Nearly 30% of Vets Treated by V.A. Have PTSD

[WilliamPitt]

Source: The Daily Beast

The Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly released a new report on post-traumatic stress disorder, showing that since 9/11, nearly 30 percent of the 834,463 Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans treated at V.A. hospitals and clinics have been diagnosed with PTSD.

Veterans advocates say the new V.A. report is the most damning evidence yet of the profound impact multiple deployments have had on American service men and women since 9/11. Troops who’ve been deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan are more than three times as likely as soldiers with no previous deployments to screen positive for PTSD and major depression, according to a 2010 study published by the American Journal for Public Health.

The report, which revealed that 247,243 veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have been diagnosed with PTSD, was buried on the V.A.’s website without fanfare. “As far as we can tell, V.A. didn’t tell anyone these numbers were made public," says veterans advocate Paul Sullivan at Bergmann & Moore, a law firm that focuses entirely on veteran disability issues. “No press release. Nothing. I actually found the report while searching for new data. I simply changed the V.A.’s web address from second quarter to third quarter by altering one digit, and the new numbers appeared. Magic, eh?”

Why was there evidently no effort to publicize these new PTSD numbers? Josh Taylor, a spokesman for the V.A., would not directly answer that question, but told The Daily Beast that the agency still estimates that the overall PTSD rate is 20 percent across the entire population of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, not just those who have come to a V.A. facility and are reflected in the report that shows the rate at 30 percent.

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/21/nearly-30-of-vets-treated-by-v-a-have-ptsd.html

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Paul Sullivan is a friend of mine. This is incredibly important.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Easy to believe. There are 18 successful suicides by veterans per day. I know one of them.

Per day.

Eighteen.

Successful, not attempted, suicides.

A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame

April 14, 2012
Nicholas D. Kristof

HERE’S a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.


An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.

These unnoticed killing fields are places like New Middletown, Ohio, where Cheryl DeBow raised two sons, Michael and Ryan Yurchison, and saw them depart for Iraq. Michael, then 22, signed up soon after the 9/11 attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

...

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[heaven05]

3. huh!!!!!!!

Last edited Tue Oct 23, 2012, 10:09 AM - Edit history (2)

ya think! This is the generation that will get the full benefit of the VA recognizing, with prodding from a very well informed social media populace, that large numbers of troops have PTSD. God bless them. I know that for soldiers before these conflicts, you know like Viet Nam/ We had to go through HELL to get benefits for PTSD and Agent Orange. My friend just got benefits for Agent Orange but had to lose his prostate, no history in his family, to get the benefits. I have the same problems developing and no history in my family either. So, I'm glad the realities of the effects of war on the soldier is being recognized, acknowledged and treated early because I think we're going to see much more about the effects of depleted uranium rounds on our troops. The suicide rate is a telling figure showing our men and women in uniform are feeling the effect(s) of long deployments, tooo long, in combat zones. I lay the blame for this one on Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs who allowed these long deployments because we didn't have enough combat troops at the time for TWO active wars and for sending them into harms way without proper equipment. At least this President is trying to get us out another mess the repugs created with no thought of the human effect.

[Trillo]

4. The only thing that will fix it is to wipe their memories.

As far as I know, that's still science fiction. Even if it could be done, why would any business do that? It's much more profitable to create an incurable illness that can only be treated, and treated, and treated, treated until the sunset of that life sets.

Marijuana is said to help some with the symptoms, and nature can provide it nearly for free. Can't have that, nosiree. Tax and regulate? Can't have that either: Schedule 1 drug, what will the prison contractors do without that gravy train. Money money money.

Didn't someone write a song about money? Maybe a few did.... Aren't wars fought over it?

And just think, if memory could be wiped, given mankind's totalitarian nature, what else might happen. Well, all sort of things could be done. You could wipe your workers memories, and then not pay them, because they didn't remember working! It would most certainly occur, and doctors or memory technicians could easily be bribed, ahem, "employed".

[midnight]

5. Systematic abandonment of the 99% in favor of the 1%.

[RainDog]

6. k&r n/t