"The Wounded Warrior at Home"--Not a compassionate response in my estimation

The Washington Post reports that the problems at Walter Reed are far from over, despite research funding:

The Pentagon has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to conduct research into post-traumatic stress disorder and care for soldiers suffering from it. But outside the Pentagon, the military still largely deals with mental health issues in an ad hoc way, often relying on the judgment of combat-hardened commanders whose understanding of mental illness is vague or misinformed.   

The article continues:

But outside the Pentagon, the military still largely deals with mental health issues in an ad hoc way, often relying on the judgment of combat-hardened commanders whose understanding of mental illness is vague or misinformed. The stigma around psychological wounds can still be seen in the smallest of Army policies. While family members of soldiers recovering at Walter Reed from physical injuries are provided free lodging and a per diem to care for their loved ones, families of psychiatric outpatients usually have to pay their own way.

  Years later and our treatment of our troops is still deplorable. Its an ethical outrage for a double standard of that sort to allow our mentally wounded troops to slip through the cracks. Whether you support the war or don’t [honestly I'm not a big fan and never have been] this feels like a grave crime against our armed forces and soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in service of our freedom. And its no hyperbole to say that soldiers with mental illness have a pattern of showing up as poverty and homeless statistics. How American is that? How can we abandon them like that?  How compassionate is that? How human is that? (h/t to the Washington Post.  It requires a free login, which is a bit of a pain) (image credit: Soldiers Media Center )  

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