TAP's Tara McKelvey reports today on inadequate mental health care for veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan:
Some suicides seem preordained -- or at least planned with determination and care. That was not the case with Henderson. True, he was a mess, physically and emotionally -- and dangerous, too. He carried a box cutter in his pocket and kept a hatchet in his Mercury Cougar. Once he got into a fight at home with his brother, Garland Sharpe. The fight was so savage, Sharpe barely survived. Henderson, who was 5-foot-11 and weighed 160 pounds, reached for a 10-pound weight during the brawl. Luckily, their mother, Diana Henderson, moved it out of the way. Otherwise, says Sharpe, "I probably wouldn't be here."
In June she explored care for veterans with Post Traumatic Stess Disorder:
Roma eventually received disability benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. But many others who have returned from a war zone (whether in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan) with shattered nerves have not fared as well. Approximately 18 veterans kill themselves every day, according to an e-mail from a Veterans Affairs official that was revealed in April after two veterans' groups, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco. More recently, the Army reported that its personnel committed suicide at the highest rate on record in 2007, and the trend is continuing in 2008. Given the severity and magnitude of the problem -- Veterans Affairs saw 400,000 veterans for PTSD last year -- the Pentagon and administration officials are eager to find a way to address the issue. There have been various approaches, including efforts to cut back on compensation claims. Recently, an advocacy group called VoteVets.org revealed an email written by an official from Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Texas, suggesting mental-health specialists should hold back on diagnosing PTSD. Instead, the official suggested, they should "consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder."
And in February she explained how one soldier was smeared as a coward for being open about his mental health problems:
On Nov. 6, 2003, less than six weeks after he experienced his "drug-induced, psychiatric breakdown," as he says, a CNN segment titled "Heroes and Cowards in War" appeared on television. Army Private Jessica Lynch was held up as a hero; Pogany was described as a coward. Yet things have changed over time. In April 2007, Lynch testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the Army exaggerated her role in fighting off Iraqi insurgents, turning her into "little girl Rambo" in order to pump up enthusiasm for the war. Meanwhile, Pogany, though he's far from the battlefield in Iraq, has emerged as a hero. At Army posts and in military communities across the country, he is trying to help save people who have returned from the war with mental and emotional problems.
On July 15, 2004, the Army dropped the cowardice charges. At that point, Pogany became Exhibit A in the case against the military's treatment of mental illness among soldiers. He was featured in GQ ("The Coward," July 2004) and on PBS' Frontline ("The Soldier's Heart," March 2005), as well as in dozens of newspaper articles. "He was like a canary in a coal mine," explains Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "Now, years later, we see more cases of the stress of war -- acute stress -- and the Army's inability to deal with it."
--The Editors
