Army should consider PTSD in gauging how it discharges vets, lawsuit says

Couldn't have said it better. I held everything in and compartmentalized when I got back. This is the single most unhealthy thing you can do, whether forced or voluntary, because your inability to face the fact is what leads to self-medicating. Chain of Command should be willing to help the servicemember. As an NCO, it was a responsibility to make sure my soldiers were both physically and mentally healthy.

Sad that many do not still remember this concept.

Your comment was spot on CPO (Join to see). Well said.

Everyone this is not a new conversation.

Lets muster, identify problems and also offer solutions to create systemic cultural system changes that do not first take into account illness caused by stress of duty, thereby stopping punitively adverse discharges harming otherwise brave service members and their families that actual need the team still and help.

I really do not know how our system would ever allow for punitive discharges without first documenting duty reviewing identifying medical illness as the root cause.

Remember the "Oath of Enlistment"

"I,, do solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all....


"Constitutional Rights of Military Personnel"
Summary-Report 88th Congress Washington
1963

----EXERPTS----
"No persons should be more entitled to protection of their constitutional rights than the servicemen engaged in protecting the sovereignty of the United States. Appropriately, the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights has been concerned"

"On the other hand, a serviceman may be viewed as discharged "under honorable conditions" or, in the words of title 38, United States Code, section lOl(2) "under conditions other than dishonorable" even though he did not receive an honorable discharge. The terminology is confusing on its face and, as Congress- man Doyle acknowledged in his testimony, few persons understand the difference between a dishonorable discharge given by a general court-martial and an undesirable discharge given administratively. He also commented with respect to the stigma created by an undesirable discharge:

"He is an undesirable. You don't want to have anything to do with him. You
don't go into detail to find out what makes him undesirable. You think he may
be a thief, he may be a homosexual, he may not be supporting his children, his
family in the minds of some people, but he is undesirable, you don't want him
around. And I think the ordinary patriotic, sound-thinking American citizen
doesn't want to have anything to do with an undesirable man and that applies
to an undesirable man from the military, something has occurred there in the
military for which he has gotten an undesirable discharge; it is a stigma. It is a
liability, and a heavy one."

Jn a similar vein, Chief Judge Quinn of the Court of Military Appeals, testified concerning the undesirable discharge, that:

I think, generally speaking, Mr. Chairman, it is worse than a bad conduct discharge, as far as its implications are concerned, and the results also are quite severe. You cannot get a job in a bank or a trust company or for the Govern- ment; for Electric Boat, for instance, at New London or any of the places where there is any confidential requirement. They will not give work to a man with an undesirable discharge. It is a very severe penalty. I think that an undesirable discharge is a very severe penalty, and I believe that it should not be given except as a result of a court-martial, except in the instance where the individual, after proper legal advice, and proper legal protection, decides to accept it for his own personal protection. I mean in the case of homosexuals, I can see there where they might want to take the undesirable discharge. But I think they ought to have a right to a trial. I think it is a very severe penalty.


https://www.rallypoint.com/answers/what-is-your-response-to-constitutional-rights-of-military-personnel-summary-report-88th-congress-washington-1963

I agree on this point. The only thing needed to be diagnosed with PTSD is a specific event or events that have caused you problems. Contrary to popular belief, it is a relatively easy thing to claim because there is no real way of disproving you have it.

I even had a friend that did not see any combat, but said he was going to file for and get PTSD compensation.

When he got home, he would stand outside his house with a Kevlar, IBA and an AR-15 and stop people that drove by asking to see ID's of the occupants.

I talked to him later and he was gloating about how he had did this just to get 100% for PTSD.

He is one of many, there are several others out there.

Those are the ones that tick those of us who had those experiences and live with them off.

I don't mind someone who actually struggles with PTSD being afforded the right to an Honorable Discharge, compensation and benefits: in my book, they earned it. But people who claim it simply for money make me sick.

Just my 2 cents worth.

You're right. It really all comes down to the person. I was deployed 4 times, had a few friends get killed, and experienced since other stuff. My wife thinks I do (or at least should) have some PTSD but I don't feel like there's anything to claim because I've never been stopped from doing by daily life by anything that's happened. Maybe I'm just really good at compartmentalizing.

SGT Michael Thorin - How would you filter out PTSD valid vrs unvalid. I believe the only way to truly filter is by examining life functioning USMEPCOM Accession Entrance Physical SF 88 or SF 95 and especially after. Evidence Based Functioning 1) Substantial Gainful Employment Records 2) Significant Relationship History 3) Living Standards 4) Medical Records


This Kevlar Crap stopping cars in the street seems well a hollywood type actor type game, if he really had a stable work, housing, family, and no Psychiatric Hospitalizations 5150's for example.