The Army has announced an education program to teach the troops when they have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Traumatic Brain Injury.

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2007 – Within 90 days, all soldiers will receive information to help them identify symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury, and they will be urged to seek treatment if necessary, Army officials told reporters at the Pentagon today.

Mental health care professionals will brief Army Secretary Pete Geren on the new program at the Pentagon tomorrow. And by Oct. 18, the same educational supplement will have been presented to platoon-sized groups of active-duty, reserve and National Guard soldiers throughout the force.

“The mild traumatic brain injury and the post-traumatic stress disorders -- they’re real,” said Army Lt. Gen. James Campbell, director of the Army staff. “They impact soldiers and impact those soldiers’ families. And as a result of that, that impacts the readiness of our great Army.”

I am confused. Do they think Secretary Geren has PTSD or TBI? He has to have it all explained to him first? Are they worried that all the hammering he gets from Karl Rove, Mr Cheney and Mr Bu$h may have unhinged him and they want him to be able to self-identify himself for treatment?

According to subject matter experts, mild traumatic brain injury is an affliction that’s become a signature injury of the war on terror, often resulting from soldiers’ proximity to roadside bombs, mortars and other explosions. Symptoms are similar to those resulting from a concussion, from slower reaction times to emotional and cognitive problems.

PTSD often occurs from a feeling of helplessness at the time of a severely traumatic event. It manifests itself in three clusters of symptoms: intrusive re-experiencing of the event, numbness or disassociation, and hypervigilance, or the feeling that one is constantly “on edge.”

Traumatic brain injury, which ranges from mild to moderate and severe cases, requires an “injury event,” while PTSD can occur from cumulative effects of combat or extended deployments.

During two 30-minute multimedia presentations that make up the program, soldiers will learn to identify basic symptoms in themselves and other soldiers. Afterwards, health professionals will answer troops’ questions. The Army also has produced a video to make soldiers’ family members more sensitive to possible warning signs and treatment options.

I am speechless. The Army wants to eliminate future problems before they occur, so they’re hiring 270 therapists to handle the estimated thousands (20% of all returning troops) of vets with PTSD. That could be as high as 100,000 veterans.

And what about all the troops with PTSD and TBI who have been coldly discharged with a diagnosis of a personality disorder, denying them further care from the VA?

Dr. Gregory O'Shanick, national medical director for the Brain Injury Association of America, was interviewed by the Boston Globe and stated,

Exactly how many TBI cases there are among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is unknown because neither the Pentagon nor the Department of Veterans Affairs has systematically screened returning troops for the disorder. The lack of a comprehensive plan to deal with brain injuries has provoked harsh criticism from lawmakers and veterans advocates, who accuse the government of neglecting the troops they sent into battle.

With troops deploying for their second, third, even fourth tours of duty, head injuries and stress disorders are becoming more widespread, said Representative Bob Filner, Democrat of California, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. For every year in the war zone, combat units encounter dozens of potentially brain-injuring blasts, each one doing more harm because the damage is cumulative.
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Statistics compiled by the VA show that more than 83,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have sought care for psychological disorders. The department does not track the number of TBI cases, according to spokesman Terry Jemison, who noted that they do know of at least 369 traumatic brain injury patients because they've been treated for other acute conditions.

The Defense Department also does not have figures on the number of brain injuries, but Pentagon officials estimated that they have found about 2,500 potential cases so far.

The government's inability to track TBI cases has angered many veterans advocates who say the lack of attention is another example of how the military failed to prepare for the troops who are now coming home injured. Critics point to long waits for appointments and the squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

"The number of people who have suffered from mild traumatic brain injury could be in the thousands, but we just won't know about it unless we screen everybody who comes back," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The system as it stands right now really depends on [veterans] to self-diagnose and then navigate the bureaucracy of red tape to get help."

Diagnosing brain injuries requires thorough clinical evaluation that includes memory and response-time tests. Whether the VA and the Pentagon have the resources to do this for the millions of veterans who have deployed remains to be seen, Rieckhoff said.

"Maybe it's politics, maybe it's negligence, maybe it's incompetence," Rieckhoff said. "I don't know. I just know that it's taking too long to take things like brain injury seriously." [emph added]

Another typical Bu$h malAdministration initiative: too little, too late.