Catastrophe - Dick Morris [134]
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Perhaps the most serious part of the Pentagon’s recent study of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans was its finding that fewer than 40 percent of those afflicted by PTSD have sought help.
“You can’t just say that I’ve got a hundred programs, therefore, I’ve done my job,” said Steve Robinson, the executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. “This study indicates that the sickest veterans who need the most help won’t go.”550
The study documents the horrors to which Iraq soldiers are exposed. Ninety percent reported being shot at; half reported having handled a dead body.551
The New England Journal of Medicine study found that 95 percent of Marines and Army soldiers in Iraq had been shot at. Fifty-six percent had killed an enemy combatant. And 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains.552 This is the stuff of nightmares and flashbacks.
“There are no clear enemy lines, non-stop pace, the war surrounds the soldier 360 degrees. The enemy can be man, woman or child. This is an extremely stressful situation,” said Steve Robinson.553
According to Fox News, “Robinson said men and women who in the past would have died in the field have survived thanks to advanced body armor, but in many cases the soldiers are living with severe, life-altering injuries or are watching their friends grapple with them. In other cases, many of the less injured are National Guard and Reservists who are being sent back to the theater two and three times.”554
The New England Journal of Medicine study suggested that about a quarter of returned soldiers were drinking excessively. One researcher said, “I know from walking and talking to people that more like 75 percent are indulging in excessive alcohol to self-medicate, to escape.”555
Fox News spoke with Barbara Critchfield, a counselor at Shoemaker High School near Fort Hood in Texas, where nearly 80 percent of students had parents deployed overseas. Now that their parents have started returning from the front, they say, their behavior is causing concern among the students.
“Some talk about fathers, who all they want to do is drink and sleep—we know there is PTSD,” she said. “I don’t know how far-reaching it is, they might be isolated incidents, I don’t know.”556
But many of those suffering do not go for treatment.
As CNN reports, on his second day in Iraq, Staff Sergeant Georg-Andreas Pogany saw an Iraqi body that had suffered severe trauma, and he suffered what he considered a nervous breakdown. “I wasn’t functioning. I was having physical symptoms. I was having a behavioral reaction,” he recalled.557
“After struggling through the night, he said he decided to tell his superior officer out of fear that if we do go out on a patrol and I do freeze up, that could have consequences too.” Instead of receiving the help his condition required, however, he was cautioned not to seek treatment. “He was told to reconsider for the sake of his career, he said.”558
“The message was: ‘Hey, you’re a coward. You’re acting like a coward.’”559
The New England Journal of Medicine study confirmed other evidence that those who need help most are the least likely to seek treatment. “Of those whose responses were positive for a mental disorder, only 23 to 40 percent sought mental health care. Those whose responses were positive for a mental disorder were twice as likely as those whose responses were negative to report concern about possible stigmatization and other barriers to seeking mental health care.”560
Because of the repeated deployments to which Iraq veterans are subject, the nature of the war, and the all-volunteer military, past indicators of PTSD may not be applicable to the Iraq War. Experts are concerned that the incidence may be vastly greater than anyone has thought.
The prevalence of PTSD threatens to strain the financial resources of