Supprt the Troops

I don't even have the words to convey how indescribably angry this makes me: Army psychologist Douglas McNinch was inadvertently caught on tape by his patient, "Sgt. X," explaining that he and other Army clinicians were "being pressured to not diagnose PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and diagnose anxiety disorder NOS [instead]," and revealing that the Army's medical boards were rejecting "his diagnoses of PTSD, saying soldiers had not seen enough trauma to have 'serious PTSD issues'."

Why the discouragement from correctly diagnosing PTSD? Money, of course. PTSD doesn't just go away. It's a serious anxiety disorder that its sufferers learn to manage, if they're lucky—but because it's also "a condition that obligates the military to provide expensive, intensive long-term care, including the possibility of lifetime disability payments," the Army is extremely interested in denying the diagnosis, no less the appropriate treatment, meaning there isn't a hell of a lot of luck to be had by returning soldiers suffering this life-fucking disorder.

"Unfortunately," McNinch told Sgt. X, "yours has not been the only case ... I and other [doctors] are under a lot of pressure to not diagnose PTSD. It's not fair. I think it's a horrible way to treat soldiers, but unfortunately, you know, now the V.A. is jumping on board, saying, 'Well, these people don't have PTSD,' and stuff like that."

...A recently retired Army psychiatrist who still works for the government, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said commanders at another Army hospital instructed him to misdiagnose soldiers suffering from war-related PTSD, recommending instead that he diagnose them with other disorders that would reduce their benefits. The psychiatrist said he would be willing to say more publicly about the cases and provide specific names, but only if President Obama would protect him from retaliation.

...Last year, VoteVets.org and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released an e-mail from Norma Perez, a psychologist in Texas, to staff at a Department of Veterans Affairs facility there. In addition to the Army, that department also provides veterans with benefits. "Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out," Perez wrote in the e-mail dated March 20, 2008. She suggested the staff "consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder." As opposed to those with PTSD, veterans with adjustment disorder, a temporary condition, typically do not receive disability payments from the government.

SMASH.

In a thoughtful country with serious, grown-up debate, sending soldiers to risk life and limb for a nation that refuses to care for them upon their return would not only be considered an enormous scandal and unconscionable ethical lapse, but would also be discussed as yet another planning failure of the two wars we fight with no exit strategies. The architects of this war thought it was going to be a cakewalk; they didn't in their wildest dreams consider the war would last this long, and thus failed utterly to prepare contingency plans in- and outside the war theaters, including the military healthcare system, which isn't designed to manage a constant influx of wounded soldiers.

I would, frankly, be amazed if even a passing thought had been given to readying the creaky, understaffed, underfunded system for that then-possibility and now-reality, because, as you'll no doubt recall, both wars were going to be walks in the park and last six weeks apiece and we'd be greeted as liberators and all that nonsense. Instead, we've been in Afghanistan for nearly a decade, Iraq not much less, and the two wars have produced (pdf) nearly 40,000 injured and dead soldiers.

Those soldiers were first casualties of the utter lack of competent post-war planning on the battlefield, and are now casualties of the utter lack of competent post-war planning at home.

It's a fucking disgrace.



Contact the White House and genuinely support our troops by requesting proper healthcare for them.