George W. Bush is too late on PTSD

George W. Bush is too late on PTSD
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 27, 2014

When I read about President Bush wanting to get involved in veterans coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq, I wanted to just ignore "Bush wants change in how PTSD is handled"

There were a lot of reasons. He had a history of ignoring them when he had the power to really make a difference in their lives.

There are always going to be news reports pulling readers in one direction over another. Unless the reader has paid close attention to everything else behind the story, they never really know what is believable so they just assume it is the truth. All of us want to believe we take care of our veterans in this country.

What the veterans talk about is never the same as what the press tells average folks.

There was a letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News summing up what most of the veterans think about all of this.

George W. Bush caused vets' PTSD in the first place
Re: “Easing stigma for vets — Former president calls for shift in approach to PTSD, dropping ‘disorder’ from name,” Thursday news story.

Sickened. Repulsed. Utterly disgusted. Close but not nearly strong enough descriptions of how I felt when I saw George W. Bush weighing in on the problems faced by veterans suffering with PTSD. He wants “disorder” dropped from the term to make these veterans more appealing to employers. He intones that veterans with post-traumatic stress are “people who got hurt defending our country and are now overcoming wounds.”

In 2005 a report came out that the troops were getting contaminated water in Iraq. The VA was warned about troops with PTSD.

The Associated Press reported Feb. 17 that the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) has raised concerns in a new report about the ability of the Veterans Administration (VA) to cope with an expected flood of PTSD cases among returning vets.The VA says it has already treated 6,400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars for PTSD, but GAO noted that less than half of those using VA health services are screened for PTSD. Without access to PTSD services, "many mental-health experts believe that the chance may be missed ... to lessen the severity of symptoms and improve the overall quality of life" for vets with PTSD, the report said.

If George W. Bush had actually cared about PTSD and the suffering of our troops would he have his Secretary of Veterans Affairs do this?

November 27, 2005
SECRETIVE VA LAUNCHES NEW PTSD REVIEW
By Larry Scott

Just six days after canceling one PTSD review, the VA "sneaks in" another
- Culture of secrecy makes agency designed to help veterans their biggest foe

Over the past year, the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA), led by Secretary Jim Nicholson, has turned a deaf ear to veterans and quietly made numerous decisions designed to strip veterans of benefits and compensation.

Secretary Nicholson came to the VA with no understanding of veterans' advocacy and no experience in the healthcare sector. He had been Chairman of the Republican National Committee and Ambassador to the Vatican. As one pundit put it, "Jim Nicholson can write a good political bumper sticker and knows how to kiss the Pope's ring. That's about it."

But, with Secretary Nicholson at the VA helm, veterans have come to feel isolated from the agency's decision-making processes. And, recent developments have done nothing quell that uneasy feeling.

The latest "unannounced" move by the VA is a new review of PTSD diagnosis, treatment and compensation. The VA's plans came to light on November 16, just six days after they had canceled a review of 72,000 PTSD claims awarded at 100 percent disability. Pressure from veterans' groups and Democrat members of Congress forced the cancellation.

The VA's new PTSD review was not announced by the VA. There was no VA press release. There was no VA press conference. The information was not posted on the VA web site.

Information about the new PTSD review was made public in a press release by Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. The release, in part, said, "The Department of Veterans Affairs announced today that it has contracted with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) on a two-pronged approach to the examination of PTSD."

The VA Budget request was not just too low, but actually cut $13 million from research. Over a million Priority 7 and 8 veterans were cut off while the VA was collecting money for treating veterans. Oh, but we couldn't blog about the real news going on because President Bush had too many defenders while the troops had too few.

Demand for veterans' health care has surged in recent years. During the seven years after the Veterans Healthcare Reform Act was enacted in 1996, enrollment grew 141 percent to 7 million, while funding increased 60 percent, a 2004 report by the Harvard/Cambridge Hospital Study Group said.

Congress in July approved an extra $1.5 billion for veterans' health after the Department of Veterans Affairs revealed a funding shortfall.

About 103,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are currently receiving care from the system, far more than the 23,500 the VA predicted. The surge contributed to about one- quarter of the funding shortfall, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson told Congress in June.

Then there was the fact that over 2 million had their records exposed when a VA employee decided to take the records home.

WASHINGTON (June 7) - Personal data on about 2.2 million active-duty military, Guard and Reserve personnel - not just 50,000 as initially believed - were among those stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee last month, the government said Tuesday.

This report would not end if all that happened while President Bush had the chance to really make a difference. In 2008 suicides started a dramatic increase after the DOD was pushing Battlemind. The next program,

Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness (CSF2) was established in August 2008 by then-Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., under the name Comprehensive Soldier & Family Fitness (CSF2), in an effort to address the challenges being faced due to multiple deployments required by persistent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of focusing only on treatment after the issues arose, Casey wanted to also provide preventative measures to the Soldiers, their Families and Army Civilians to make them stronger on the front end.[1] CSF2 Resilience Training was created to give these individuals the life skills needed to better cope with adversity and bounce back stronger from these challenges. CSF2 (renamed in October 2012), was designed to build resilience and enhance performance of the Army Family—Soldiers, their Families, and Army Civilians. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is not a treatment program in response to adverse psychological conditions. CSF2 has three main components: online self-development, training, and metrics and evaluation.

This program, started and the suicides went up even higher. So if you really want to praise President Bush for pushing to take the "D" out of PTSD then you just didn't know in his case the "D" stands for denial of what he failed to do when he had the chance.