Pentagon: Mental Ilnesses "Pre-Existing"

[Gold9472]

Pentagon: Mental illnesses 'pre-existing'

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_New...existing/5956/

Published: Oct. 1, 2007 at 1:07 AM

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- Pentagon officials are blaming some mental health discharges of U.S. troops in Iraq on what they call pre-existing mental conditions.

Experts say many of the approximately 10 soldiers and Marines discharged every day for mental health problems actually have combat-related problems, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Sunday.

By classifying the health problems as non-combat related, the military is saving money on treatment, the newspaper said.

Sens. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., have inserted language in a defense authorization bill to make it harder to discharge troops on those grounds, and to require a review of procedures by the Government Accountability Office.

Bond called the practice an abuse of the system. Obama said the lack of care for returning soldiers is “deeply disturbing.”

[Chana3812]

your mind and soul is forever f*cked up once you go to war....

I feel so bad for our soldiers who will prolly end up like the Vietnam vets ... unloved, unwanted, unemployed

Bush views our military as His group of toy soldiers .... to play with ... in his silly game of global domination. Once they are broken, he just throws them in the trash.

sux

[AuGmENTor]

I can't imagine what those men are going through over there. Well, not the extent of it anyway. The human mind is very resilient. You do what you have to do to survive. Over the years that follow, you learn to deal with the pictures seared onto your brain. I guess you can go either way. Make peace with it, or have your brain beat itself to pieces.

On a side note, with mental health being what it is today, it really wouldn't surprise me that some of the guys are shipping out with issues already in place. Look at how many people are on anti-depressants these days. Of course, the conditions there are not very helpful to people with those problems.