Andrew Weaver and Ray McGovern: Troops Return to Painful Wait for Needed Help

[marmar]

From the Baltimore Sun, via CommonDreams:


Published on Sunday, February 4, 2007 by the Baltimore Sun
Troops Return to Painful Wait for Needed Help
by Andrew Weaver and Ray McGovern

The California Nurses Association reported that in the first quarter of 2006, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs "treated 20,638 Iraq veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder, and they have a backlog of 400,000 cases." A returning soldier has to wait an average of 165 days for a VA decision on initial disability benefits, and an appeal can take up to three years.

This is unacceptable and reprehensible.

The saying "War is hell" doesn't begin to describe how horrible it has been for tens of thousands in our military in Iraq and Afghanistan. War inevitably involves witnessing and sometimes engaging in gruesome acts of violence. It is a shocking confrontation with death and devastation. It is normal for human beings to react to war's psychic trauma with profound fear, anger, grief, repulsion, helplessness and horror - or with emotional numbness and disbelief.

Trauma is the Greek word for "wound." Just as a physical wound from combat can cause suffering in the body, psychological trauma can cause acute suffering of mind and spirit.

It is not surprising to find that an assessment of more than 220,000 military personnel returning from Iraq published in the April Journal of the American Medical Association found that nearly one in five has significant mental health problems. Repeated tours of duty increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder by 50 percent. .....(more)

The rest of the piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0204-21.htm