COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
Report Faults Mental Care for Iraq Veterans at Upstate Base
LISA W. FODERARO, New York Times
February 13, 2008
WATERTOWN,
N.Y. — The four tours in Iraq served by the Second Brigade at
Fort Drum here have created an unusual level of stress, especially
after the standard Iraq tour was increased to 15 months from 12. Yet
according to a new report on the shortcomings of mental health care at
the base, a soldier’s wait to be seen for psychological help can
take more than a month.
The draft report, “Fort Drum: A Great Burden, Inadequate
Assistance,” which was given to The New York Times last week, was
done by Veterans for America, a nonprofit advocacy organization for
wounded members of the armed forces. It also uncovered several other
problems with the mental health services on the post, which is north of
Syracuse.
Based on interviews with a dozen soldiers and the mental health
providers on the base, the report describes problems with
understaffing, a reliance on questionnaires to identify soldiers in
need of treatment and a sometimes dismissive view at the company level
of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The system is very much overburdened,” said Jason W.
Forrester, director of policy for Veterans for America, in a telephone
interview last week. “These problems are going to continue as
long as we have units, such as the Second Brigade Combat Team, that
have seen high-intensity combat, extended deployments and inadequate
time between deployments.”
Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, the commander of the 10th Mountain Division,
which includes the Second Brigade, acknowledged the shortcomings of the
mental health care on the base, and said the problems were being
addressed. “We recognize that there is stress on the force and
our families from this conflict,” General Oates said. “But
until recently we have not fully appreciated the extent of some of the
mental stresses and injuries or how best to identify them”
In particular, he said, the providers of psychological services on the
base have been expanding their effort to interview “those who are
most at risk,” though “the screening process is not where
we want it to be.”
Indeed, the report said that the wait for an appointment has eased
since three Army psychiatrists were reassigned last month from Walter
Reed Army Medical Center, joining three psychiatrists already on the
base, to address the needs of 3,500 Second Brigade soldiers recently
back from Iraq. But, the report noted, the reassignment was “only
a temporary fix” since the psychiatrists from Walter Reed would
probably return to Washington in a few weeks.
Fort Drum lacks its own hospital, so any soldier needing inpatient
treatment has to be sent to Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown,
which recently increased the number of beds in its psychiatric unit to
32 from 24.
But the report said that when the psychological facilities at the base
have closed for the day, some soldiers have bypassed Samaritan and
driven more than an hour to Syracuse for treatment. The Veterans for
America report said the soldiers fear that doctors at Samaritan will
side with some base leaders, who had, “in some cases, cast doubt
on the legitimacy of combat-related mental health wounds.”
“The Department of Defense itself has recognized that with every
tour you increase the likelihood of post-traumatic stress
disorder,” said Adrienne Willis, spokeswoman for Veterans for
America. “Here we have a brigade that has served four
tours.”
Nor is the heavy service the only problem at Fort Drum. In the last two
weeks, it has been at the center of a controversy over whether the Army
instructed the Department of Veterans Affairs last March to stop
helping soldiers there with their disability claims. At first, the Army
surgeon general, Eric B. Schoomaker, denied that the Army had told
Veterans Affairs to do so.
But after National Public Radio reported on a memorandum from the March
meeting in Buffalo in which a colonel was quoted as directing Veterans
Affairs to discontinue counseling, the surgeon general apologized for
his denial and said it was based on a “miscommunication.”
In the report issued by Veterans for America, one soldier, Eli Wright,
26, who was a medic in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 and remains on active duty
while awaiting a medical discharge, said his symptoms of post-traumatic
stress disorder began after his tour ended and have worsened since then.
“My nerves are basically shot,” Mr. Wright said in a recent
interview at the Different Drummer Cafe downtown. “I have
flashbacks if I hear loud noises, especially if weapons are being
fired. Sometimes just putting on my uniform can bring me right back to
my experience in Iraq.”
He said that when he was in Iraq, he treated more civilians than
American soldiers, and that two in particular stood out in his mind: an
old woman and a child who were shot through a door as soldiers were
“going door to door, tearing apart entire neighborhoods”
searching for insurgents.
Mr. Wright said he waited weeks at Fort Drum to see a mental health
professional, who diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. He was
prescribed medication and pointed toward group therapy, where, he said,
“half the time the group is staring at the floor.” At
times, he was taking two pills at once. “I couldn’t stay
awake,” he said.
But his chief complaint with the Army is the long wait for treatment.
“The average wait time is five to six weeks,” he said.
“When a soldier is having a mental breakdown, he has to wait over
a month to see a counselor about his problems.”
Mr. Forrester of Veterans for America said that while the top brass at
Fort Drum, especially General Oates, have spoken passionately about the
need for soldiers to seek psychological treatment, others have not.
“There’s a trickle-down problem with the message, and that
is that there’s still a pervasive stigma around mental health
treatment in the military, along with a lack of confidentiality,”
he said. “For those who still doubt the legitimacy of these
wounds, they often are quite abusive of fellow soldiers or people in
their units.”
While Fort Drum has two dozen psychologists, social workers and
substance-abuse counselors, the low number of psychiatrists is
worrisome because psychiatric medication is common, Ms. Willis said.
“They’re heavily medicated, and it’s not something a
social worker can deal with,” she said. “You really need a
psychiatrist to manage that.”
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