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America's Medicated Warriors I fear the fate of these brave soldiers 20 years from now [June 16]. In 2002 my brother Bill, a combat infantryman decorated with three Bronze Stars, took his life on the 34th anniversary of his return home from Vietnam. He was proud of his service but said that in order to survive, he saw and did awful things he could never talk about. I don't know what the answer is, but post-traumatic stress disorder and depression have to be treated with more than a Band-Aid like Prozac. The Department of Veterans Affairs...
...about organizing a massive program to help out. The result, unveiled this July Fourth weekend, is an ambitious effort to raise $100 million to provide free psychological counseling for returning veterans and jobs for those who need them. The scope of the problem is enormous: upwards of 20% of combat veterans are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As recently reported in TIME, the military is prescribing antidepressants to troops downrange to help blunt the psychological effects of combat. "There's just a tremendous need for counseling," says Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans...
...McCormick Foundation, which will administer the program for Major League Baseball. "In my day, you'd never ask for psychological help because you'd be disqualified for command." To eliminate the stigma, a few regular Army units have started to make psychological counseling mandatory for soldiers returning from combat. "We decided to do it after those murders at Fort Bragg," said retired general B.B. Bell, who initiated mandatory counseling when he commanded the U.S. Army in Europe. (Bell was referring to the three returning soldiers who murdered their wives in 2002.) There is a similar program at Fort Lewis, Wash...
...those are isolated programs. And the need is even greater in the National Guard and Reserves. Because of the all-volunteer Army, "we've never had so many Guard and Reserves involved in combat," Grange says. These troops tend to be less well trained and yanked out of settled civilian lives and therefore more susceptible to psychological stress. "They also come home totally removed from the base of support that regular troops have. They're all alone," he says. Indeed, a disproportionate number of Guard and Reserve service members have civilian jobs as first responders--police, firefighters, emergency workers...
With Veterans Affairs overwhelmed by two wars, it may be a good thing, spiritually, for the rest of us to help those who have sacrificed so much in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few years ago, a colonel who had just returned from combat told me, "Over there, it always felt like we're stuck in hell and the country is at the mall." Part of the responsibility for the disconnect lies with President George W. Bush, who never asked us to sacrifice for the war effort. It's time to rectify that. "I'd like to see every...