500,000 GIs Suffer From ‘Invisible’ Wounds: End the War, Fund Health Care, Veterans Groups Say


March 14, 2008

As the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war approaches, a rising tide of soldiers and veterans suffering psychological injuries is being adding to the nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers who have died in the war and the tens of thousands officially counted as physically wounded in action.

“Rates of mental health problems among new veterans are high and rising,” Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) said in its January 2008 issue paper, “Mental Health Injuries: The Invisible Wounds of War.” With 1.5 million service personnel having served in Iraq or Afghanistan and one in three vets expected to suffer serious psychological problems including depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), IAVA says about 500,000 men and women are coming home with combat-related psychological injuries.

In addition, up to 300,000 Iraq vets have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) which may not have outward signs and may be hard to distinguish from psychological injury.

The toll on troops and their families is severe. The Army recently released figures showing that about five soldiers attempt suicide each day, up from one per day before the Iraq war started. According to IAVA, one fifth of married soldiers in Iraq say they are planning a divorce, and at least 40,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets have been treated for substance abuse.

Army figures show soldiers serving multiple deployments are 50 percent more likely to suffer mental health problems.

With military and veterans’ care systems increasingly overwhelmed, hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers and veterans are now waiting months or even years to get medical help and disability compensation.

How to reverse this tide? “Well, the first thing we need to do is to stop the war, and stop creating more of this problem,” Michael McPhearson, executive director of the St. Louis-based Veterans for Peace and veteran of the first Gulf War, said in a telephone interview.

Though care for returning soldiers and veterans has never been adequate, McPhearson said, the Bush administration failed to anticipate both the length of the war and the types of injuries it would bring.

“Then, because they didn’t do any planning,” he said, “the war is costing a lot more than they expected. So they are looking for ways to not spend as much money on other aspects such as health care for veterans.” He cited the lack of mental health providers as an acute problem.

McPhearson urged people around the country “to get involved locally with the issue,” so they can help work on specific problems in their areas. “People at the vets center here are very concerned about what’s happening with veterans, but they don’t have enough resources to deal with the problems,” he said, adding that veterans themselves often aren’t given complete information on help that’s available to them.

“Soldiers don’t know the rules of the Veterans Administration, so if it gets too hard and there’s no one to talk them through it and explain the benefits, they just say ‘forget it,’” said Eli PaintedCrow, who retired as a Sergeant First Class after 22 years in the Army, including service in Iraq.

PaintedCrow, a member of the Yaqui Nation and lives in California’s Central Valley, said the large number of soldiers who return home to rural areas face long travel times to reach veterans’ services and programs in the cities.

Ten percent of soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are women, among them some 16,000 single mothers. “So here you are in a small town trying to get to the vet center, and you have kids,” PaintedCrow said. “Who’s helping them with their children, and who’s helping them with their PTSD or other problems while they’re trying to deal with their children? Communities need to build something around that,” she said. “We can’t wait for the VA.”

Soldiers of color, both men and women, also face constant problems with racism, she said, citing her own experience with a white female commander who told Black and Brown soldiers under her command that if they trained their white replacements satisfactorily, they could serve as their assistants.

Both McPhearson and PaintedCrow emphasized the special problems faced by women soldiers who experience sexual harassment only to find that their charges are disregarded or covered over.

PaintedCrow said the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), which she helped to co-found, emphasizes “opening a door” for women soldiers to connect and “heal the wound that’s inside.” Many of its leaders are “women of color, lesbian women, women who feel a disconnect everywhere else,” she said. “This is not based on rank or where you served, it is based on who you are as a woman, what is important to you and how we can validate and support that.”

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America has set out a far-reaching legislative program to address many of the problems faced by returning vets, including guaranteeing “thorough and confidential” mental health and TBI screening for all troops before and after a combat tour, fully funding VA health care, overhauling the military and veterans disability system and enacting a “modernized World War II-style GI bill” of education benefits for returning soldiers.

Source: People's Weekly World Newspaper,
Marilyn Bechtel

Thanks for this article!! I haven't been in the military and I am for PEACE....NO MORE WAR!!!!! To me it's more important to spend all that money helping the vets who've been injured psychologically!!! And for the poor in this country to get the proper help for their PTSD!!!! and other health problems!! And the folks in the South who still need a lot of help to recover from those horrific storms mentally and physically!! .....PEACE FOR THE MASSES

Thank you 'going on hope' for this thread!

I read someone's post, can't remember who, but someone just back from Iraq.

Said, "What the h*ll, you people don't even act like there's a war going on." Or something like that...........

Made me feel so horrible for our spoiled country. This must be so isolating for our vets.

My Gosh, how sickening it is, War for Oil, and people can't even pay their mortgage, feed their kids, go to the doctor or dentist............and we are the richest country in the world. This is the price of freedom?

I accidentally started on this subject at a party in my yuppy lake community here...........They all stopped in their tracks and glared at me cause I said something they perceived as 'anti-American.'

I shut up immediately and made a joke out of it........have to live with these people.........but the Denial is Sickening! The rich are so selfish, it seems...........my ex comes from a wealthy family. I never saw someone who put others down, talked about 'class', so uncompassionate...........I was appalled (oh and he's on DSHS and 'collecting' from his Mummy!)

TO ALL YOU VETS ON THIS FORUM............I'M SO SORRY WE ARE SO IN DENIAL...........WE LOVE YOU AND WE SUFFER ALONG SIDE YOU!!!! You need our care, I'm going to start researching how I can get involved to help those returning.......

My husband returned from Iraq a year and a half ago. There are so many people that are suffering from these "invisible wounds" and are definatly being left behind to deal with it on their own. I am not sure how it is in the other branches of the military but i know for sure that the Marines it is definately looked down upon to have any psychological problems- even if it is from being deployed. If we could just make these guys realize that it is not something to be ashamed of and that there are some resources out there to help them, people's lives might not be destroyed by PTSD. But it is true that the VA is overwhelmed by the people and it takes awhile to get an appointment. I definately agree that we need to stop sending our guys/gals over there and ruining their lives to "save" other peoples. Before my husband and my sister along with her fiance came back with psych problems from being deployed i was all for the war, but seeing first hand what it does to the people returning I am against it. It is depressing how all these amazing people can be deployed and when they come back they feel all alone and have NO hope for anything...their marrages, life, careers, health, or any chance of happiness. It tears me up inside to see my husband deal with these issues on a day to day basis. It is very hard on me when he tells me that he doesnt' want to be married because he feels guilty for putting me through the hell that he has to go through to recover from PTSD or at least learn to deal with it. I want nothing more than to be there for him and help him through this, but he doesnt' want me to. I know there are many of you out there that are in the same situation...we just have to stay strong and pray for our spouses that the guilt will go away and the hope will return.

I lost my boyfriend to his ptsd. He could not cope with allowing himself to be loved. He felt he was undeserving and was a terrible person. He has many other "classic case" syptoms...too many to list here.

He is a veteran from Desert Storm and Afghanistan and has been getting some treatment from the local VA. I do not think that the VA has enough resources or progressive treatments for ptsd. Its just sad because these men and women pay a terrible price for our country. When they get home they are expected to be "normal" yet they have been living in a war zone for many months. I think the reservists who have been called to active duty have it even worse. They are just thrown back into "real life" as soon as their duty has been filled.

I love my country but what are we doing to our soldiers? Is it really worth it?

Sisu

I am a 100% service-connected disabled Desert Storm vet. I don't go to the VA hospital any more because I was sexually assaulted there by an employee. The VA police refused to take my evidence covered with his DNA. They refused my calls. The emergency room at the VA hospital refused to treat me because they said my injuries did not constitute "an emergency", i.e. trouble breathing, bleeding, imminent death. The perp still has his same job in the hospital, and he touches patients daily.

I am not asking for sympathy. These are simple facts.

Don't let anyone you care about join the military. I was raped in the army, but the sergeant got promoted when I didn't get pregnant. When my health turned sour, the army treated me with contempt until I got a medical discharge.

People who join the military are walking into an early death, the hell of PTSD, and there will be no high quality medical care waiting for them at the VA when they separate from duty. They will fight tooth and nail for deserved compensation, and be denied by the same government that lied to them about the conditions of life in the military.

Just don't do it.