Furious Seasons

July 17, 2009

Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Get Mental Health Diagnoses At 37 Percent Rate

An article in today's New York Times reports on a study out of the San Francisco VA/UCSF that the prevalence of mental disorders among Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans is discouragingly high.

"The researchers found that 37 percent of those people received mental health diagnoses. Of those, the diagnosis for 22 percent was post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, for 17 percent it was depression and for 7 percent it was alcohol abuse. One-third of the people with mental health diagnoses had three or more problems, the study found."

War is surely Hell.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at July 17, 2009 10:23 AM

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Comments

Perhaps being a soldier causes emotional distress that gets labeled mental illness? No, it's got to be a biopsych genetic defect, a genuine medical disease. Go war go.

Posted by: Sally at July 17, 2009 11:33 AM

Both the VA and HHS including FDA have been notorious over the past 8 years for forcing out individuals with mental illness.

It seems to me that they don't want anybody who might actually care about patients. SAMSHA seems to be the exception but then they promote screening, diagnosis, and treatment.

This can be verified by No Fear data and examining MD-714 documents that can be obtained under FOI. (Asking the EEOC might get a faster response especially if electronic versions are requested.)

Georgia Coffey was the head of EEO at the FDA and I believe the written evidence I have seen shows her being involved in harassing and forcing out individuals with mental illness in FDA who worked on Psych drugs and had concerns.

Georgia Coffey is now head of EEO at the VA. It seems to me that since she's a proven commodity they put her where she can continue to do the same quality of work she did at FDA.

Posted by: X at July 17, 2009 04:14 PM

The cardiomyopathy and liver toxicity are both serious complications of alcohol abuse. They are also both problems with many antidepressants used for PTSD and with the atypical antipsychotics. (See the toxicities in the background package for the recent FDA pediatric bipolar AC meeting.)

The use of these drugs in this population is likely to make these problems worse and result in a lot of early deaths as well as increased costs to the VA above treating the Vets MI and war wounds.

Posted by: R at July 17, 2009 04:25 PM

At least some of these diagnoses reflect that fact that there are no or very few jobs here in the US and getting labeled mentally ill allows a vet to get a disability check, hence a vet with a mental disability gets paid more than one without one. This is true whether there's a physical disability or not. It's similar to how as the number of jobs available to the general public decrease, the number of applications for social security disability increase. We are trying to solve social problems with psychiatric labels. Troubling.

Posted by: Sally at July 22, 2009 10:32 AM