'Wash Post' Goes 'Beyond Walter Reed' for Report on Vets' Mental Health Woes

'Wash Post' Goes 'Beyond Walter Reed' for Report on Vets' Mental Health Woes
Dana Priest
By E&P Staff

Published: June 16, 2007 12:10 AM Sunday

NEW YORK The Washington Post team of Dana Priest and Anne Hull, who broke the Walter Reed scandal sky high earlier this year, return for a front-page report on Sunday called "Beyond Walter Reed: The War Inside."

It looks at veterans' mental health woes, such as Post-Traumatic Shock Disorder (PTSD) and inadequate treatment they receive.

A few summary grafs are reprinted below. The rest of the lengthy piece, plus photos, video, background and archives, can be found at www.washingtonpost.com.

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One of the bitter legacies of Vietnam was the inadequate treatment of troops when they came back. Tens of thousands endured psychological disorders in silence, and too many ended up homeless, alcoholic, drug-addicted, imprisoned or dead before the government acknowledged their conditions and in 1980 officially recognized PTSD as a medical diagnosis.

Yet nearly three decades later, the government still has not mastered the basics: how best to detect the disorder, the most effective ways to treat it, and the fairest means of compensating young men and women who served their country and returned unable to lead normal lives....

Between 1999 and 2004, VA disability pay for PTSD among veterans jumped 150 percent, to $4.2 billion.

By this spring, the number of vets from Afghanistan and Iraq who had sought help for post-traumatic stress would fill four Army divisions, some 45,000 in all.

They occupy every rank, uniform and corner of the country. People such as Army Lt. Sylvia Blackwood, who was admitted to a locked-down psychiatric ward in Washington after trying to hide her distress for a year and a half [story, A13]; and Army Pfc. Joshua Calloway, who spent eight months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and left barely changed from when he arrived from Iraq in handcuffs; and retired Marine Lance Cpl. Jim Roberts, who struggles to keep his sanity in suburban New York with the help of once-a-week therapy and a medicine cabinet full of prescription drugs; and the scores of Marines in California who were denied treatment for PTSD because the head psychiatrist on their base thought the diagnosis was overused.

They represent the first wave in what experts say is a coming deluge.

As many as one-quarter of all soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq are psychologically wounded, according to a recent American Psychological Association report. Twenty percent of the soldiers in Iraq screened positive for anxiety, depression and acute stress, an Army study found.

Ellie