MB Civic

Troops are returning from the battlefield with psychological wounds, but the mental health system that serves them makes healing difficult

By Dana Priest and Anne Hull | Sunday, June 17, 2007 | The Washington Post

A front-page article from today’s Post on the dreadful state of mental health among veterans of the Iraq War (read in: war, period) and the even more dreadful system of mental health care they are stuck with by an administration that could care less. Hopefully, this kind of embarrassing expose will lead to some structural changes, but I have low expectations. I spent portions of 5 years of my medical training working in a large VA medical center, and I was shocked at the third world medicine practiced in that system. We should simply give all veterans Medicare, and send them to decent civilian docs and hospitals. The VA medical system was an ingenious solution to the problem of providing care for millions of war related casualties during the Civil War, and for honoring the sacrifice of those maimed by the war, but it is now in awful shape. That’s particularly true on the mental side of the system. I am delighted to see its shameful lapses given major publicity…BS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061600866_pf.html