VA prodded to give more aid to female veterans

[unhappycamper]

VA prodded to give more aid to female veterans
By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times
Stars and Stripes online edition, Wednesday, February 10, 2010

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Kristine Wise remembers driving from San Diego to Victorville, Calif., to visit her brother and seeing haunting messages on the freeway signs. Instead of the speed limit or the miles to the next town, she envisioned: Beware of Snipers. Watch Out for Bombs. 40 miles to Baghdad. Death Ahead.

~snip~

The disturbing images are part of the anxiety and panic attacks she has suffered since serving as a supply clerk just as the insurgency was becoming proficient at killing Americans with roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

In Iraq, her depression ran so deep that she wrote a suicide poem: "The pressure is too great / I'm going to crack and fall apart / ... My casket is now fully covered, it looks nice." Sent back to Germany, Wise received psychiatric and medical treatment before she was honorably discharged in 2004, two years early.

Now 40 and a student at Cal State San Marcos, she is part of a growing phenomenon: large numbers of women who have been traumatized by military service.

The number of female veterans being treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs has doubled in recent years and is expected to double again within a decade. The swift demographic change has prompted some veterans' advocates to assert that the VA has not responded adequately to women's mental and physical health care needs.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=67921



unhappycamper comment: It doesn't help that fully one third of females in the military have either been raped or sexually assaulted.