The PTSD Hand Grenade

PTSD is another kind of explosive often brought to you by the U.S. military, especially after a decade of war by the same troops over and over again. No, the Army didn’t break due to those rigors like many thought it would, but some individual troops were not so lucky. Diagnosing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder isn’t as easy as identifying a broken bone. There’s always tension between doing right by the troops on the one hand, and taxpayers on the other.

But stories like this one in Sunday’s Seattle Times are dispiriting:

A Madigan Army Medical Center psychiatrist who screens soldiers for PTSD has been removed from clinical duties while investigators look into controversial remarks he made about patients and the financial costs of disability benefits, according to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray.

Related Topics: National Security, PTSD, Suicide, Traumatic Brain Injury, Troops
  • Latest on Battleland

    Air Force photo / Senior Airman Joshua Turner

    Gimme 5, in Pashto

    Army Photo / Spc. Ryan Hallock

    Honor, Stigma…and PTSD

    I’m an old guy from the Vietnam era, a psychiatrist who studied violence in the 1960s, who treated survivors of trauma in the ’70s and who helped create and nurture the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder through the ’80s.

    Getty

    Trash Talk…

    Trash can be deadly. You can get a hint of that from the contract solicitation issued Tuesday by the Defense Logistics Agency’s European disposition office seeking “hazardous waste services in southwest Asia.”

blog comments powered by Disqus