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WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates (pictured) said Oct. 26 that troops injured in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to face too many bureaucratic hurdles.
Paperwork alone for them can be "frustrating, adversarial, and unnecessarily complex," Gates said.
Gates spoke at a mental health summit with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki (pictured). By appearing publicly together, they sought to reinforce their commitment to tackling veterans' health issues and the stigma associated with seeking mental health care.
Earlier this year, they pledged with President Barack Obama to create a system that would make it easier for the Pentagon and VA to exchange information so there is less of a wait for veterans to get disability benefits. The VA is struggling with a backlogged disability claims system with hundreds of thousands of claims that need to be processed.
Among U.S. troops who have fought in the recent wars, Gates says brain injuries and mental health ailments are "widespread, entrenched and insidious." He noted that a RAND Corp. study last year estimated that there could be more than 600,000 service members with traumatic brain injuries or mental health issues.
Gates said there have been positive changes such as the doubling of the budget for mental health and traumatic brain injuries to almost $1.2 billion from last year, but other challenges remain such as filling a shortage of therapists in and near military installations.
About 2 million troops have fought in the recent wars. Tens of thousands have been physically injured, while hundreds of thousands have entered the VA's health care system.
Shinseki said veterans from the recent wars are coming homes with "invisible wounds" that are just as debilitating as physical traumas sustained on the battlefield.
"Who's vulnerable? Everyone," Shinseki said. "Warriors suffer emotional injuries as much as they do physical ones."
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The AP:
