Long after Jimmy died, his wife, my Aunt Lil, told me he hadn't always been that way. Before he went away to serve in World War II, he'd been a much quieter, gentler soul. But on December 7, 1941, Jimmy was on a ship in Pearl Harbor. He survived, but he was never the same again. The bombs falling around him had severely damaged his hearing, which is probably why he shouted. The trauma of that day may have caused a permanent personality change as well.
In those days, mental-health experts didn't know much about what trauma could do to the human nervous system. What we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), they called "shell shock" or "battle fatigue." Nobody knew how to help those veterans. Now we know much more, but our federal government refuses to allocate enough funding to reach all the returning veterans who need treatment.
A study conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that the military response to veterans' mental-health problems leaves much to be desired. Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are reporting alarmingly high rates of psychological distress, but there aren't enough professionals in the Department of Defense or Veterans Administration to provide the help they need. Four out of 10 psychologist slots in the Army and Navy were vacant at the time of the APA study. Even more alarming, the APA report found that only 10 percent to 20 percent of mental-health experts serving the military had training in treating trauma survivors, a tragic finding in light of the proportion of veterans who need that specialized treatment.
A few months ago, news outlets shone a spotlight on deficiencies at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where some veterans with severe physical wounds lived in substandard housing and received inadequate care. Bureaucrats made their usual excuses, but some changes are being made, and a head or two did roll. Americans were rightly outraged at the poor conditions at Walter Reed. But where is our outrage about the lack of proper treatment for veterans' mental-health problems?
While our society has made progress in understanding mental illness, we still don't really accept that depression, anxiety, PTSD and other problems are, in fact, treatable illnesses. If we did accept that reality, the media coverage of recent reports on veterans' mental-health issues would equal that of the problems at Walter Reed, and it decidedly doesn't. If we believed that war-related mental-health problems can be resolved with proper care, we'd be bombarding Congress with demands that our veterans receive that care.
Instead, the same old misconceptions stand in the way of veterans' recovery - the ideas that mental illness is a matter of character, not biology; that asking for help is a sign of weakness; that therapy and psychiatric medicines are for sissies.
Given that veterans of the current Iraq war are returning with very high rates of mental distress - with perhaps as many as 1 in 3 needing treatment - we'd better shake off the misinformation surrounding mental illness and get it right this time. For men like my Uncle Jimmy, wartime service resulted in lifelong suffering, and that couldn't be helped. Men and women serving their country today don't have to suffer as he did - if we will only care enough to provide the help they need.
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* CONNIE CLARK, an
Episcopal priest and chaplain in Evanston, Wyo., welcomes comments at chaplconnie@yahoo.com. You may also comment by e-mailing religioneditor@sltrib.com.
