Returning veterans encounter VA mental health meltdown

[DreamSmoker]

Source: MSN

Clay Hunt, a Marine sniper, served two combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he came home with a Purple Heart and post traumatic stress disorder, Hunt asked the Veterans Administration for help. But getting medical attention was a two-year struggle. On March 31, Hunt committed suicide in his Sugar Land, Texas, apartment. He was 28.
..Philip Northcutt, 38, a fellow Marine, saw intense combat in Iraq in 2004 and was wounded. He was diagnosed with PTSD in the field, but he says he was merely given sleeping pills and an anti-depressant and told to keep fighting. When he came home, he struggled to adjust, spending time in jail and becoming homeless before he started receiving disability benefits more than four years later.

When Jordan Towers, 27, came home from Iraq in 2008, the Marine couldn’t escape the feeling that he was on another night patrol in Al Anbar province, and that each step might be his last. He angered easily and snapped at people for no reason. When he called the VA, he was told it would take three months to get an appointment. He was diagnosed with PTSD a year later, but six months after the diagnosis he is still waiting to hear whether his claim for disability benefits will be approved.

Three Marines, three cases where the U.S. government allegedly let down those who risked all for their country.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42995663/ns/health-health_care

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This weekend I will remember those who gave their lives for us..
I will also pray for those still here who gave so much..........

[EFerrari]

1. What a disgrace.

[Warpy]

2. Meanwhile, VA facilities are stuffed with WWII and Korea vets

who are too sick to live alone and for whom the VA system is the nursing home of choice, since the VA will only pay for 6 months of outside nursing home care. That should be the scandal, right there, and that's the law that needs changing. Get the old guys into more appropriate facilities and the new vets would find beds available so the VA could do its job giving aid to the acutely sick.

[Hubert Flottz]

3. When you ETS you become a liability to the federal government.

The "Bennie's" are for the well connected.

[denbot]

4. This fucking sucks, DU veterans who don't know about VOTEVETS .ORG

http://votevets.org/home

This organization actually works to helps vets, instead of serving as a mouth piece for the rightwing/defense industries like the V.F.W.

I started using the V.A. just after Iraq II started. Signing up was almost instantaneous, but that is very different now. Moments before logging on to DU I paid my V.A. perscription bill with thier new www.pay.gov function. I have private insurance, but need the V.A. to cover gaps in coverage my private insurance won't.

[russspeakeasy]

5. We have had 2 such suicides in the community I live in.

Both had seen "extensive combat in Iraq and Afghanistan." The VA is overworked, understaffed and dedicated to coming in under budget. Getting into the system can take years. It's a shame, a damn shame, but when the higher powers decide to go to war, they only budget for bullets.

[Viking 1]

6. .

:argh::grr::nuke:

[jwirr]

7. They have been doing this for decades. Lost papers, rejection of

illnesses like the ones caused by agent orange, post traumatic syndrome, and I assume others. My sil came home from Germany with a damaged shoulder and spine from an accident. I was friends with a vet who warned me that they lose papers. I told Bill. When he got to the states and was seeing a doctor he stoled his own papers. When he got home and they tried to refuse him he went to the local VA rep. The guy was delighted - saying "This one I am going to win."

Whenever possible soldiers should ask for copies of their papers when seeing a doctor. They are going to need them when they get home.

[Yon_Yonson]

8. SNAFU, FUBAR, CLUSTERFUCK

The VA is understaffed especially in the light of these returning Vets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am a Nam Vet and it took them 13 months to process my disability claim. No money for anything except for actual warfare and new weapon development ... the rest be damned!

[NoodleyAppendage]

9. VA facilities and personnel are understaffed and underpaid

You get what you pay for. If there was a serious effort to increase mental health and claim coverage at the VA, then there would be a large increase in the upcoming VA budget to cover it. But, alas this is not the case.

To be clear, it is not the VA personnel that are the problem. The problem rests way above the VA system.

J