Playboy Mag: Investigation Raises Disturbing Questions Regarding Diagnosis and Treatment of PTSD

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March Playboy Magazine Investigation Raises Disturbing Questions Regarding Diagnosis and Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Among American Troops

NEW YORK, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In an extensive,
months-long investigation, "The Real Cost of War," in Playboy magazine's
March issue (on newsstands and at http://www.playboydigital.com Friday,
February 9), journalist Mark Boal discovers American troops fighting in
Iraq and Iraq war veterans are not receiving the mental health care they
deserve, specifically when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of post
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Boal spoke with numerous mental health
experts, government sources and former military personnel who paint a
disturbing picture about the government's handling of PTSD.

Boal found that the Department of Defense (DOD) diagnoses about 2,000
cases of PTSD a year. Yet according to a landmark study conducted by Army
researchers and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, PTSD
rates for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are running between 10 and 15
percent. That means one would expect to see the military diagnosing 13,000
to 20,000 cases of PTSD.

Former government officials agree there is a problem. "PTSD is being
underdiagnosed on a fairly wholesale level," says Dr. Robert Roswell, a
former undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
But why?

According to sources in the Pentagon and former officials of the VA,
doctors working for the VA and DOD are being pressured to limit diagnoses
of PTSD in order to save the military money and manpower, reports Boal.
Budget pressures may be the motivation to discourage diagnoses of PTSD,
according to the article, which reports that when the DOD submitted a war
budget to Congress, the line item for mental health casualties was simply
left blank. "DOD never prepared for a long war; it never prepared for an
occupation," says one senior congressional staffer. "Now we're seeing the
third thing it didn't anticipate: what to do with the soldiers when they
come home. Now they really don't have the money."

Boal discovered politics may also be a factor. "The soldier has
tremendous symbolic power in American politics. Healthy, happy soldiers
bespeak a just war. Like the amputees and flag-draped coffins the
administration hides from public view, such soldiers are antithetical to
the hawkish goal of mitigating the costs of the conflict," writes Boal.
"The critical difference is that mental illness isn't always obvious and is
therefore easier to sweep under the rug." As one congressional staffer puts
it, "It's much easier to deny the reality of mental illness than it is to
deny the spinal cord injury of some guy sitting in a wheelchair."