Veterans protest the gutting of West L.A. PTSD therapy groups

[LovingA2andMI]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Dov Simens said he was “playing Rambo” in a homeless camp on Wilshire Boulevard 34 years ago when he stumbled on a therapy group for combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Through weekly sessions on the West Los Angeles veterans campus, Simens, 75, a member of the military’s secretive Phoenix interrogation and assassination program in Vietnam, was able to marry, have children and buy a house in Sherman Oaks, he said.

Buoyed by his success, he took a break. But anger and depression drove him back to the “group of my peers.”

“I have PTSD and I know that there is no cure,” Simens said. “There is no pill or opioid that will make what I did disappear.”

Now he and other veterans say the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has soured on long-term therapy and started dismantling the West L.A. PTSD program, which has helped thousands of former service members heal the invisible wounds of war.

Before August, about 20 groups, each with five to 30 members, had been meeting on the medical campus for a total of 40 hours a week of therapy, said Leslie Martin, the former PTSD therapy program director. The combat veterans group shut down this fall after refusing the VA’s order to move to cramped quarters with no privacy, she added.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ptsd-group-shutdown-20181229-story.html

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Drump and the GOP does not give a CRAP about our Troops and Veterans....

[red dog 1]

1. Kick for exposure

[SunSeeker]

2. This is what happens when the VA is run by Trump's Mar-A-Lago cronies.

[politicaljunkie41910]

3. Not just the Mar-A-Lago cronies but Trump himself never served, and therefore he's not willing to

spend the money to continue providing the therapy that these men need, perhaps for a lifetime.

Better they are in counseling than to be wrestling with demons in their head that they can't rid themselves of, and going out and creating new victims of a war that's been over 45 years ago, but is still racking up casualties.

[not fooled]

4. pukes care for the troops

as window dressing.

Actual troops can go screw themselves, say donnie's Mar-A-Lardo cronies, except insofar as we can make money off them.

[Johnyawl]

5. Trump and his Mar-a-logo buddies...

...are deliberately breaking the VA so they can privatize it. That way all the billions of dollars will run through their hands. They'll take their cut which will reduce services to veterans.