Many troops with PTSD aren’t treated

[unhappycamper]

Many troops with PTSD aren’t treated
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Apr 13, 2008 15:48:02 EDT

Post-traumatic stress disorder experts say service members aren’t seeking care, aren’t getting enough time to recover between deployments and aren’t receiving medications or therapies that are known to be effective.

“Problems related to getting troops adequate mental health treatment cannot be resolved unless two issues — stigma and access — are addressed,” Todd Bowers, director of government affairs for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on health on April 1.

Almost 59,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with PTSD by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Army post-deployment health assessments have found that 20 percent of active-duty and 40 percent of reserve-component troops had symptoms of PTSD, and some experts say the real numbers could be much higher.

But because PTSD hasn’t been addressed until fairly recently — the first scientific paper about the disorder in veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War didn’t come out until five years after that war ended — VA and Pentagon officials say much needs to be done to determine good screening techniques and therapies.

“This is the first war where DoD and VA recognized the psychological impact going in,” said Army Col. Charles Hoge, chief of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Walter Reed Institute of Research.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/army_ptsd_041208w/



uhc comment: And the VA continues to sit on disability claims.