Army Eases Guidelines Screening for Alleged PTSD Fakers in Win Against Neocons

As the political fallout in this election year continues over
Allen Breed’s AP hit job published in 2010 asserting
that U.S. veterans and reformist DVA elements
effectively collude to commit widespread fraud,
we note that blaming veterans for illness and injury
has a long tradition.

- Something's wrong, something's not quite right -

"So the brave men and women who have served in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are honest enough to put themselves in danger in the defense of the United States, yet their sworn personal hearing testimony concerning the stressors they experienced in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq is not. Something is seriously wrong here," writes the Paralyzed Veterans of America in their Service Officers Appeals Report (SOAR, 2004, Volume 8, Number 4).

Yes, there is something seriously wrong, but a group of reformers led by President Obama, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, Bob Walsh, Jim Davis, Anthony Hardie, and Gordon Duff and near-constant lobbying by an even smaller group of veterans' advocates (Paul Sullivan) are pushing back against the likes of AP journalist Allen Breed, Fox News, the American Enterprise Institute, and embedded, neocon bureaucrats in the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), and just about every Republican in congress who screams about the national debt after pursuing policies ensuring the debt skyrocked the last 10 years.
---

By Katie Drummond in Wired

Media attacks veterans' claims

In a big reversal, the Army has issued a stern new set of guidelines to doctors tasked with diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among returning soldiers. Stop spending so much time trying to spot patients who are faking symptoms, the new guidelines instruct.Chances are, they’re actually ailing. The 17-page document has yet to be made public but was described in some detail by the Seattle Times. In it, the Army Surgeon General’s Office specifically points out — and discredits — a handful of screening tests for PTSD that are widely used to by military clinicians to diagnose a condition estimated to afflict at least 200,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

It's no coincidence that the man at the top, President Obama, on August 10, 2005 as a young senator blasted the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration in a letter to then VA Secretary Nicholson, writing "in order to truly create fairness in the claims system, the VA should concentrate its efforts on reviewing denials of PTSD claims. Without accessing why some PTSD claims are denied, it will be impossible to fully understand how the VA’s PTSD rating system can be improved." Our veterans aren’t lying about PTSD and as Chief Justice John Roberts asked, "In litigating with veterans, the government more often than not takes a position that is substantially unjustified?" ((Astrue v. Ratliff )(08-1322)) Yes, the government does take substantially unjustified positions against veterans with the media's help, and Obama's turning this around should happen faster and more comprehensively. In light of this reality, I can't wait for Mitt Romney to tell President Obama that we cannot afford more money for the Veterans Benefit Administration (VBA) and VA, and we are going to have to give these veterans voucher-care. (Michael Leon) To understand the change that is taking place in treating PTSD, see U.S. Army Clears War of Wrongdoing on the Army's 2010 ludicrous Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention (HP/RR/SP) Report. "I had this conversation with a guy in the [Bush] White House, the liaison to the Department of Veterans Affairs. This was during the Bush Administration. He said, if we were to keep every promise that we made to the veterans, it would bankrupt us as a nation," said veterans' advocate, Steve Robinson, who has challenged the President and the Defense establishment face-to-face on their shameful neglect of the health problems, especially mental-health issues, faced by returning Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.

But the results of what’s known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test are flawed, according to the report. PTSD sufferers often exhibit anxiety, insomnia, flashbacks and depression — all of which, some doctors believe, can be discounted under the test.

Under the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration, covert war
was declared on veterans' seeking disability benefits

The test devotes a large swath of questions to catching apparent exaggerations of symptom severity, seemingly inconsistent answers, or reported symptoms that don’t mesh with the typical signs associated with an illness. “The report rejects the view that a patient’s response to hundreds of written test questions can determine if a soldier is faking symptoms,” the Seattle Times summarized.

Where PTSD is concerned, that’s especially true. The condition is accompanied by symptoms that can differ markedly between patients: Some are hyperactive, others are lethargic; some exhibit frenetic rage while others are simply sullen and depressed.

“And,” the Times continued, “[the report] declares that poor test results ‘does not equate to malingering’.” Those tests were the standard of care at Madigan Army Medical Center — which is a big deal.

Located in Takoma, Washington, Madigan isn’t just one of the military’s largest medical installations. It’s home to a forensic psychiatry team tasked with deciding whether soldiers diagnosed with PTSD were sick enough to qualify for medical retirement. In March, the Army launched an investigation of the Madigan team after Madigan’s screening procedures allegedly reversed 300 of the PTSD diagnoses among soldiers being evaluated.

The reversals resulted in some soldiers being diagnosed with “personality disorders” and others left with no diagnosis at all. Madigan allegedly used the tests to save money by limiting the number of patients who’d qualify for retirement.

“We have to ensure we are not just ‘rubber stamping’ a soldier with the diagnosis of PTSD,” reads a memo from an unnamed Madigan psychiatrist that leaked last month. “We have to be good stewards of the tax-payer dollars.”

The Surgeon General’s attempts at strengthening its PTSD diagnostic tactics might come as a relief to veterans. But they might also be more than a little too late. Shortly after the scandal at Madigan emerged, subsequent reports of similar shoddy diagnostics at Walter Reed, Fort Carson and Fort Bragg trickled out as well. Including more allegations of soldiers being pinned as malingerers by military docs.

“Leading off, trying to say it’s isolated, doesn’t really pass the common-sense test,” Patrick Bellon, executive director of Veteran’s for Common Sense, told Stars and Stripes earlier this month. “Clearly, something is not right.”

Obama VA, DoD Hit Stigma Surrounding PTSD and TBI

The symptoms are evident, and the consequences life-long for Veterans and their families

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) has moved away in the last few years from targeting and criticizing servicemembers and veterans suffering from trauma to treating victims of trauma.

Now, the stigma of trauma is diminishing as the DVA and military culture move away from the mindset that trauma is a personal failing, lack of faith in God, a dodge or fraud to a health-centered approach.

Just last year Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli came under heavy criticism from veterans' advocates for his part in treating suicide and trauma in such a manner as to blame the soldier, treating this trauma "as a lack of moral character, and a lack of intestinal fortitude, when it is really a medical issue," as Steve Robinson wrote in August 2010 in reaction to the Army's “Health Promotion, Risk-Reduction and Suicide Prevention Report.”

By Alex Horton

Many active duty folks and Veterans have an impressive sense of history. They can recall specific battles in World War II, name obsolete military equipment from past eras and fondly recall their relative’s own military experience. But we also have a strong sense of the pervasive stereotypes that have haunted Vietnam Vets. Stigmas wrongfully attached to them still carry weight today.

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli recently spoke on the importance of recognizing post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury as real injuries despite their invisible nature. The symptoms are evident, and the consequences life-long for Veterans and their families:

“The truth is, because we don’t see these injuries…they don’t receive the same level of attention as amputations, burns, shrapnel injuries,” Chiarelli said. “There is simply a bias – and I really mean that — there is a bias either conscious or subconscious toward invisible wounds and injuries…It exists everywhere including in the medical community.”

PTSD and TBI are marks of war, as real and permanent as those mentioned by Gen. Chiarelli. Read up on post-traumatic stress, as well as traumatic brain injury, to determine if you have symptoms associated with those ailments. I know some folks who have waited for years for a diagnosis when they could’ve been in a treatment program. Don’t wait to get help.

American Legion and VA Crats Meet Amid Reports of Coming VA Housecleaning

- If a to-be-named new head of the VBA is a hard-core veteran's advocate, it will go a long way toward proving that President Obama and VA Sec Shinseki are serious about reversing the culture of the VA and VBA that has driven veterans to madness in the worst case, and endless frustration in the normal course of bureaucratic works -

Speaking at the 92^nd National Convention of the American Legion this Saturday in Milwaukee, Acting Under Secretary for Benefits (and head of the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA)), Michael Walcoff, addressed the new Agent Orange presumptives.

But reading reports and listening to the scuttlebutt among veterans' advocates, it's difficult to access whether Walcott was apologizing for the expanded Agent Orange presumptives, and hoping Congress and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) step in and halt the implementation of the benefits.

From the Business Wire:

'You’ve got Agent Orange. You’ve got presumptions. You’re talking about over $13 billion in the first year,' said Walcott.

Walcoff said VA anticipates additional 190,000 benefits claims in the first year after the regulations go into effect. For that reason, Walcoff said, the announcement won’t be met with applause from everyone.

'There will be articles out there written by writers; we’re working with a writer right now who’s very negative about this – very negative about the fact it’s going to cost so much money,' Walcoffsaid. 'Very negative about the fact that anybody who was in country in Vietnam qualifies for this. That’s the kind of thinking that’s out there.'

Well, Walcott seems like a nice-enough guy, some advocates say, but word of mouth is that Walcott is one of the anti-benefits guys that packed the VBA with anti-veteran hacks. Walcotts sank his head in the sand and did very little to overhaul VBA when he had chances for more than three decades.

A replacement is expected fairly soon, and if the head of the VBA is a hard-core veteran's advocate, it will go a long way toward poving that President Obama and VA Sec Shinseki are serious about reversing the culture of the VA and VBA that has literally driven veterans to madness in the worst case, and endless frustration in the normal course of its functioning.

With pending claims for benefits now sitting at over 1.3 million, some advocates are suggesting that a housecleaning looks likely in the near future.

Veterans’ advocate Steve Robinson, a veteran who served in Ranger and Special Operations units, was recently quoted after accessing the Army's July 29 “Health Promotion, Risk-Reduction and Suicide Prevention Report”:

So, yes, there havebeen some improvements, some things that I am sure the veterans are appreciative of, but it baffles the mind to think that the Administration believes change will occur if they don’t clean house, and remove the entrenched bureaucrats, and policy wonks, who are gatekeepers to affecting that change. I don’t know why they haven’t moved them out, but they are still there, and they are, in fact, sabotaging Shinseki on several fronts. And there have been some political blunders that have occurred, because some of these entrenched bureaucrats—two and three levels below Shinseki—have made recommendations that filtered their way up to the top. ...

The fact is Obama out-performed his other Democratic presidential nominees on veterans at the polls precisely by appealing to and reaching out to hard-core veterans' advocates, and not "VSO (Veteran Service Organization) housecats," as one Vietnam veteran and advocate said in a recent interview with Veterans Today.

Said Robinson in an interview with EIR [Executive Intelligence Review]:

[T]he veterans service organizations themselves are political creatures, for the most part. And they have political leanings. And those political leanings are understood within the Beltway; and we know who the VFW is, we know who the American Legion is, and people don’t want to be put into those boxes.

But you can tell by the things that they do and don’t support, where they stand. I think veterans were frustrated with the Bush Administration, and when you looked at the possibility of getting more of the same with John McCain, and potentially his candidacy, veterans, and veteran services organizations, and others, I think, chose Obama.

Paul Sullivan, Executive Director of the veterans advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, said in testimony before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations to consider Gulf War illness, that "a cabal of VA staff" is "intentionally delaying research and treatment for our veterans."

And it's not just Gulf War illness.

There is beyond a doubt embedded neocons dug it deeply at the VA and VBA like Renee L. Szybala, former VA director of Compensation and Pension Service under the Bush-Cheney administration, who energetically worked to block veterans from being paid benefits.

In one infamous case, Szybala helped engineer the DoJ prosecution of a Wisconsin Vietnam-era veteran whistle-blower whom the regional office of the Milwaukee VA hated because he blew the whistle on their altering his C-file and taking a decade to decide his claim.

The federal charge Szybala engineered was for wire fraud for receiving VA benefits after the veteran (Keith Roberts) saw his friend crushed to death by a c-54 aircraft, and after being advised in 2002 by the late Jim Henning, a Shawano County (Wisconsin) Veteran's Service Officer, to apply for an earlier retroactive date for his PTSD disability benefits.

The DoD said the two veterans were not friends and one veteran exaggerated his efforts to save his (not) friend, fellow veteran though both men were serving on line duty at the same time as the deadly accident at a Navy base in Italy, a ludicrous prosecution bought by a jury in a small Northern Wisconsin town.

The Near Future

"Scores of anti-vet career people at the VA have been getting away with murder for decades. Our president needs to get rid of them, and fast," said a veteran's advocate who works at all levels of the VBA claim process.