"With the Capitol in the background, Army veteran David Dickerson of Oklahoma City, Okla., right, and Air Force veteran Linda Stanley, from San Diego, Calif., now with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), join others to place 1,892 flags"
"Veteran suicide is a major issue on Capitol Hill, but policymakers may be making decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate data, according to several investigations that suggest depression could be a far larger problem than the one-in-10 figure the Department of Veterans Affairs cites."This has been part of the problem all along as members of Congress, pressured to do something and pushed by zeal to have name on bill they were willing to do anything. Not what works. Not what they had facts instead of claims on to feel confident it would work. Not even taking the time to take a look back at all the other clusterfucked up bills they already wrote. How did they expect anything to work when they didn't have a clue about what already failed?
"A glitch in the system made it so that even when doctors selected major depressive disorder, the computer would automatically reclassify it to the broader, less-serious diagnosis of “depression, not otherwise stated.” The VA said it expects to fix this error by early next year."Keep in mind that mental health professionals have been looking into the link of PTSD and combat since WWI and after Vietnam veterans came home, pushing for change in the 70's, by the 80's it was being treated and veterans were being compensated for a huge part of their lives being taken captive.
The VA can blame a computer glitch but if the psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist doesn't have a clue, how could they expect a different result?
The biggest problem veterans have staying alive after combat is battling the stupidity of legislators! That would depress anyone!
Think of how depressing it is when you go to your own doctor feeling like crap only to hear they don't have a clue what's wrong with you. They make you run around from this specialist to that one so they can rule stuff out while you feel worse. Well, that's what happening to veterans. The testing, research and hearings have been going on for decades.
What failed, failed huge and then resurrected under another veteran's name tied to it with more money allowing the perpetrator of the original junk to fade into oblivion.
Congress forgot to remember and that is the most depressing thing for veterans waiting for help that still hasn't come and will have come far too late for at least 22 veterans a day who were forced to wait too long.
Just a reminder, this is from 2002
Psychiatry Res. 2002 Jul 31;110(3):231-8.
US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health
PTSD symptoms and cognitive performance in recent trauma survivors.
Brandes D1, Ben-Schachar G, Gilboa A, Bonne O, Freedman S, Shalev AY.
Chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with cognitive impairments involving memory and attention.
The association between cognitive impairment and early PTSD symptoms is unknown, yet such association may lead to poorer processing of traumatic memories and thereby contribute to subsequent PTSD.
This study evaluated the relationship between PTSD symptoms and cognitive functioning within 10 days of traumatic events.
Forty-eight survivors were assessed for symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, depression and dissociation and for immediate and delayed verbal and figural memory, attention, learning and IQ.
Survivors with high levels of PTSD symptoms showed impaired attention and immediate recall for figural information and lower IQ. They did not show, however, an impairment of verbal recall and learning.
The observed difference was not explained by anxiety or dissociation. It disappeared, however, when the effect of depressive symptoms was controlled for.
Lower IQ and impaired attention are associated with early PTSD and depressive symptoms.
Poorer attention may have a role in shaping traumatic memories.
Exactly how many veterans will have to die before they figure this out?
