Are you confident in your assertion that the there is an incentive to diagnose PTSD?
Let me know after you read this.
Here’s a letter from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (“CREW”) and VoteVets.org that alleged that “a mental health professional on the VAstaff told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD and consider instead the alternativeand less costly diagnosis of adjustment disorder.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52001426/CREW-v-Army-Re-PTSD-Diagnoses-5-28-08-VA-IG-Letter-Final
Yes, I’m confident there is an incentive to diagnose PTSD and other ‘disabilities’. Why?
1 - I know bureaucracies. You don’t expand your program, get funding and get recognition by getting people OFF the program, but ON.
2 - When I retired, I had a counselor try to talk me in to filing for ‘disability’ for hearing loss from 25 years around jet engines. I told him to stuff it - I chose to live that way, and would still be flying if the USAF would let me do so.
3 - I think my son-in-law is on full disability. While he refuses to have anything to do with PTSD - and he went thru things that could well give him a completely legitimate diagnosis of it - he is on disability for back, neck, shoulder and knee damage. However, he also rides dirt bikes, and I’m not convinced anyone who can ride dirt bikes for hours is fully disabled.
4 - My sister’s two daughters are both married to Marines. Both have been encouraged to apply for disability, although both have refused. Good on them!
5 - Two of my kids have done tours in Iraq, and both have been told they could apply for disability. Neither is disabled in any way.
6 - My wife is a nurse. She complains almost every shift about patients getting unneeded surgery and tests on state money. She has listened to doctors discussing what procedures the state will pay for in a way that has convinced her that payment is driving the diagnosis.
My Dad apparently suffered from terrible nightmares, frequent and severe sinus pain (he flew fighters in WW2), and never ever told anyone what he went thru. If you tried to talk, he would leave the room. Yet he was an excellent husband and father. His career ended in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. The idea that he needed disability, or a medical retirement, would have shocked and offended him.
The uncle who went thru D-Day & fought as infantry in Europe was undoubtedly a PTSD case. Everyone who knew him said the war dramatically changed him. Yet by all accounts he managed to be a good family man and provider without any counseling or treatment.
The uncle who had multiple ships sunk under him seemed totally unaffected by it, other than a refusal to talk about it. He was cheerful, successful, and happy. But like my Dad, he wouldn’t say a word about his war experience.
I’m not saying PTSD doesn’t exist. I know it does. What I deny is that it merits ‘retirement’, and that the money being spent is being well spent.