As the nine-year “War on Terror” rages onward, high suicide rates, multiple deployments and lack of psychological treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) alarms military personnel and many point to the real cost of the Middle East offensive will be health care after the war has ended. This disparity will likely exact a large toll on the nation’s military readiness in future conflicts.
Several reports including the Rand Study, Harvard Study and Dole-Shalala Commission find that the real cost of the war effort will come long after the fighting has ended and soldiers seek treatment for a myriad of injuries they suffered on the battlefield.
The signature injuries and perhaps the hardest to document are the elusive and well-hidden Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI and PTSD.
When soldiers return from the Middle East they are subjected to a plethora of details that need to be taken care of so they are able to receive adequate treatment, make their adjustment to life outside the battlefield and return to their families.
Since most deployments last months if not more than a year, most returning service members hastily scan through the mountains of paperwork in an effort to get home quickly.
Among the forms each soldier receives is a self-assessment for PTSD. When asked what the questions consist of and how many questions are on the PTSD evaluation form, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Gigail “Gail” Cureton media relations said, “That’s not information we release.”