No matter who you are -- no matter if you do or don't know anyone who's served or is currently serving in a combat zone -- if you're an American this issue is of great import to you.

Currently, 16,000 returning Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD. The reality is staggering. The questions are, too.

How do we take care of our returning troops suffering from PTSD when...

• we don't have adequate funds to recognize and treat the disorder because the war's costs have ballooned so completely and fully out of control?
  
  
• we don't have a clear understanding of the disorder itself and what it means to our returning troops, their families, their communities, our nation?
  
  
• it's politically uncomfortable to confirm its existence, breadth, and scope for those who pushed for the war in the first place?

So, how is our government and media reacting to this ever-mushrooming problem?

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Hide It | The PTSD debate is beginning to heat up.  

Unfortunately, much of it is going on behind closed doors and generally (today's WaPo notwithstanding) not on the front-page of our nation's newspapers.

It's not on any of our television news shows. It's not in many of our splashy news magazines. There are no public service announcements educating the public on this issue. It's not being discussed in any measurable way in our nation's public square. The VA held a meeting in Philadelphia this month on PTSD -- it was an internal meeting, closed to the public.

Why all the silence?

"If we show that PTSD is prevalent and severe, that becomes one more little reason we should stop waging war. If, on the other hand, PTSD rates are low . . . that is convenient for the Bush administration."

So, we mustn't discuss PTSD because it will make the war's proponents look bad? And this will help our troops suffering from PTSD how exactly?

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Deride It | We must 'review' PTSD claims and definitions.

In order to cut costs, in August the VA announced that they would review the claims of approximately 72,000 vets currently receiving disability payments for PTSD. No matter that this review would have diverted funds from their "backlog of several hundred thousand disability claims yet to be processed."

The number of vets receiving compensation benefits for the illness rose nearly 80 percent between 1999 and 2004 -- from 120,265 to 215,871. During the same period, benefits for all types of disabilities grew by just 12 percent, to about 2.5 million. So far, about 10 percent of the stress syndrome increase comes from veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Budahn said.

Some experts say PTSD is diagnosed too readily. "PTSD went from being problematic, to being accepted as a condition, to being almost too easily accepted," said Wilbur Scott, a University of Oklahoma sociologist who has written about the disorder.

Now the VA, with the blessing of Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID and Committee Chairman of Veterans' Affairs) has contracted the Institute of Medicine to review PTSD.

Under the agreement, one IOM committee will be established to review the current scientific and medical literature related to the assessment of PTSD and how accurate the current screening instruments are.  Another IOM committee will provide technical assistance on issues related to treatment, prognosis, and compensation of PTSD.

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The first committee will take six months to complete its tasks.  The second committee, whose meetings will be open to the public and will accept public input, will take one year for its assignments.  Information about how to provide comments on those activities will be posted on the National Academies of Science (of which the IOM is a member) website, located at http://www.national-academies.org.

Ah. Now that's better. Public meetings accepting public input!

But, then you go to the link provided, and it's impossible to easily find any information on this committee's work. It's not clear if the meetings have begun, when they will begin, or how we will be able to comment or follow them. They don't make it easy to get involved, do they?

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Bleed It Dry | Plenty of money for the war, none for the warriors.

One can't entirely blame the VA for trying to contain budget increases since this administration's funding of the VA is pathetic. Take a look at what Sgt. Shaft has to say about it just today over at Military.com:

The administration proposes a VA health care budget of $28.1 billion for fiscal 2006, an insufficient increase given the influx into the system of new veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In contrast, the independent budget -- a comprehensive budget policy document co-authored by Amvets, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Veterans of Foreign Wars -- recommended $31.2 billion in funding for veterans' health care during 2006. This suggested funding increase of $3.5 billion is designed to meet realistic inflation and health care demand increases. This increase does not include onerous enrollment fees or increased co-payments for prescriptions put forward by the administration.

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The budget proposal slashes $351 million from veterans' nursing homes by serving 28,000 fewer residents and eliminating $104 million in state grants. It cuts $4 million from medical and prosthetic research, bringing to $53 million the total amount cut from research in two years.

The proposed increase of 113 employees to help process veterans' disability claims barely covers the number of positions that were deleted last year, and won't begin to make a dent in the current backlog of 480,000 compensation and pension claims, a number of which are from veterans from the current war on terrorism.

The country's 25 million veterans, 2.2 million uniformed members and their families voted overwhelmingly for this administration last year to make a difference in their lives, yet this budget fails to live up to the nation's obligation to veterans because it doesn't acknowledge that the costs of war continue long after the last shots are fired.

Some believe that faith-based organizations can come to the rescue. If you're a veteran, you may have found an email this morning from Webb & Associates Chaplaincy Consulting informing you of an operational-combat stress prevention (OCSP) pilot program they're hawking. Apparently, it will translate into a $921 million annual savings for us. And a little government contract for them.

The devil is in the details. Please read Jeff Huber's excellent expose on this over at Pen and Sword, as well as additional comments in the front-paged commentary right here at ePM.

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This is another installment in a series aimed at providing information on combat-related PTSD. For but a partial glimpse on the scope of this national tragedy, please visit ePluribus Media's PTSD Timeline.

Additional PTSD information and resources:

-- #2 | Returning Vet PTSD - One Wife's Story
-- #1 | Returning Vet PTSD - One Soldier's Story
-- 16,000+ Returning Combat Vets Need Our Help
-- Take That, PTSD! Rep. Lane Evans Rocks
-- Doonesbury this Week: One Vet's PTSD Struggle