Behind the walls of Ward 54 (at Walter Reed Hospital)

[kskiska]

They're overmedicated, forced to talk about their mothers instead of Iraq, and have to fight for disability pay. Traumatized combat vets say the Army is failing them, and after a year following more than a dozen soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, I believe them.

Before he hanged himself with his bathrobe sash in the psychiatric ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Spc. Alexis Soto-Ramirez complained to friends about his medical treatment. Soto-Ramirez, 43, had been flown out of Iraq five months before then because of chronic back pain that became excruciating during the war. But doctors were really worried about his mind. They thought he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving with the 544th Military Police Company, a unit of the Puerto Rico National Guard, the kind of unit that saw dirty, face-to-face combat in Iraq.

A copy of Soto-Ramirez's medical records, reviewed by Salon, show that a doctor who treated him in Puerto Rico upon his return from Iraq believed his mental problems were probably caused by the war and that his future was in the Army's hands. "Clearly, the psychiatric symptoms are combat related," a clinical psychologist at Roosevelt Roads Naval Hospital wrote on Nov. 24, 2003. The entry says, "Outcome will depend on adequacy and appropriateness of treatment." Doctors in Puerto Rico sent Soto-Ramirez to Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., to get the best care the Army had to offer. There, he was put in Ward 54, Walter Reed's "lockdown," or inpatient psychiatric ward, where the most troubled patients are supposed to have constant supervision.

But less than a month after leaving Puerto Rico, on Jan. 12, 2004, Soto-Ramirez was found dead, hanging in Ward 54. Army buddies who visited him in the days before his death said Soto-Ramirez was increasingly angry and despondent. "He was real upset with the treatment he was getting," said René Negron, a former Walter Reed psychiatric patient and a friend of Soto-Ramirez's. "He said: 'These people are giving me the runaround ... These people think I'm crazy, and I'm not crazy, Negron. I'm getting more crazy being up here.'

(snip)

In fact, repeated interviews over the course of one year with 14 soldiers who have been treated in Walter Reed's inpatient and outpatient psychiatric wards, and a review of medical records and Army documents, suggest that the Army's top hospital is failing to properly care for many soldiers traumatized by the Iraq war. As the Soto-Ramirez case suggests, inadequate suicide watch is one concern. But the problems run deeper. Psychiatric techniques employed at Walter Reed appear outmoded and ineffective compared with state-of-the-art care as described by civilian doctors. For example, Walter Reed favors group therapy over one-on-one counseling; and the group therapy is mostly administered by a rotating cast of medical students and residents, not full-fledged doctors or veterans. The troops also complain that the Army relies too much on pills; few of the soldiers took all the medication given to them by the hospital.

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/18/walter_reed/index.html

[Southsideirish]

1. "My name is O'Hanlon, I've just gone sixteen. My home is in 'Manna -

that's where I was weaned.

I've heard all the stories - I wanted the same,
to play up my part in the Patriot Game."

[no_hypocrisy]

2. The more things change . . .

My friend is a Vietnam vet. He had a nervous breakdown in the jungle. Could've been because he was one of two survivors in a company of 24 that was set up to be target for the North Vietnamese --set up the U.S. Army to be bait to trap the enemy (Operation Hastings).

So, he couldn't fight anymore. He was sent back "home" to a military hospital. However, the military didn't want it getting back to the "enemy" that soldiers were regularly having nervous breakdowns. So they decided the fiction would be to call these situations "battle fatigue". Not only in the press. My friend was actually treated for battle fatigue. He kept telling the doctors that he thought he was having a mental breakdown and they refused to entertain his entreaties to properly help him. He was treated for battled fatigue and nothing else. It's amazing that he has his shit so together now after all that nonsense.