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Suicidal and Facing a Third
Tour in Iraq
By Aaron Glantz
05/17/07 - -- -SAN FRANCISCO, May 15 (IPS)
- At the beginning of May, Corporal Cloy Richards tried to
kill himself.
"He punched out all his windows and cut major arteries," his
mother Tina Richards told IPS. "He had to go to the hospital
because he almost bled to death."
Cloy Richards, who lives in rural Salem, Missouri, has served
two deployments in the Marine Corps in Iraq. The military lists
him as 80-percent combat disabled.
His mother says he has knee and arm injuries, as well as
post-traumatic stress disorder, and currently has a claim
pending with the Army for a traumatic brain injury.
"It's something that affects us every single day," Tina said,
"when he's 23 years old and he can't even climb the stairs. He
has bad nightmares where he thinks he's back in Iraq."
Richards said her son sustained most of his injuries after his
first tour in Iraq, adding that the family protested his second
deployment to no avail. After four years on active duty, Cloy
Richards is now in the individual ready reserve and faces the
possibility of a third deployment to Iraq.
New guidelines released by the Pentagon in December allow
commanders to redeploy soldiers suffering from traumatic stress
disorders.
According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes,
service-members with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or
whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be
considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) as a "treatable" problem.
PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to
an event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was
threatened, according to the National Institute of Mental
Health. A person having a flashback may lose touch with reality
and believe that the traumatic incident is happening all over
again.
"It's just terrifying," said Dr. Karen Seal, a clinician at San
Francisco's Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centre who treats
soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other
psychological illnesses.
Seal told IPS that patients under her care have been deployed
despite serious mental health conditions.
"I feel like writing them a medical excuse," she said, "but
that's not my responsibility as a VA clinician. Because I'm a VA
provider, I don't have the authority to do that."
According to a study co-authored by Seal and her colleagues at
the Centre, about one- third of the more than 100,000 returning
veterans seen at VA facilities between Sep. 30, 2001 and Sep.
30, 2005 were diagnosed with mental illness or a psycho-social
disorder such as homelessness and marital problems, including
domestic violence. Over half suffered from more than one
disorder.
Other researchers suggest those statistics may only represent
the tip of the iceberg. Many veterans, they note, don't come
forward to seek care. The stigma associated with post- traumatic
stress disorder may account for part of this gap, they say.
In addition, according to recent report by Linda Bilmes of
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, waiting lists for
returning veterans are "so long as to effectively deny treatment
to a number of veterans."
In the May 2006 edition of Psychiatric News, Bilmes notes that
VA Undersecretary of Health Policy Coordination Frances Murphy
wrote that when services are available, "waiting lists render
that care virtually inaccessible."
There is also the issue of geography.
"One of the disconnects and failures in planning for this war is
that the Veterans Administration is essentially configured in an
urban way," Bilmes told IPS. "That makes a lot of sense for
recruiting specialists and staffing the facilities. However,
recruiting for the military in this war tends to come primarily
from small, rural America. So, what we don't have is enough
mental health care for veterans in these rural communities when
they come home."
Last Thursday, the VA's Inspector General issued a report
estimating that 1,000 veterans under its care commit suicide
every year.
The report also found that vets are at increased risk of suicide
because many VA clinics don't have 24-hour care or adequate
mental health screening, and lack properly trained personnel.
The report, which was requested last year by Rep. Michael
Michaud, a Democrat of Maine, said clinics should work harder so
veterans can seek treatment without feeling stigmatised, and
recommended additional screening for patients with traumatic
brain injury, a type of brain damage caused by projectiles like
roadside bombs which many are calling the "signature injury" of
the Iraq war.
"The problem is that traumatic brain injury, which is an
anatomic, physiologic problem, sort of intermingles with
post-traumatic stress disorder," Dr. William Schecter, the chief
of surgery at San Francisco General Hospital, explained to IPS.
"This is going to be a lifelong challenge for the individuals
who have suffered these injuries." (END/2007)
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