Duckworth: I probably have PTSD

Duckworth: I probably have PTSD

The scenes haunt Tammy Duckworth, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. She’s in Iraq, flying helicopter missions, looking down on the desert below. She jumps out of the helicopter on the dusty ground, both legs intact. She’s doing the work she loves, and it’s exciting.

Only, it’s a dream, not reality. When Duckworth wakes up in Illinois, struggling through a few moments of confusion, she remembers that she’s a double amputee and she'll never fly missions in Iraq again.

It's like having a form of double vision, she says. Close your eyes, and you're there in Iraq, adrenaline rushing, ready for action. Open your eyes and you're here in the States, with a completely different routine. This multi-layered sense of reality is probably a kind of post-traumatic stress response, she admits.

VA hasn't met veterans' mental health needs

Critics: VA hasn't met veterans' mental health needs
BY MIKE FITZGERALD
News-Democrat

Veterans groups and members of Congress both have criticized the Department of Veterans Affairs for failing to keep up with war veterans' demands for mental health services.

Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's mental health chief, responds that "The expansion of mental health programs has been, frankly, phenomenal."

But Paul Sullivan, a former VA analyst, predicts a looming mental health crisis for at least 700,000 current and future veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

From the start, the VA -- like the Department of Defense -- vastly underestimated the number of troops that would return home from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems, said Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, of Washington, D.C.
...

"I had to go back in and prove that I was still an amputee," she said. "If two federal agencies won't accept information from each other, you can imagine the challenges as a state trying to come into a federal partnership."

...

The need for such services among National Guard members nationwide remains huge, with 49 percent of Guard members who served in Iraq reporting psychological problems -- a rate 29 percent higher than for regular soldiers.

Shameful treatment of injured GIs should have us up in arms

Shameful treatment of injured GIs should have us up in arms
March 4, 2007
Support our troops: It's a sentiment you can subscribe to fully whether or not you want those troops to be on the battlefield, which, in the case of the profoundly painful, perplexing conflict in Iraq, can take the form of a roadway or public square or food market. It's also a sentiment you can get behind in calling for the proper treatment of wounded GIs when they return home. Shockingly, many soldiers who made a physical sacrifice for their country in Iraq and Afghanistan have been denied that kind of support at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the country's best-known facility for the treatment of veterans.
Embarrassed by a series of reports in the Washington Post on the substandard outpatient conditions at Walter Reed, and investigations by Congress and the Army itself, the military fired Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, who was in charge of the hospital, and Army Secretary Francis Harvey resigned. President Bush pledged to name a bipartisan commission to review the level of care our wounded servicemen and women are receiving at all such facilities.

Duckworth Nominated To Investigate Walter Reed

Duckworth Nominated To Investigate Walter Reed
http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/local_story_064180249.html
Durbin Urges Bush To Name Her To Presidential Commission


(CBS) CHICAGO The despicable conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have prompted congressional hearings and motivated an Illinois senator to nominate a local war hero to the committee looking into the mess.CBS 2's Mike Parker reports that Illinois' senior Sen. Dick Durbin is urging President Bush to name Tammy Duckworth to the presidential commission that will investigate conditions at Walter Reed and other military hospitals.