Study says post-traumatic stress disorder being over-diagnosed

I hope this will make the psychologists smarten the fuck up. I know of a few people that have been diagnosed when they shouldnt have. One guy was told he has anger issues, the problem was he was bitter and short tempered before he went on tour. Since he has a tour now they assume he has an OSI, he thought about denying the claim and coming clean but he said "in 15 years I dont want to be kicking myself for not getting a pay day".

it's the new ADHD

It seems to be the diagnoses of the day for everything that cannot be explained.

The problem is that the Military is taking just about anyone who can walk and chew gum. In the grand scheme of things numbers count and alot of disfunctional people are getting into the military because of this.

These people are damaged goods before they arrive so when they do a tour, and become basket cases, which they may have anyway tour or not, they're sent to a shrink, who, rather than spend the time finding the root cause of their problem writes them up a flavor of the day diagnosis of PTSD and sends them off to DVA to collect their pension.

I somehow don't think this is how the system is supposed to work and if the abuse continues I can see them seriously curtailing or at the very least requiring another couple of physciatrists evaluations before any PTSD claims are granted which will hurt the actual people suffering from this affliction.

Maybe because we are people and not machines. Lets face it are we trained to be shot at? React to being blown up? Mass-Cas situations? Yes. Is it quite different to train then to actually see your friend shot/blown up or civies blown up. Yes. Does the training help? Yes, but lets remember the training only started to go into semi-hyper realistic in the past couple of years and you can only train and get realistic so much then your onto the real thing. Personally do I think its over diagnosed? No I don't, as with any system anywhere your gonna get your scammers, but hey its not like the walk into Mental Health and go "I gots the PTSD wheres my bling?" People are screened, tested, re-screened, re-tested over and over and over again before a payout is done.

Not in those exact words, but that is what is happening. A guy gets pissed off at work and all he has to do is say the magical words "I feel like killing X" and stomp around in a huff. Hell I guy doesnt even have to show up to work! All he has to do is take a weeklong vacation, come back and say "I just couldnt stand going back to work, I have problems". If they show a few symptoms:
-Say you drink heavily (showing up drunk to the review can help)
-Say you have emotional issues (be angry then cry that will get em)
-Say you and the woman have issues (tell her that you will get at least $10,000 just say that we dont have sex and I don’t share with you anymore)
-Say you have contemplated killing yourself (how will they know you dont?)
-Tell them how you saw horrible things ("I saw them touch boys or I heard about so and so getting blown up or I was so scared cuz I thought I would die WAAAAA!")
-Say you cant sleep (just rent some movies and games and have a all nighter for a few days)

The problem is no one has the balls anymore to say, "Stop your fucking whining". They are much too willing to coddle/payout those who have the slightest issue. I know some people are really fucked up and it sucks but way too many people who had issues before they put the uniform on or who know how to manipulate the system are getting a free walk. It is going to ruin it for the rest, which is why we need more stringent screening at the recruit level or at least in the pre tour level. Hopefully they will be able to do this after 2011. If you have any risk of getting an OSI you should not and hopefully do not get a tour.

Seems we've almost come full circle though, in the WWII WWII days it was comon practice for Vets to zip their lips and suffer in silence, now we apparently have too many of them getting sappy over things they have seen and done, where is the medium? I don't think its that no one has said "Stop Your Fucking Whining" as Guy_Fawkes posted rather an a situation where we expect them all to be soldiers in one respect and big Teddy Bear PR guys when they get home. For years all we heard about is their unwillingness to talk out, the phycs and brass wanted them to be more open about their feelings.

Know a guy who was in Bosnia, he came home and lived what seemed like a normal life, he awoke in the middle of the night once and was in the process of beating the shit out of his wife. He went to a doctor and guess what PTSD from some of the shit he'd seen. ended his military career, he was a lifer with 15 years in and all he had ever wanted to be was an infantry soldier, now he's medicated and make cabinets for a living.
He was of the thought don't ask don't tell, but would have ended up killing someone because of it and thats what caused him to seek help.

I think its more likely that various causes of regular stress, depression, OCD are going un-diagnosed. There are studies that suggest that depression is grossly undiagnosed.

...and I have a virtually identical story of a guy I know who also served in Bosnia, except instead of making cabinets, my friend now drives a city bus. PTSD may or may not be overdiagnosed, I don't know. But it IS a real affliction and its affects on the victim and their friends and family can be devastating.

Agreed Lemmy, how many of our Vets from the two World Wars suffered in silence because of their stereotypical view of what a man and a soldier should be.
Coupled with the fact that mental illness as a whole is on the increase and it's no wonder that we see more and more of it.

It's pretty simple to read someones medical records to ascertain how a physical injury was incured. For example, you didn't have a knee injury when you joined, but after falling out of that helicopter on duty you do now. So given the circumstances it was likely caused by a military incident.

But how do you do that with a mental illness? You basically can't and unless they devise a better system of screening recruits these problems are going to continually arise, where a diagnosis of PTSD is given, when in fact the problem exhisted long before the person even enlisted.

So I can fully understand why they're saying PTSD is being over diagnosed. I know of two cases where PTSD was diagnosed and quite likely wasn't caused by operational stress but because some physciatrist didn't bother to take the time to investigate fully and wrote it off as operational when in fact it was a problem that had been present before these individuals even went in theatre.

I wish them luck figuring this out and my only concern is that the people actully suffering from operationally caused PTSD are going to be labeled as malingerers and denied the proper benefits and treatment.

there's ussually criteria for this kind of stuff. you don't just walk into a doctors office complaining about stress and then 15 minutes later you get diagnosed.

the problem with ADHD is the school systems started to tell parents things like " get your kid on drugs or else we are going to expell him"

they had no right making doiagnosis that should be reserved for the medical experts.

I realise that. But the point I was trying to make was that, people enlist with mental problems that don't arise till they've been in for a period of time and from all appearences, when these problems do arise the first thing that's done, rightly or wrongly is that they assess them for PTSD.

When a person goes and sees someone at the base hospital it's usually the base physcologist, who'll make a diagnosis and send them on to a physciatrist for further assessment.

The problem appears to be that if you've got issues that surface anytime after a deployment, and the base physcologist diagnoses PTSD or a myriad of other disorders, which may or may not be caused by the deployment, it's quite likely that nobody is going to question his diagnosis for two reasons. Profession ethics and treatment.

So there lies the crux of the problem. Nobody wants to tell someone that your mental problems might not be from your deployment and you likely had them when you enlisted, because that would preclude this person from recieving a DVA pension and treatment after release. So the easiest way to ensure the patient is cared for is to diagnose deployment caused PTSD and pass them off to the DVA.

The only problem with this whole scenario is that they're gonna make it one hell of alot harder for people actually suffering from military caused PTSD to get the compensation and treatment they deserve.