Returning From Iraq, Still Fighting Vietnam
By SALLY SATEL
Published: March 5, 2004
Over the next few months, 130,000 American troops will return home from Iraq. Their arrival will bring joy to their families and gratitude from the nation. It will also renew a debate over post-traumatic stress disorder. The House Veterans' Affairs Committee, for instance, has scheduled hearings on the disorder next week, with a focus on soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Likewise, just as the press has spent a year comparing the invasion of Iraq to Vietnam, it has begun drawing parallels between today's troops and Vietnam veterans, who are believed to suffer from a high rate of war-related psychiatric disorders.
But as we try to help the soldiers of Operation Iraqi Freedom meld back into society, it would be a mistake to rely too heavily on the conventional wisdom about Vietnam. What is generally put forth as an established truth — that roughly one-third of returnees from Vietnam suffered psychological problems — is at best highly debatable.
That much-cited estimate comes from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study, released in 1990 by the Veterans Administration. It concentrated on post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by disabling painful memories, anxiety and phobias after a traumatic event like combat, rape or other extreme threat. It found that 31 percent of soldiers who went to Vietnam, or almost one million troops, succumbed to post-traumatic stress. The count climbed to fully half if one included those given the diagnosis of "partial" post-traumatic stress disorder.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/opinion/05SATE.html
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