Griper News: For the VA and the Pentagon, an Injury isn't an Injury if it's Emotional

ABC News' blog, The Blotter, reports that the Dept. of Veterans Affairs mismanaged funds to treat mental illness in veterans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs did not allocate all of the hundreds of millions of dollars that was to go to additional mental health initiatives for veterans, nor did it follow how the money it did allocate was being used, according to a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office.

In 2004, the Secretary of the VA approved a new mental health initiative to close the gaps in mental services available for veterans.
"Some of the service gaps identified by the VA were in treating veterans with serious mental illness, female veterans, and veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan," according to the report.

[...]

In 2005, the report says, the VA failed to allocate $12 million of the $100 million because, according to the VA, "there was not enough time" to allocate the funds before the end of the fiscal year. The report also adds that some medical centers that received funds were also not able to spend them before the fiscal year ran out.

Somehow, this doesn't surprise me at all. The military has always lacked an appreciation of the seriousness of mental illness. Why would they handle funding for treatment of mental illness, when they don't seem to believe it exists?
According to National Public Radio, "Army studies show that at least 20 percent to 25 percent of the soldiers who have served in Iraq display symptoms of serious mental-health problems, including depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)." Yet NPR found that soldiers with PTSD were likely to be punished for their emotional problems, rather than helped...

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