A quarter of US war vets diagnosed with mental disorder
Posted in H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts) on March 13th, 2007 7:53 am by HL
A quarter of US war vets diagnosed with mental disorder: study
Raw Story
Excerpt:
A quarter of the Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans treated with US government-funded health care have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to a study published Monday.
And when psychosocial disorders such as domestic violence were included, the number of war veterans suffering from mental illnesses rose to 31 percent.
The instances of mental illness among recently discharged troops and members of the National Guard are significantly higher than those of a study published last year which examined active duty troops, the lead researcher told AFP.
The study comes just days after the Bush administration vowed a “comprehensive review” of veteran care following revelations that soldiers being treated at the renowned Walter Reed Army Medical Center were living in a building with mold-covered walls, infestations of mice and cockroaches, and holes in the ceiling.
That scandal exposed a broader problem with the under-funding of the VA system, said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
With a backlog of more than 860,000 medical claims and waiting times of up to a year for treatment, many of the troops coming home are not getting the help they need, Davis said.
And that includes treatment of mental disorders, which are a predictable result of the kinds of stresses troops face under combat, Davis said.
“War changes everybody and everybody is going to have to deal with it in one way or another,” Davis said.
HLs Take
Just one more cost of war that we will all have to deal with in the coming years. Veterans gone crazy from the war, with on one to help them out, so they will be forced into the streets. By then Bush will be chilling on his heavily guarded compound in Paraguay.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I see that Buck ‘n Bill, the HL trolls extraordinare, aren’t commenting on this. I wonder why? I guess there’s no humor in PTSD. Where’s the laughs in our fearless leader’s de-funding of the VA? I guess they can’t work up a laugh over soldiers who get used up protecting our “way of lifeâ€, then thrown away.
“…war veterans suffering from mental illnesses rose to 31 percent…with a backlog of more than 860,000 medical claims and waiting times of up to a year for treatment…â€
I wonder how many Timothy McVeigh’s and John Allen Mohammad’s will come out of Gulf War II? How about it boys? How many home grown, red blooded, all American terrorists, trained by the military at great expense to the American taxpayer and sent off to fight in one of the Bush family’s oil wars will come out of this latest chapter of the Never-Ending Glorious Oil War on Terror? Let me know if Pat Robertson’s CBN does a story on this Bill, will ya? Buck’s too busy breeding pot-bellied albino flying kamodo dragons, so it’s all up to you.
March 16th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Well you want a comment to this JAFO here.
Everyone is complaining about what this war is doing to the troops and yet no one complains about the mental problems that the vets from the former wars have been having for years.
No we need to help just the troops from the Iraq war because Bush has caused all of this and one else has every suffered from the affects of war.