Army misdiagnosed and kicked out thousands of mentally ill vets

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/12/09/discharged-soldiers-mental-health

Previous investigations revealed how the VA was underprepared to meet the medical needs of the War on Terror vets, and the backlog for mental health care was horrendous.

Not sure if it's related, but a new study found that the Army systematically under-diagnosed soldiers with "adjustment disorder" rather than PTSD/depression (a vague classification from the Vietnam era that suggests a soldier is *temporarily* experiencing poor emotional/behavioral symptoms after a deployment). The former implied that the soldier was unable to perform his/her duties stateside and should be dishonorably discharged (i.e. it's the soldier's fault). However, if they were diagnosed with PTSD/depression, that is considered a debilitation due to their military service (i.e. it's the war's fault), which is an honorable discharge that guarantees lifetime free medical care for themselves, spouse, and kids (equivalent to losing a leg or an eye).

That Vietnam vets site above suggested that the military "saved" $12B on medical/disability payments for Vietnam vets who were misdiagnosed.

In many cases, suffering vets got both civilian and Army psych evals. The civilian diagnosis was depression, but the Army diagnosis disagreed (even after reviewing the civilian diagnosis). It's possible that the civilian doctors were sometime wrong, but not to the tune of two thousand independent cases.

Since 2009, the Army has also kicked out 22,000 vets for various misconduct. But when a soldier has PTSD/depression, that increases the likelihood that they will fall into a misconduct situation (dereliction of duties, fighting, substance abuse, etc.). So we're not sure how many of the 22K were misdiagnosed, but I would bet it's at least a third. There is now a Congressional inquiry about this issue due to NPR's reporting.

You can't get a mortgage unless you can prove that you can afford it. We shouldn't go to war unless we can prove that we need to, we are likely to win, and our gov't can and will handle the costs.