PTSD? No such thing in the Corps.

[Bigmack]

The Corps is eating it's own warriors. You other ex-jarheads think you got screwed by the Corps... shit.... you ain't seen nothing. Remember how we used to talk about the "Green Weinie"?

Read the whole article, and if you aren't screaming-pissed at the end.....


- - - -
NATION
January 31, 2008 (February 18, 2008 issue)

DENIAL IN THE CORPS

KATHY DOBIE

During his short career as a marine, Corporal Jenkins received many commendations recognizing his "intense desire to excel," "unbridled enthusiasm" and "unswerving devotion to duty." It was for heroic actions performed during a fifty-five-hour battle with the Mahdi militia in Najaf that Jenkins was awarded a Bronze Star for valor. The fighting, which began on the city streets in August 2004 and moved into the Wadi al Salam Cemetery, was ferociously personal. Marines and militiamen were often only yards apart, killing one another at close range. When the battle was over, eight Americans and hundreds of militiamen were dead.

After that tour, his second in Iraq, Jenkins could barely sleep. When he did, the nightmares were horrible. He was plagued by remorse and depression, unable to be intimate with his fiancée, run ragged by an adrenaline surge he couldn't turn off.
snip..
According to civilian and military defense lawyers, mental health professionals and veterans' advocates, the trajectory of James Jenkins's postdeployment life, with untreated PTSD leading to misconduct and then punishment, is all too common in the Marine Corps. A marine endures one, two, even three tours in Iraq, serves honorably and well, but returns suffering from combat trauma and starts to drink or abuse drugs or becomes violent at home, and suddenly finds himself ostracized, punished and drummed out of the Corps with an other-than-honorable or bad-conduct discharge. A history of service is tarnished, and the marine is denied benefits--even the treatment necessary to recover from combat trauma--and left with only a bitter sense of betrayal. A Corps review in 2007 of 1,019 other-than-honorable discharges issued to combat veterans during the first four years of the Iraq War found that fully a third of the discharged marines had evidence of PTSD or another combat-related mental illness. Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps's legal defense counsel for the western United States, estimates that of all the Iraq combat veterans his office defends, one-third have PTSD or another combat-stress mental health issue. Many of these clients have served at least two tours in Iraq.
snip...
The Marine Corps has always taken pride in caring for its own, but its efforts to take care of mentally wounded marines have overwhelmingly failed, plagued by denial, machismo, an unrealistic war tempo and a severe shortage of resources. In the spring of 2007 the Corps set up the Wounded Warrior Regiment, where marines suffering from physical and mental injuries could be tracked and supported. "I spoke with the guy at Quantico who was going to be running this warrior regiment," says Steve Robinson, a Gulf War veteran and veterans' advocate. "And one of the first things he said that made me sit up in my chair was, 'Look, we don't want to diagnose marines with PTSD. We need them to get back into the fight. Call it something else, whatever you want to call it, and then we try to retrain them.'"

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/dobie

[nightrider767]

1. many are reluctant to make a claim as they leave service,

as they fear that might affect future employment opportunities.

I personally met one guy in Munich, and this was exactly the case.

He didn't want a disability on his record.

[TahitiNut]

2. SSDD

We faced the same thing post-Vietnam. One rather (cough) prominent anti-war 'author' claimed that PTSD was "political, not medical." We faced the prospect of having a record that'd screw us in civilian life. The crap was so deep it was unbelievable - and there's really no way to give someone the picture that didn't live it.

[PDJane]

3. I don't think that's the case. I didn't live it,

But I think I have a fairly clear picture. Of course, I read a lot and have both empathy and imagination, which may be a curse.

I am not an American...and I'm dismayed, angry, and completely disgusted with the mind set and the chain of command. Wear it out and use it up wasn't meant to be applied to people, and there is only a certain number of people to use up and wear out.

I don't understand what is happening down there, but it doesn't look like democracy, and it doesn't look sane.

[unhappycamper]

4. PTSD is another reason 25% of all homeless in this nation are veterans.

The current generation will be made to pay the same price their earlier Brother and Sisters made in the last war and the war before that and the war before that.

[SpiralHawk]

5. Republicon thinking in the Marines: denying facts, ignoring reality

And doing what they damn well please to the human beings under their control. How perfectly republicon to ignore the facts...and then cause needless suffering.

[flashl]

6. There have a steady stream of reports where soldiers with PTSD

are separated from the military as having pre-existing mental conditions.