This is much more worthy of media attention than the SBVT nonsense.
"We hear about the thousands of injuries -- brain injuries, leg injuries, arm injuries -- but rarely do we hear about the psychological casualties in war," said PTSD expert Dr. Evan Kanter, a neuroscientist and staff psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle.
"There will be tens of thousands of these, and the cost of that will be tremendous."
An Army survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 1 said 15.6 percent to 17.1 percent of returning soldiers from Iraq exhibited signs of anxiety, major depression or other mental health problems. A new study of 1,300 Fort Bragg paratroopers who took part in the Iraq invasion echoed the findings, showing 17.4 percent exhibited PTSD symptoms.
Comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are frequent in counseling circles. While an estimated 2 percent to 10 percent of veterans exposed to combat in the brief 1991 Gulf War developed combat-related PTSD, in Vietnam it was an estimated 30 percent.
