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Why Were Soldiers With PTSD Discharged?    [

    Soldier Says He Was Deployed With Head Injury
    By Kelly Kennedy
    Army Times

    Friday 20 April 2007

    After an hour of bench-pressing a log weighing several hundred pounds during Army Special Forces selection training in February 2006, five soldiers lying on their backs at Fort Bragg, N.C., reacted quickly to the next order:

    "Drop back!"

    So quickly, in fact, that when they dropped the log, it landed on Spc. Paul Thurman's head.

    "I shook for a moment, and then went limp," Thurman told Military Times. "I was unconscious for a minute or two, and then I went back to training."

    An MRI later showed that Thurman had lesions on the right parietal lobe of his brain, a condition that led to a "don't deploy" order - which the Army violated, according to Thurman. Worse, rather than providing compassionate understanding of the symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury, he said leaders at Fort Carson, Colo., have harassed him, refused him medication and pushed for an Article 15.

    Thurman stepped forward Friday as one of the 18 soldiers whose cases were cited by six senators in a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting a review of alleged improper handling of traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and ungrounded personality disorder discharges.

    The letter was sent after an Army surgeon general investigation into the cases said the soldiers were handled properly - but the soldiers involved said no one from the surgeon general's office ever talked to them in the course of that investigation.

    Meanwhile, a former Fort Carson officer has come forward to denounce the treatment of a soldier diagnosed with pre-existing personality disorder, rather than PTSD and traumatic brain injury, after reading about the case of Spc. Jon town in Military Times.

    Town was discharged for a pre-existing personality disorder even though he had no history of mental health problems until after he returned from Iraq - a prerequisite for a personality disorder diagnosis.

    Edward Kaspar said he served as Town's lieutenant and was a witness to the incident in which a rocket exploded above Town's head in Iraq, causing his brain injury.

    "I was pretty shocked to hear about his problems now," Kaspar said by e-mail. "This personality disorder thing just doesn't make sense. I'm not a trained medical professional, but I can say that in the years he served as one of my soldiers, he definitely had it together. I relied on him to get the job done and he never failed me, both in peacetime and in war."

    Andrew Pogany, who has been investigating soldier complaints at Fort Carson, said that though he is no longer surprised by the stories, he is particularly angry about Thurman's case.

    "He has a profile that says he can't always understand orders because of his brain injury - but they're giving him an Article 15 for disobeying orders," Pogany said. "This kind of treatment is very pervasive across the board."

    Thurman said a civilian lawyer - a former military attorney - may take his case pro bono.

    After his initial brain injury during Special Forces selection training, Thurman tore a bicep muscle and had to drop out because he couldn't move his arm. He went back to Fort Carson, where his unit was preparing to deploy to Iraq.

    "My profile said I was undeployable because of the thing in my head," Thurman said. "I also have melanoma skin cancer, and couldn't deploy because of that."

    He said he mentioned his profile to his chain of command, but said the doctor and his commander cleared him to go to Iraq anyway.

    Once in Iraq, Thurman said, he was told he would head to Germany for a follow-up MRI to make sure his brain was OK, even with the already-existing lesions.

    But before he got a chance to go to Germany, he said, he was injured again during a training exercise in Iraq.

    "We were doing convoy training, and somebody told us to clear a medevac helicopter," he said. "I heard somebody yell out, 'Grenade!' I turned around to see a new private picking up a really big IED simulator."

    Thurman said he dived for the ground as the private threw the simulator, but the device landed three inches from his head.

    "I could feel a huge concussion wave, and then I couldn't hear anything," Thurman said. "I told my sergeants my ears were hurting and that I felt really weird. My vision was acting all strange."

    Soon he was having dizzy spells, was losing his balance and couldn't sleep.

    His company sent him to Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany, where the doctors, he said, told him he shouldn't have been deployed to Iraq. They forwarded him on to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he said he spent "eight hours with the USO ladies eating cookies" before being packed off to Fort Carson. He said he was not examined while at Walter Reed.

    Since the injuries, Thurman said he blacks out, has seizures that last up to 40 minutes, has short-term memory loss and maintains a constant headache. Once, in front of his Army lawyer, he started throwing up and having a seizure, he said.

    For that reason, his doctors told him to take depakote, which he said leaves him drowsy. At Fort Carson, he's attached to a rear detachment unit because his company is still in Iraq.

    In January, the company had a health-and-welfare inspection at 2:30 a.m. As dogs searched the barracks for drugs, the soldiers reported to the company area for a drug urinalysis. But standing in formation, Thurman said his face and arm began to go numb, and he could tell he had a seizure coming on. He realized he needed his medication, and said he asked a staff sergeant if he could go. He was told no. He said he asked the first sergeant, and was told no. He said he asked the company commander, and was told no.

    Finally, dizzy and disoriented, he walked away from the formation to get his medication.

    "Someone yelled, 'Private! Get back in formation!'" Thurman said. "But I'm a specialist, and I was already pretty disoriented, so I kept walking."

    His medical profile states that Thurman sometimes can't follow orders because he can't comprehend them. He was being processed out of the Army for a medical disability. Next, he said, a staff sergeant yelled at him to get back in formation.

    "I said, 'F--- you,' I've got to get my medication,'" and kept walking," Thurman said. "I ended up having a seizure right there. Then they took me to do a urinalysis."

    His expletive, he said, led to an Article 15 - but the write-up, Thurman and Pogany say, doesn't say anything about Thurman cursing only after being denied permission to get his anti-seizure medication. His urinalysis came up clean.

    His profile also states he can't drive because of the seizures. But this month, he received a bad counseling statement, he said, for refusing to attend an 80-hour driving course.

    "All my counseling statements in the past have been great. They say things like 'esprit de corps' - that's top-notch. I was always volunteering. I attended like 15 different schools."

    Now he's pushing for a court-martial, rather than the Article 15, to make sure someone higher in the chain of command sees what's happening to him.

    "That's my right," he said.

    Pogany agrees with other critics who have noted that injured troops separated from service with bad-conduct discharges and diagnoses of pre-existing personality orders have no shot at disability retirement benefits - which holds down the military's costs to pay those benefits.

    Defense and service officials have repeatedly denied that budget concerns play a role in such cases, but Pogany doesn't buy it. "It's just sick," he said. "The pile is really starting to stink."

    The letter to the GAO, dated April 19, is signed by Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill.; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Christopher Bond, R-Mo.; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn; Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. It was also sent to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren.

    Steve Robinson, legislative director for Veterans for America, said the Government Accountability Office has begun its investigation.

 

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    Why Were Soldiers With PTSD Discharged?
    By Kelly Kennedy
    Army Times

    Thursday 19 April 2007

Senators ask for investigation into "upsetting allegations."

    Six senators have requested an investigation into what they call "upsetting allegations" that the Army gave personality-disorder discharges to 18 Fort Carson, Colo., soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries.

    "There are allegations of commanders at Fort Carson, Colo., denying soldiers access to mental health care and instead ordering them redeployed for additional tours in Iraq," states a letter to the Government Accountability Office. "We have also heard of cases in which service members with PTSD are diagnosed as having 'personality disorders' that the Army considers 'pre-existing,' thus depriving otherwise eligible combat veterans of disability benefits and much-needed mental health care."

    The letter, dated April 19, is signed by Senators Barack Obama, D-Ill.; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Christopher Bond, R-Mo.; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn; Tom Harkin. D-Iowa; and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. It was also sent to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren.

    "I'm especially troubled by reports of some DoD commanders downplaying the serious mental health conditions confronting service members returning home from Iraq," Obama said in a statement, "and then redeploying those troops without proper treatment. It's time for a full accounting of how many of our troops are affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, other service-connected mental health conditions and traumatic brain injuries."

    The letter requests that the following items be investigated:

• Known cases of improper discharges or misdiagnoses.
  
  
• The growing number of discharges for personality disorders.
  
  
• The overall number of misdiagnosed cases for PTSD, mental health conditions and traumatic brain injuries.
  
  
• Defense Department progress in mandatory screening and treatment.
  
  
• What is available to soldiers if they believe they have been misdiagnosed.
  
  
• The number of service members reporting mental health concerns because of sexual assault during deployment.

    "We seek to ensure that the DoD has the resources necessary to diagnose and treat service-connected injuries that impact the mental health of U.S. service personnel," the letter states. "It is vital that the U.S. military ensures it is treating the mental health needs of our forces with the same priority and resource investments it is devoting to physical injuries."

    The quest for information began after The Nation reported that 22,000 soldiers have been diagnosed and discharged from the Army for pre-existing personality disorders since the war began, as well as documenting cases of soldiers who believe their combat-related mental health issues were buried for the sake of saving money or quickly filling a slot with a deployable soldier.

    Veterans for America then requested an Army surgeon general investigation into the cases of 18 soldiers discharged for personality disorders. Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, said the Army surgeon general wrote the group a letter stating that the soldiers' cases had been investigated, and that no improprieties took place.

    However, Robinson said no one talked to any of the 18 soldiers during the investigation, thus sparking the congressional inquiry.

    "Four months later, we got a letter saying, 'We thoroughly and thoughtfully reviewed these cases,'" Robinson said. "But how can that be if they didn't do follow-up exams and didn't talk to the soldiers?"

    Spc. Jon Town is one of those soldiers. "Nobody talked to me," Town said. "It's unbelievable that their investigation didn't involve talking to the soldiers."

    Town was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury when a rocket blew up two-and-a-half feet above his head in Iraq in 2005. "It was like I was kind of flying and then there was a fireball behind me," he said of the explosion that caused his injury.

    He bled from his ears and passed out cold for about three minutes. He rested for 24 hours, and then went to work the next day.

    "As soon as I got back, it was in my medical records," Town said. "But it took me two months to get my first appointment."

    He can't hear in his left ear, lost 50 percent of his hearing in his right ear, and has short-term memory loss and headaches that never go away.

    Town also has PTSD - common for soldiers with traumatic brain injuries.

    "It's rather scary," he said. "Yesterday, me and my wife were going to my mom and dad's house and someone blew a tire out. It scared the bejesus out of me."

    Town said his wife encouraged him to pull over and calm down, but said that he has flashbacks two or three times a day and only gets three hours of sleep a night.

    Soon after he returned to Fort Carson, Town sat in a bathtub full of water. He plugged in a hair dryer, and then tugged it into the water.

    "It was a really bad day, bad time," Town said. "Fortunately, it short-circuited."

    Though he checked into a hospital the next day, his command wasn't as helpful. He received a bad write-up when he overslept one day because of his medication. He was written up again after one of his sergeants said something offensive about a friend who died in Iraq.

    "I just yelled at the person," he said. "He was a staff sergeant, and I was disrespectful. But he had no right to say what he said."

    Soon, his mental health diagnosis changed.

    "I had obvious symptoms of PTSD, and I was going to do the medical evaluation board," he said. "But they sent me to psychiatrists who said I had a personality disorder."

    With no history of mental health issues in his past, Army physicians diagnosed Town with a personality disorder, then discharged him with no benefits because they determined the supposed disorder was a pre-existing condition.

    "My commander told me it wouldn't affect my benefits, and if I signed the paperwork, he could get someone to take my place," Town said. "But I lost everything, and had to pay the Army $3,000 back because I re-enlisted and got a bonus. That's what I got for seven years of service."

    He was chaptered out and has been waiting for six months for an appointment with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    Andrew Pogany, a former soldier who investigates cases for Veterans for America, said Town's case is typical, and then listed several others:

• One Native American soldier served two full tours in Iraq and has not been able to get treatment for his PTSD. Instead, the soldier said, his chain of command disciplined him for alcoholism and harassed him by calling him a "drunk Indian." Other soldiers signed statements saying the Native American soldier was mistreated, and that they were ordered not to cooperate with investigators.
  
  
• Another soldier served in Afghanistan for a year, then sought help for PTSD. He received none, then was redeployed to Iraq. While returning to Iraq after leave, he had a panic attack at the airport and said he could not get on the plane. He immediately called his unit, then sought mental health treatment. He was diagnosed with acute stress disorder, and then chronic PTSD. And then he was found guilty of "missing movement by design," reduced in rank from specialist to private and given 45 days of extra duty.
  
  
• A 550-pound log fell on a specialist's head causing lesions to his frontal lobe. His profile said he was undeployable and that he needed an urgent MRI, but he was cleared to go to Iraq. One month after arriving, he suffered another traumatic brain injury in an explosion and was medevaced back to Fort Carson. He faces an Article 15 for disobeying an order, even after a doctor said his brain injury was so severe he can't comprehend orders.
  
  
• A soldier was given an other-than-honorable discharge even with signs of a traumatic brain injury. One day before he was kicked out, the soldier was diagnosed with the injury. He was discharged anyway.

    "It's just totally ridiculous," Pogany said. "It flies in the face of what they say publicly."

    Publicly, Army mental-health experts have been fighting the stigma surrounding mental health issues, as well as the idea that service members will be punished for seeking help.

    "I tell these stories to people who have nothing to do with the military, and they think I'm making this up," Pogany said.

    In Iraq, Pogany, a former staff sergeant and Army interrogator serving with an A team out of Fort Carson, had what appeared to be a nervous breakdown. Instead of providing him with medical treatment when Pogany said he needed help, the Army sent him home and charged him with cowardly conduct.

    But he continued to have the symptoms he had in Iraq: panic, anxiety, nightmares, confusion and depression. Then his lawyer said other soldiers who had taken anti-malarial medication were having the same symptoms.

    Pogany was medically retired in 2005 after his doctors said the medication caused brain damage.

    "The drugs did damage to my brain stem. But I'm done with that. It just gets me worked up that these guys are falling through the cracks today."