Obama changes VA rule to help vets get stress disorder aid

President Obama, saying that post-traumatic stress is one of two “signature injuries” of today’s wars, announced Saturday that new policies will soon take effect to make it easier for war-zone veterans with the disorder to receive disability benefits.

The president previewed the changes at the Veterans Affairs Department in his Saturday radio address. He said traumatic brain injuries also beset today’s veterans and that too few of them “receive the screening and treatment they need” for both conditions.

In the past, veterans were often stymied by a requirement to produce evidence that a specific event triggered their stress disorder. That’s kept those who served in noncombat roles in war zones from getting the care they need, he said.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder that can surface after traumatic events and leave patients feeling scared, confused or angry, according to the VA’s National Center for PTSD. They may experience flashbacks, become suddenly angry, have a hard time sleeping or concentrating and develop problems involving relationships, employment and alcohol or drug use.

Rep. John Hall (D-N.Y.), who championed the changes, said veterans had been required to produce incident reports, buddy statements, medals or other corroboration to prove they experienced trauma.

Hall, whose district includes West Point and who chairs a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on disability assistance, told of a World War II veteran who was on ships that sank in the Pacific and was rescued in both instances. “Like a bad ‘Twilight Zone’ episode, there were body parts and sharks going by him,” the lawmaker said. But when the man sought help during the 1970s, the VA initially dismissed him as having a preexisting condition, schizophrenia.

He now is receiving disability checks, Hall said.

Hall said the new policy will presume there is a service-related connection when a combat-zone veteran suffers from the stress disorder.

More than 400,000 veterans now receive compensation benefits for service-related post-traumatic stress disorder, VA officials said. Officials declined to say how many people might be affected by the new regulation.

In an April 2008 study, the RAND Corp. found that nearly 20% of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression, but only slightly more than half had sought treatment.

The study says these cases of post-traumatic stress and depression would cost the nation as much as $6.2 billion in the two years after deployments for costs associated with medical care, lost productivity and suicide.

An analysis by the Chicago Tribune published last spring found that overall disability payments to veterans from all wars reached $34.3 billion in 2009, a 76% increase since 2003.

Veterans of recent U.S.-declared wars on terrorism received $329 million in disability payments in 2009 related to mental disorders, including post-traumatic stress, which is 34% of all disability payments to vets from this period, the paper found.

Officials said the changes would be published Monday in the Federal Register and take effect immediately. The new regulation will also make it easier for veterans to receive treatment for post-traumatic stress.

Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said Saturday that the change was “a very good step forward.” But the VFW favored a more expansive bill introduced by Hall that would have also accepted diagnoses from private sector mental-health professionals, not just those at the VA.

“The VA mental-health professionals, as good as they are, are understaffed and over tasked,” Davis said.

Still, Davis saluted the VA for “acknowledging that we’ve got a lot of troops fighting in a war without front lines. Whether you saw it upfront as an infantryman or you were a truck driver or you were working in a medical unit in the rear or, unfortunately, you were sitting in a chow hall when a suicide bomber let go, you were impacted.”

kskiba@tribune.com