Forgetting the traumatized soldiers

The U.S.’s National Public Radio aired an important story yesterday on its All Things Considered programme about soldiers who return from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), exhibit all sorts of classic PTSD-indicative symptoms, are diagnosed with PTSD, and then receive ‘less-than-honorable’ discharges, which deny them medical benefits.

Matt McLauchlen … spent months in military hospitals after a rocket explosion in Iraq almost severed his spinal cord and caused permanent disabilities. When he told a colonel he was so depressed that he had smoked marijuana, commanders at Camp Pendleton sent him to court martial—and discharged him with only partial benefits.

This is only one example: the news item is full of other half-forgotten soldiers: remembered long enough to get kicked out of the armed forces and denied their rightful benefits. Veterans’ groups have been trying to raise awareness of this issue, but their efforts have only accomplished so much. And of course the U.S. government had nothing to say about it on or even off the record.

The Vietnam War and the first Gulf War rightly focussed attention on the realities of PTSD and ultimately turned it into a recognised medical condition. Treatments exist to help those it affects. So why aren’t they getting to those soldiers who need them? Why are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans denied their rights to help? Unfortunately this is yet another item on a long list of things the Bush administration needs to be held accountable for, and it’s probably not very high up on that list priority-wise. But just take a listen to the NPR story linked above: would that more media outlets still possessed that sense of journalistic integrity and passion.