President George Bush still seems brimming with confidence in his war agenda. With every speech, things are going bitter in Iraq, and he doesn’t even blush when affirming over and over his certainty that victory will be attained.
Thousands of U.S. soldiers who have fallen thousands of kilometers away from their homes in a war they were deceived about, counts for nothing. But the tragedy today, that can move anyone with a thinking mind is that most of the warriors that were trained in booby-traps, explosives and landmines to be a total killer are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
For some U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, stress, depression and mental illness are trimming down the homecoming reunion. However, the problem is as old as war itself. But the irony is, American soldiers were assured by the US government and the military that there will be a solution and it will be nothing like Vietnam, with its legacy of psychologically scarred veterans whose problems went unrecognized, undiagnosed, and untreated.
Looks like no lessons were learnt from Vietnam.
President Bush’s Iraqi adventure has brought American troops to a point blank range that places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk and far more, it disrupts the defense of the United States.
So how has it come to this?
Throughout the Iraq war, everything has been underestimated- the insurgency, the cost, and the number of troops. Now, the psychological problems and the needs of these soldiers are being underestimated too.
* In a study published in 2004 in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that nearly 17 percent of soldiers who have returned from Iraq, or nearly 1 in 6, showed signs of major depression, generalized anxiety, or PTSD.
* A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association in early 2006 found that 1 in 5 soldiers met the risk for concern.
* Of the total, 32,010 (31 percent) were diagnosed with mental health and/or psychosocial problems, including 25,658 who received mental health diagnoses. More than half (56 percent) were diagnosed with two or more disorders.
* Even more disturbing are the number of homeless veterans from recent wars and further more, it is still hard to gauge as these figures is not even close to accurate because it doesn’t include the others sleeping in buses, their cars or on the streets. From 2004 to 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs provided shelter to 300 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan tours, out of the tens of thousands who have served.
The toughest issue: Suffer from PTSD and still going back on the field
Transferring military members who suffer from PTSD back into combat goes straight to one of the toughest issues of the war: how to guard soldiers’ mental health and still keep them fighting. It is well-established fact that repeated and prolonged exposure to combat stress is the single greatest risk factor in developing PTSD.
Just how many troops will bring the war home with them is impossible to know at this point. But the numbers are virtually certain to grow as the war enters its fifth year and we can expect to see a whole lot more PTSD as time goes on.
