More than a year ago in Newsweek, I called the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) situation among our troops and veterans a national health crisis, despite new and better efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs. It remains a crisis. In fact, it's gotten worse. Daniel McGoldrick of Bright Hub reports that the rates of PTSD among troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq continue to rise. Furthermore, he notes, they don't include the large number of vets who don't admit to having trouble by reporting to any VA medical and behavioral health center.
The VA has thousands of well-meaning doctors, nurses and other employees, and they are making efforts to streamline the PTSD claims process. But it is a daunting challenge given the massive number of service members - men and women - that will be coming home with serious mental issues in the coming years, especially given the latest developments in Afghanistan which suggest we will likely be there past 2014.
Paul Sullivan, founder of Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), a veteran's advocacy organization, determined from the VA's own records that that the agency has diagnosed 171,000 veterans with PTSD out of 600,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran patients treated. Sullivan writes:
