It's the Army way, a combination of linguistic contortion that would send Joesph Heller and Orwell into convulsions.
They want to change the name to Post Traumatic Stress Injury.
I feel better already.
I guess that after speaking to every 19-year-old in America, General Peter Chiarelli, has the wisdom to tell us, "No 19-year-old kid wants to be told he’s got a disorder." (Washington Post)
Of course the real reason is a shift to 'injury' could make it harder for service members to collect permanent-disability payments. According to Charles Figley, director of Tulane University’s Traumatology Institute, “When you have an injury, you follow a treatment regimen and expect to get better,” Figley said. “This change is about medicine, but it is also about compensation. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.”
That's right, troops. A few pounds of anti-depressants should heal you right up in a few years. No need to fill out all those papers requesting disability compensation.
Or maybe, like the VA once told me, Jesus will help. No shit, they gave me a pamphlet about it a few years ago when I discovered that both of my counselors were "No longer with the VA."
At least the medicine kept coming. I'm not sure if it came from Jesus or not since it came in the mail with paid postage.
Now you can tell me about the effectiveness of certain medications, but I won't listen. Actually, I will try to listen, but I can't hear you because the Wellbutrin they gave me for PTSD (I) caused a 24/7 case of Tinnitus for which I was richly rewarded with another 10% disability, which did not translate into an increase in disability compensation. The VA has a new math theory where 40% and 10% equals 40%. My loss of hearing due to battle noise was rated as 'service connected', but again, zero dollars.
Remember when Verizon was GTE, Xe was Backwater, and Air Tran was ValuJet before one of their jets took a nosedive into the Everglades? Same deal.
I think that if you asked a 19-year-old soldier how to protect the troops, they might say that the military should limit the number of tours in war zones.
According to Bessel van der Kolk, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University, who points out that medical studies have suggested that a soldier’s resilience is depleted with each battlefield tour, “As long as you have repeated deployments, you will have devastating effects on people.”
Personal note to General Chiarelli and any other other idiot at the Pentagon who favors this,
"Sir, with no due respect, Take a fucking hike, preferably with an infantry unit in Afghanistan."