Will Congress Abandon Veterans’ Legislation so vital to their health and relationships? It appears so.
I am posting here a link to An Open Letter to Congress from the Disabled American Veterans. I wrote about the issue of health and relationships last February. Be supportive. Call Congress today! Veterans Today Newsletter . My article from the February’s Providence Journal follows:
Challenges for Returning Vets: Health and Relationship Havoc
IT IS VALENTINE’S DAY every day that a young man or woman arrives home safely from Iraq or Afghanistan. But for returning veterans the war often comes back with them. Family, friends and lovers looking forward to normality often see soldiers struggling with health and relationships as they fall through medical-care cracks. One member of an elite combat unit seeking help in Rhode Island was told: “Not only are you not in the system, but you are listed here as ‘sensitive file.’ I can’t even confirm that you were in the military.” This is an all too familiar story at Veterans Administration hospitals. Why?
“When you are a soldier you are under the purview of the Department of Defense whereas at home you are under the Veterans Administration. Because of confidentiality rules, the two do not share medical records,” says Anne Van Cott, a neurologist at the Veterans Administration Pittsburgh Health Care System.
Dr. Van Cott is promoting awareness of traumatic brain injury (TBI), which can result from a blow to the head, concussion or a penetrating wound. Today’s signature combat wounds are head and extremity injuries from blast exposure; about a third of those in combat are coming into contact with improvised explosive devices.
TBI disrupts normal functions with mild to severe consequences and may develop into post-traumatic epilepsy. Seizures from this disorder can range from the hardly noticeable to disabling. Veterans must be alerted to the wide range of symptoms, and if they experience any of them, find a V.A. hospital for diagnosis and early treatment.
The situation with brain injury and epilepsy in veterans is so serious and widespread that at a recent American Epilepsy Society meeting of neurologists, Marc Dichter, M.D., a neurology and pharmacology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, outlined “Operation Giveback” to create better access to care nationwide and develop comprehensive information networks.
In addition to physical injuries, some vets are homeless, without jobs, and are turning to drugs and alcohol. Within nine months of civilian life, a model soldier in a state unit developed a severe drinking problem, abandoned his family and drained the bank account. Family relationships are so strained that the military reports a divorce rate up to 53 percent among enlisted men, with numbers on the rise among officers.
One young physician, Maj. Daniel O’Connor, of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, recently served at a triage station in Iraq for wounded soldiers and civilians. He believes that most families are resilient enough to weather the relationship stress of one deployment. But he pointed out that “by the end of the second or third deployment, and as many as three years away from home, many relationships start to suffer. When you factor in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that affects so many soldiers, even the strongest relationships will suffer.”
His opinion is underscored by Capt. (ret.) Charles Reade, of Barrington. Also a Providence businessman, he was commander of an operational Green Beret “A Team” within the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany and a combat adviser and troop commander in Vietnam. Serving as a volunteer Army deputy chaplain since 2004, he has held pastoral-care and depression/suicide-prevention classes and works with fresh-from-combat Army recruiters.
Chaplain Reade said, “I often receive calls from family and friends asking me to give a touch of God’s love to a veteran. I see in returning warriors a broken spirit. They come home and have flashbacks. They have great difficulty tolerating daily life or relaxing. Their family partners have been running the household in their absence and they want to jump back in and make family decisions because they were trained to be decisive. This creates conflict and frequently results in domestic abuse.”
He added, “Sometimes I see young men and women affected by PTSD who have lost their ability to be intimate. They have lost hope, positive feelings for the future, peacefulness, spontaneity, their wholeness. They have lost trust in almost everyone including their families. They have lost their ‘awe’ to believe that there could be anything greater than that which inflicted the original pain.”
In this election year, war is no longer foremost on our minds though we look for dates that will signal its end. However, for those who did the fighting for us, now struggling with their health and relationships, there may be no end in sight. It seems that insufficient dollars and system policies are thwarting veterans from receiving the medical care they need. Where is the outrage?
from the Providence Journal on Sunday, February 3, 2008
Copyright 2008 Rita Watson