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PTSD and the Veterans Administration: Just who’s malingering?

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Staff

By Neal Powers

In 1944, when an uninjured private, Charles H. Kuhl, said he “couldn’t take it any more,” Gen. George S. Patton called him a “yellow coward,” slapped him and threw him out of the hospital tent. The U.S. military has always had difficulty discriminating between members disabled by mental health issues like post-traumatic stress disorder and malingering.

Many in the Veterans Administration would have us believe that PTSD is unique to military personnel, but that is not true. Law-enforcement officers, firefighters, even missionaries and relief workers in Haiti can suffer. So can many victims of rape, abuse or other violent crimes. Anyone witnessing death or dismemberment is a potential candidate. The critical difference is whether they get the chance to talk about it and work through it. That’s where the military culture becomes a barrier.

In the modern military mindset, only the lowest of the low would let his buddies down, fail to do the job or abandon the mission. As a result, it is often only after family lives are destroyed by night terrors, panic attacks, violent outbursts, emotional numbness and substance abuse that many combat veterans seek help. Today, the VA feels like an adversary to many veterans.

Until recently, to get help veterans had to prove they weren’t malingering. They were required to document the experiences that were ruining their lives, including getting statements from corroborating witnesses.

I have never been in combat, but I have been diagnosed with PTSD. In my case, the disorder was a result of investigating scores of fatal aircraft accidents. As an FAA aviation safety inspector, I soon learned that somewhere around 100 miles per hour it no longer matters whether the human body is the target or the missile. Dump in a hundred gallons of burning fuel and the crash site begins to look like a combat zone.

The resulting nightmares are the same. The panic attacks are the same. The flashbacks are the same, and the depression is the same.

But here is the part that the VA is not telling. Its psychiatrists and psychologists aren’t supermen.

And although the VA has relaxed the documentation rules, it still retains the sole authority to diagnose PTSD. The VA staff is not even required to entertain the opinions of its civilian counterparts. Because of this, the credibility of the VA is at risk.

If you really wanted to know what happened on the Deep Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, would you settle for the story as told by BP, or would you rather have an engineering report from an independent expert without a dog in the fight? As I see it, the VA could use a little validation from independent experts. To the best of my knowledge, you can’t fake night terrors. You can’t fake a panic attack. You can’t fake depression and you can’t fake suicide.

Americans face an unprecedented crisis. We have combat veterans who have seen two, three, even four rotations in Iraq and are now on their way to Afghanistan. Suicide rates for those on active duty are unacceptably high. At home, combat veterans already account for 20 percent of today’s suicides.

This is the wrong time in history for the Veterans Administration to engage in a turf war with people who are just as smart as they are. They need help from their civilian counterparts. The VA’s unfinished business will eventually fall on the churches, communities and families of our returning service men and women. For once, let’s call it the way it is, and get our patriots the help they need.

Neal Powers is a retired U.S. Air Force captain, flight instructor and aviation safety instructor for the Federal Aviation Administration.

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