PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
THE WAR
WITHIN
She was 31, a single mom, and
sick. Her Harley gathered dust
in the garage. She stopped writing poetry. “I couldn’t cope,” she
says. “I felt so scared.
“I think my son kept me from
clicking off ‘safe’ more times
than I’d care to admit,” she confides, referring to the temptation
to turn off her weapon’s safety
mechanism and end her life.
Such combat trauma wounds are
largely invisible — but the numbers
are arresting. Roughly 2,413,000
young Americans have served in
the Iraq or Afghanistan war, so far.
More than 600,000 of them
may be struggling with PTSD and
major depression. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has
formally diagnosed 207,161 Iraq
and Afghanistan war veterans
with PTSD. But experts believe
many more are affected because
of shortcomings and defects in
screening and diagnosis.
A recent study by the RAND
Corp., a Pentagon-funded think
tank, suggested how many undiagnosed veterans there might be.
It estimated that some 14 percent
— or about 337,820 — of post9/11 veterans suffer from the
headaches, sleeplessness, irritability, depression, rage and other
HUFFINGTON
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symptoms of PTSD, whether or
not they are formally diagnosed.
An additional 14 percent suffer
from major depression. The VA’s
National Center for PTSD confirmed the numbers as accurate.
In addition, some 40,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan
have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury they received
in combat. The condition involves
a bruising of the brain caused by
concussion or other head injury,
according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. Many
more veterans may be suffering
without diagnosis or treatment,
experts say. (Overall, the Defense Department has diagnosed
233,000 individual cases of TBI
since 2000, the vast majority
caused by training injuries or vehicle accidents, not combat.)
Head wounds were considered
fatal until the 20th century and
the arrival of better and faster
medical care. As with PTSD, the
diagnosis and treatment of TBI
have improved significantly during the past decade.
Still, in a chilling reminder of
war’s long-term effects, the VA
reported that last year it treated 476,515 veterans for PTSD
— most of them veterans of the