PTSD Soldiers returned to Active Duty

[darkangel]

This is my cousin who served in the Armed Forces. He started out in Africa and wound up in Iraq. When he came out he was diagnosed as 70% disabled with PTSD.

Nothing was stranger for Mary Jane Fernandez than the events of last Christmas, which had her 24-year-old son, newly returned from the war in Iraq, downing sedatives, ranting about how rich people were allowed to sit in recliners in church, and summoning the Waterbury police to come arrest him.

This Christmas may top that.

Despite being diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and rated 70 percent disabled by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Damian Fernandez has been called back to duty and told to prepare for another deployment to Iraq.

Two weeks ago, Fernandez, who was discharged from active duty in the Army last year and was working to settle back into civilian life, abruptly received orders to report to Fort Benning, Ga., on Jan. 14.

When the FedEx letter from the Army arrived Nov. 28, he calmly told his mother and girlfriend, "I got my orders," staring hard at them with vacant eyes.

That night, he snapped. He told his girlfriend, Riella Darko, that he wanted to die and asked her to take him to the emergency room of St. Mary's Hospital, where he was placed on a suicide watch. He has since been transferred to a locked ward in the Northampton VA Medical Center in Massachusetts.

His callback orders have not yet been rescinded. Even if they are, his mother said, simply being told he must go back into combat has set back his recovery.

"I don't understand why the military would put him through this," Mary Jane Fernandez said. "He was just starting to come back to reality a little, and now he's lost again."

Fernandez is one of 8,262 soldiers who have left active duty but have been ordered back under a policy that allows the military to recall troops who have completed their service but have time remaining on their contracts. About 5,700 of those called up have already been mobilized, with Fernandez among about 2,500 ordered to report in the coming weeks.

http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfDEC06/nf121106-2.htm

An Iraq war veteran from Waterbury who was called back to duty despite a diagnosis of severe post-traumatic stress disorder has been exempted from returning to combat and released from the military.Damian Fernandez, 24, who became suicidal and was hospitalized after receiving orders last month to prepare for another deployment to Iraq, has been excused from reporting to duty Jan. 14 and discharged altogether from the Army's ready reserve, according to a letter Thursday from the Army's Human Resources Command.After Fernandez's case was recently featured in The Courant, U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asked the Army to grant him an exemption.Fernandez's mother, Mary Jane Fernandez, said she received the letter and a personal call Thursday from Col. Robert T. Marsh, commander of the U.S. Army Human Resources Command, notifying her that her son was being released from the military. She said she was relieved that Damian, who has been in a lockdown unit at the Northampton VA Medical Center in Massachusetts since receiving his call-up orders, would no longer have to worry about being sent back to war."Now that he knows he'll never have to go back, maybe he can finally start to get better," Mary Jane Fernandez said of her son, who suffers from paranoia, flashbacks and depression and has been deemed 70 percent disabled with PTSD by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

http://nutmeggrater.blogspot.com/2006_12_17_archive.html

Is it right to recall Soldiers who suffer from PTSD back to Iraq or any other country where there is a War going on? I think that for all of the Soldiers who served our country and suffer from PTSD should NOT be given orders to return to Active Duty. They served and did what they could for our Country and became mentally ill from it.

Doing this is a very controversial subject and even though this was in 2006 I think it still exists today. What do you all think about this?

 

[Francis]

From the MSNBC site today..

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38712714/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

At the height of the Iraq war, the Army routinely fired hundreds of soldiers for having a personality disorder when they were more likely suffering from the traumatic stresses of war, discharge data suggests.

Under pressure from Congress and the public, the Army later acknowledged the problem and drastically cut the number of soldiers given the designation. But advocates for veterans say an unknown number of troops still unfairly bear the stigma of a personality disorder, making them ineligible for military health care and other benefits.

I guess the answer is that the military has not listened yet.. We have the same issue here in Canada..