The Marine Corp Times reports “The Defense Department plans to review all military mental health cases dating to 2001 to ensure troops were not denied appropriate diagnoses or service-related benefits, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.” They are “conducting a service-wide survey of behavioral health cases after problems surfaced at Madigan Army Medical Center, Wash., where more than 100 soldiers received diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder that were later overturned.”

What is really going on? Is this another money-is-the-bottom-line investigation? Why would a soldier receive a PTSD diagnosis and then have it revoked only to have it reviewed and reinstated? It makes no sense. There is no report of “cured” soldiers or relief of distress in the lives of troops. The Marine Corp Times reports that the DoD and the Veterans Administration (VA) differ in how they “approach these cases and how they diagnose the cases and how they deal with them”. ..”Questions about the military’s treatment of its mental health patients arose in 2011 when 290 of 690 PTSD diagnoses were overturned by a group of psychiatrists reviewing their case files.” What?

How has this here’s-your-diagnosis-oops-we-changed-our-mind-opps-we-changed-our-mind-again mentality on the part of psychiatrists effected the troops access to proper and timely mental health care? Can’t imagine it’s positive. Once again we have the great American Psychology Industry waffling around while neglecting the mental health of it’s citizens. In this case, those citizens have put their lives on the line in service to their country.

Somewhere around “2.3 million troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan at the cost  over a lifetime estimated to be between $750,000 and $1.5 million” reports the Marine Corp Times. That’s math I can’t do. So my original question about whether or not money is at the root of this “investigation” seems to have a high probability of being the case.

Is this psychiatric diagnosis waffling by psychiatrists contributing to even more debilitating mental distress and suicide?

There appears to be a similar situation occurring in the community of therapists diagnosing women with both multiple personalities and post-traumatic stress disorder. Is that why this group of psychotherapists are developing a new category of “complex” PTSD or C-PTSD to circumvent the inspection of the PTSD diagnosis?

Retrieved 06/16/12. Full Story http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2012/06/military-defense-department-orders-review-mental-health-diagnoses-061312w/

Read more on C-PTSD http://ptsd.about.com/od/ptsdbasics/a/ComplexPTSD.htm