VA tested with psychiatric needs of war vets - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

VA tested with psychiatric needs of war vets

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For Fred Griego, the long journey began in the South Pacific during World War II.

An American ship in harbor had taken a direct hit and, against a background of flames, the casualties were rushed to a field hospital where a 21-year-old New Mexican farm boy worked as a medic.

“Two of their guys,” Griego remembered, “they were just crisp. They were burned, and the flesh was falling from their bones. Their bones were white. White.”

The medical training Griego received in the Army stressed one thing: Do everything possible to save a life. But that night, his commander told him there was nothing he could do for burned men dying in his tent.

“He told me...put them way out in the back,” Griego said. “To get close to them, to just sponge their lips with a piece of cotton, I had to use my gas mask.”

Sixty years later, the memories are still as sharp as shrapnel. They still pierce his sleep, and recounting them still brings tears to his eyes.

The power of war to wound the psyche remains a major force. According to the Pentagon and several independent studies, at least a third of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer some level of mental illness. By some estimates, a fifth of those 1.5 million veterans will, like Griego, develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

Of the 2,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan so far enrolled at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albuquerque, between 25 and 30 percent are receiving mental health services, hospital officials say.

Griego shared his story because he hopes the newest generation of veterans will take advantage of the psychiatric services now offered by VA and other organizations — services that weren’t available when he came home from war.

“I didn’t know what was wrong with me, just that I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

Griego sought psychiatric help through VA as early as 1947. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that the military and VA began recognizing — and trying to treat — the disease. Now, VA’s national treatment system is facing its first major test, and some say it’s failing.

A congressional investigation released late last year found that VA had failed to spend much of a $300 million appropriation designed to fill gaps in mental health care, and some of what it did spend went in other directions.

A Navy commander said at a congressional hearing that 90 percent of the military mental health care providers he surveyed weren’t trained to treat PTSD.

Officials at the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque say their services for returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are below capacity, though not far below.

But Larry Bussetti, director of social work at the hospital, says other obstacles to care also exist.

Veterans who maintain a connection to the military often fear that seeking psychiatric help could affect their career. Since medical privacy rules don’t apply to members of the active-duty military, that’s not an unfounded concern, Bussetti said.

“There is a possibility that their command could ask for their records, and we would not be in a position to refuse that request,” Bussetti said.

Another obstacle, Bussetti said, is that many new veterans — most of whom are relatively young men — believe they can overcome their problems without help, or that the problems will eventually go away.

But Griego’s experience says otherwise.

Untreated, the immediate symptoms of PTSD — such as flashbacks, nightmares and anxiety attacks — will lead to a deeper set of problems, psychiatrists say. People often begin to doubt their own sanity and withdraw from society, often relying on drugs and alcohol to numb their minds.

Even with treatment, Milt Lasoski, a local VA psychiatrist, says the traumatic memories that form the basis of PTSD often prove all but impossible to shake.

“The vividness of the memory has to do with the emotion at the time,” Lasoski said. “The net effect is that it makes it a lot easier to store, in memory, bits and pieces of the trauma situation.”

He added, “You find people suffering from dementia who still have vivid memories about what happened to them in war 60 years ago.”

While some people do overcome the disease, Lasoski said, it’s treated as a chronic illness. The goal is to function, not necessarily to forget.

Lasoski says many of the Iraq war veterans being seen at the local VA struggle with driving, because many were National Guardsmen who served in convoys in Iraq.

If someone swerves and cuts them off in traffic, they need to understand that it’s not someone about to kill them, he said.

“If they have some therapy to help them understand why they’re getting anxiety attacks, they can use their cognitive (abilities) and maybe medications to lower the hyper-arousal,” he said.

The first step in treatment, Lasoski says, is to stress that what a veteran is going through is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation, not a sign of madness or weakness.

Griego, who attends a monthly counseling session with several dozen other World War II and Korean War veterans, says counseling and medication have helped a lot.

But it came late. For years, he and other older veterans walked through a world of shadows.

He would go to church. He would take long walks, trying to wear himself out, or work late hours, trying to shrink the night.

And he turned to alcohol to knock himself out.

“I damn near killed myself, just drinking too damn much,” he said. “Until (my wife) finally told me, it’s either us — me and the family — or the bottle.”

Lasoski says many veterans suffering from PTSD find it difficult to tell their families about what they’re going through. But family members often prove critical in convincing a veteran to seek help.

Still, Bussetti said, the ultimate decision rests with the veteran.

“Unless they’re willing to engage in their care,” he said, “our treatment options are virtually nonexistent.”