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Volume XIV Number 19 x x x (954) 532-2000xx xxxxxx xxxxMay 10, 2008
|
Bent Out of Shape |
I am incensed
Usually I try to
limit my reporting to Florida issues with special emphasis on the
Broward County area, and for those of you who usually read my
columns, you should not be offended with my tone – but for those
of you unfamiliar with my diatribes, this time you might want to read
other stories elsewhere in this paper.
A friend once told
me that I might not always be right but I am never in doubt. I
responded that I am nothing if not certain and confident. Others have
said I am pugnacious, contrary and a curmudgeon. Now that I have set
the tone – it’s time to get to the meat of this week’s
column.
I am a veteran. I
served my country in the early 1960s in Southeast Asia. My years in
the military are my business and my service to my country was both
honorable and experiential. I was glad to have been of service –
I was young and idealistic – but I’m not going back. I did
my time and I will have memories and nightmares for the rest of my life.
Millions of men
and women have served this country honorably with considerable
distinction – only to return to have to find their own way in a
society that really doesn’t give a damn what happens to them. As
veterans, we fight our demons, our fears and our senses of
hopelessness – alone. We prefer not to talk about our
experiences with our marriage partner, relatives, friends or associates.
But I will tell
you that freedom is not free. The price is high. Veterans were
willing to pay that price and sacrifice for those who they love –
and for strangers too – so all can enjoy the lifestyle that we
all have been told we deserve. This is a tradition started by our
forefathers, many of whom also paid the ultimate price.
Back in the old
days (before Vietnam), returning veterans were celebrated, and
treated with dignity and respect. It was deserved. Our grateful
country gave veterans the GI Bill of Rights and many of us took
advantage of the programs. Inevitably, some just dropped out and did
their own thing. A mind is a very difficult organ to understand.
I do not speak of
those of us who served in Southeast Asia, because while it was a
shameful treatment we received, it is irrelevant to this week’s message.
I believe as a
nation, we should be ashamed of our government and the layers of
bureaucracy who cover-up and lie to us – and then just shrug
their shoulders as if nothing ever happened. Our government demands
honesty and honor from us, but then gives us in return only lip
service, and all too often dismisses us as so much useless garbage.
I also believe as
a nation, we should immediately address the issue of the shocking
numbers of suicides of our veterans.
It has been
recently learned that top officials at the Veterans Administration
have tried to conceal information from the public, about the sudden
increase of attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or
sought help at VA hospitals around the country, a previously
undisclosed internal VA email indicates.
The email was
disclosed in a federal trial at a courthouse in Northern California,
where two veterans advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit
against the VA alleging that a systematic breakdown at the VA has led
to an epidemic of suicides among war veterans. The two veterans
advocacy groups were Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United
for Truth.
These groups claim
the VA has turned away veterans who have sought help for
posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] and were suicidal. Some of the
veterans, the lawsuit claims, later took their own lives.
The Veterans
Health Administration, in a stunning admission, announced top
officials at the Veterans Health Administration have confirmed that
the agencies own statistics show that an average of 126 veterans per
week – 6,552 veterans per year – commit suicide. That was
in the internal email.
Brig. Gen. Michael
J. Kussman, the Undersecretary for Health at the VA, sent the email,
dated Dec. 15, 2007. Kussman had inquired about the accuracy of a
news report published that month claiming the suicide rate among
veterans was 18 per day. The e-mail was recently part of a discovery
issue in the class action trial. The email was cited as evidence that
the VA has failed to properly treat veterans who suffer from post
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal tendencies.
The plaintiffs
claim that the VA, which has a backlog of 600,000 benefits claims to
sort through, is unprepared to deal with cases of [PTSD] among
veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and has turned away
veterans who have sought help for depression at VA hospitals. Some of
those veterans later committed suicide, according to the lawsuit.
The groups want a
federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction to force the VA to
immediately treat veterans who show signs of PTSD and are at risk for suicide.
The February email
was sent shortly after the VA gave CBS News data that showed only a
total of 790 attempted suicides in 2007 among veterans treated by the
VA. In an email sent to the network, after Katz’ email was
disclosed in court, he denied a “cover-up” and said he did
not disclose the true figures of attempted suicides because he was
unsure if it was accurate.
United States
Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Patty Murray of Washington state
said Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, should
immediately resign in the wake of evidence showing he withheld
crucial information about veterans’ suicides and attempted suicides.
“Dr.
Katz’ irresponsible actions have been a disservice to our
veterans, and it is time for him to go,” said Murray, a member
of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “The No. 1 priority of
the VA should be caring for our veterans, not covering up the truth.”
The Feb. 13, 2008,
email, was sent to Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, by
Ev Chasen, the agency’s chief communications director. Chasen
had sought guidance from Katz about interview queries from CBS News,
which reported extensively on veterans’ suicides last year.
“Is the fact
that we’re stopping [suicides] good news, or is the sheer number
bad news? And is this more than we’ve ever seen before? It might
be something we drop into a general release about our suicide
prevention efforts, which (as you know far better than I) prominently
include training employees to recognize the warning signs of
suicide,” Chasen wrote Katz in an email with the subject line
“Not for CBS News Interview Request.”
Katz’s
response is startling. He said the VA has identified nearly 1,000
suicide attempts per month among war veterans treated by the VA. His
response to Chasen indicates that he did not want the VA to
immediately release any statistical data confirming that number, but
rather suggested that the agency quietly slip the information into a
news release.
“Shh!”
Katz wrote in his response to Chasen. “Our suicide prevention
coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month
among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this
something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of
release before someone stumbles on it?”
In the December
email Katz sent to
Kussman, he noted that roughly 126 veterans of all wars commit
suicide per week. He added that data the agency obtained from the
Center for Disease Control showed that 20 percent of the suicides in
the country are identified as war veterans. The “VA’s own
data demonstrate 4-5 suicides per day among those who receive care
from us,” Katz’ email said.
Perhaps
underscoring just how underprepared the VA was for the number of PTSD
cases to emerge from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, documents
released to support the plaintiffs’ allegations show that prior
to the U.S. invasion of Iraq the VA believed it would likely see a
maximum of 8,000 cases of veterans showing signs of PTSD.
The RAND
Corporation has released a study that said about 300,000 U.S. troops
sent into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from major
depression or PTSD, and 320,000 received traumatic brain injuries.
Since October 2001, about 1.6 million U.S. troops have deployed to
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many soldiers have completed more
than two tours of duty, meaning they are exposed to prolonged periods
of combat-related stress or traumatic events.
“There is a
major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our
nation in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Terri Tanielian, a
researcher at RAND who worked on the study. “Unless they receive
appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions,
there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation.
Unfortunately, we found there are many barriers preventing them from
getting the high-quality treatment they need.”
Those are
statistics Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for
Common Sense, have been warning lawmakers about for several years.
“The scope of PTSD in the long term is enormous, and must be
taken seriously. When all of our 1.6 million service members
eventually return home from Iraq and Afghanistan, based on the
current rate of 20 percent, VA may face up 320,000 total new veterans
diagnosed with PTSD,” Sullivan told a congressional committee in
July 2007. If America fails to act now and overhaul the broken DOD
and VA disability systems, there may be a social catastrophe among
many of our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. That is why
VCS reluctantly filed suit against VA in Federal Court . . . Time is
running out.”
“I am shocked
and appalled,” said Frank Adamchak, 65, a resident of Pompano
Beach. Adamchak, 65, served six years in the Air Force and another 35
years in law enforcement. “Our military has it completely wrong.
In civilian life, if a police officer discharges a firearm, he is
automatically given three days off for psychological help, whether he
hit or missed the target. The military has a lot of young and
impressionable men, exposed to violence for the first time. I cannot
understand why our combat veterans are not at least screened for
psychological problems when they return home, and, if they need it,
given adequate treatment without having to wait months or years.”
The VA said it has
hired more than 3,000 mental healthcare professionals over the past
two years to deal with the increasing number of PTSD cases, but the
problems persist and are increasing.
VA says vets not
‘entitled’ to healthcare
Richard Lepley, a
Justice Department attorney, said the VA runs a “world-class
health care system.”
But Gordon
Erspamer, the lead attorney representing the two veterans groups,
said the VA has arbitrarily denied coverage to thousands of vets;
that it takes nearly a year to decide whether it will provide
coverage to veterans suffering from PTSD, and takes as long as four
years for the VA to address veterans’ appeals cases.
“Seeking help
from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs . . . involves a
two-track system,” says a copy of the plaintiff’s trial
brief filed in federal court last week. “A veteran will go to
the Veterans’ Health Administration for diagnosis and medical
care; and a veteran goes to the Veterans’ Benefits
Administration to apply for service-connection and disability
compensation . . .
“VA is
failing these veterans as they move along both of these parallel
tracks. They are not receiving the health care to which they are
entitled (and where they do receive it, it is unreasonably delayed),
and they are not able to get timely compensation for their
disabilities, which means that they have no safety net. These two
problems combine to create a perfect storm for PTSD veterans: they
receive no treatment, so their symptoms get worse; and they receive
no compensation, so they cannot go elsewhere for treatment. The
failings of these two separate but interrelated systems are what this
action seeks to address.”
Justice Department
attorneys had argued in court papers filed last month that Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans were not “entitled” to the five-years
of free healthcare upon their return from combat as mandated by
Congress in the “Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act.” Rather,
the VA argued, medical treatment for the war veterans was
discretionary based on the level of funding available in the VA’s
budget.
But during a court
hearing last month before U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, Dr.
Gerald Cross, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health,
Veterans Health Administration, said that veterans of Iraq and
Afghanistan were not only entitled to free healthcare, but also he
said “there is no co-pay.”
Soldier’s
suicide warnings ignored
Chris Scheuerman,
a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant, testified before a
Congressional committee last month that there is an urgent need for
mental health reform in the military.
Scheuerman said
his son, Pfc. Jason Scheuerman, went to see an Army psychologist
because he had been suicidal.
The Army
psychologist wrote up a report saying Jason Scheuerman “was
capable of (faking) mental illness in order to manipulate his
command,” according to documents the soldiers father turned over
to Congress.
“Jason
desperately needed a second opinion after his encounter with the Army
psychologist,” Chris Scheuerman testified in mid-March before
the Armed Services Committee’s Military Personnel Subcommittee.
“The Army did
offer him that option, but at his own expense. How is a PFC (private
first class) in the middle of Iraq supposed to get to a civilian
mental health care provider at his own expense?” he said. “I
believe soldiers should be afforded the opportunity to a second
opinion via teleconference with a civilian mental health care
provider of their own choice.”
Jason Scheuerman
shot himself with a rifle on July 30, 2005. The 20-year-old’s
suicide note was nailed to the closet in his barracks. It said,
“Maybe now I can get some peace.”
Dr. Arthur Blank,
a renowned expert on PTSD who has worked closely with the VA,
testified during the federal court hearing in San Francisco last
month that multiple deployments are largely responsible for an
increase in veterans suicides. “I think it’s because of
multiple deployments, which means one is exposed to trauma over and
over again,” Blank testified.
I ask all
Americans, not just veterans and their families, to remember this
problem on Memorial Day, May 26th and ask – no, demand –
that members of Congress investigate and solve this horrendous
problem. It would also be nice to remember this problem on Veterans
Day, but that will not occur until November 11, six months away, and
we can’t wait that long. If our losses remain at the currant
rate, we will lose another 3,000 of my comrades in arms to suicide.
This has to stop – now. This should be a priority.
I am incensed.
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