Costs soar for compensating veterans with mental disorders

Costs soar for compensating veterans with mental disorders
By Tim Jones and Jason Grotto, Chicago Tribune
Stars and Stripes online edition, Sunday, April 18, 2010

CHICAGO — Corey Gibson's right leg bounces when he sits. At 29 he sleeps fitfully, with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle mounted above his bed. "That's my sense of security," he says.

Laurie Emmer, a 47-year-old mother of four, shuns crowds and strangers. She always sits facing the restaurant door when she goes out to eat and, before sitting down, makes sure to identify the quickest route out.

And Eric Johnson, 62, who revisits Vietnam nearly every night in his head, escapes the demons who rob him of sleep by patrolling the streets of his South Side neighborhood with his yellow Labrador retriever, Che.

The veterans come from different generations and different wars, yet they share a common and increasingly costly wartime affliction — post-traumatic stress disorder and other forms of psychological damage. Last year, mental illnesses accounted for 35 percent of the $22 billion spent on disability payments to veterans who served in the Vietnam, Persian Gulf and "global war on terror" eras, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.

Compensating veterans with psychological scars has helped fuel a 76 percent surge in service-related disability costs since 2003, the Tribune found, burdening an already overwhelmed system and underscoring the reality that the biggest costs of war are not often immediate or visible.

They get more cash if they can make it look really, really good.

and still took his own life.

The fact that there will always be some who will try to "game the system" doesn't detract from the legitimacy of claims by those who truly qualify.

Personally, I qualify--IN SPADES--for PTSD benefits, but I've never applied, and I know others like me.

What is it you are trying to say, exactly?