an interview with ilona meagher

who researched and wrote about our vets and ptsd

Ilona Meagher Is Taking a Stand for Our Vets


..........BuzzFlash: You've written a book, Moving a Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in America's Returning Troops. In terms of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are returning home, how big of a problem is this?
Ilona Meagher: We won't have a clear idea, just as we didn't with the Vietnam War, until many, many years after. But we can say that, of troops that have returned and separated from service, about one-third have already come in for some form of counseling. That's not necessarily PTSD. But about 75,000 troops who have returned from combat have been given a psycho-social disorder diagnosis from the VA. Of those, about 50,000 have the PTSD diagnosis.
The thing to keep in mind about these figures, though, is the stigma. We know that many troops don't seek help, because they are worried that having something on their record about some sort of emotional problems might not allow them to get a police officer job, or a different type of job that they might want. If they're in the Special Forces, they might not get the mission. So a lot of people don't get the help that they need.
One final figure I'm going to throw out that will really show you the extent of the problem is that even of those troops who filled out the post-deployment health assessment form - PDHA - and checked off that they needed some help, only 22% got follow-up care. ...............