Canandaigua VA To Research PTSD
Last Update: 4/8/2006 12:57:17 PM
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Kyle Clark (Rochester/Canandaigua, NY) -- The federal government is giving the Canandaigua VA new missions, including research on the most effective treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In addition, doctors there will find new ways to deliver mental health care to vets in rural areas.
A local veteran living with PTSD hopes new treatments will mean happier homecomings for soldiers who are currently serving.
Thom Harris now lives on Comfort Street on Rochester's southeast side. It's been 36 years since he was a young Marine fighting in the jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam, but his dreams can still take him back there.
"When I get ready to lie down in my bed, I know whether or not it's one of those nights," he said.
Still, Harris is a success story. Regular therapy helps keep his PTSD in check.
He wonders what's on the minds of the men and women returning from war today.
"It worries me. I say that loud and clear, it worries me. They've got the mark of war on them, as we say," Harris said.
Harris and others have found peace and quiet at the Canandaigua VA.
US Representative Jim Walsh said, in addition to the PTSD research, "The other portion of the mission would be how to best treat soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who settle in rural areas, because of their remoteness from hospitals."
That could mean developing therapy via teleconferences or the Internet, as well as immediate treatment that starts the day soldiers come home. It's the kind of understanding and support Harris waited years to find.
"Because of some of the things we went through as Vietnam veterans, hopefully we blazed a trail for some of the guys coming back from the war," he said.
The new uses for the Canandaigua V.A. fulfill its role as a newly-named "National Center of Excellence in the Department of Veterans Affairs."
Walsh said he expects a final plan from the VA by June or July. As the chair of the Congressional Committee on Veterans Affairs, Walsh will push it through the House and Senate
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Budget cuts area that helps fund Durham VA rehab
By Gerry Smith, Herald-Sun Washington bureau
April 6, 2006 10:05 pm
WASHINGTON -- Rep. David Price, D-4th District, accused the Bush administration on Thursday of trying to delay medical and prosthetic research for veterans in its 2007 budget proposal by cutting funding that helps pay for a Durham rehabilitation center.
The proposal, part of President Bush's proposed Veterans Affairs budget of $80.6 billion for 2007, would cut research funding from this year's $412 million allocation to $399 million next year. Price said a $23 million increase from this year's spending is needed just to maintain current programs, according to the biomedical research and development price index, "so that means the administration's proposal is effectively a $36 million cut."
At a subcommittee hearing with Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson, Price asked how many medical and prosthetic research programs the VA planned to suspend or cancel in its fiscal 2007 budget proposal.
The VA officials at the hearing responded that the agency received $412 million this year, even though the VA had asked for only $393 million, $6 million less than this year's request.
The Office of Independent Budget for the Department of Veteran Affairs said on its Web site that the agency would need $460 million for medical and prosthetic research in 2007.
"It's really difficult to avoid the conclusion that the VA intends to slow down its research program and certainly halt any program growth in fiscal year 2007," said Price, a member of the subcommittee on Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs.
The proposed funding cuts for research could affect the Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center at the Durham VA Medical Center. Harold Kudler, the center's co-director, said he did not want to speculate about what possible cuts might mean, but acknowledged that the center relies entirely on federal funding and hoped it would continue.
The center, which opened last year and has been receiving $2.8 million a year in federal funding, focuses on treating and assessing the "post-deployment mental health" of soldiers returning from war.
Experts in the field say a growing number of returning soldiers are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Louis Washington, director of Durham County Veterans Services, said he has seen more veterans, including some who served in the Vietnam War, filing claims for PTSD in the last few years. But Washington said being discharged from the military for PTSD is difficult because the Department of Defense views the disorder as "a way for soldiers to get out" of serving.
Vietnam veteran Samuel Miller of Durham said funding cuts for prosthetic research would be "a sin."
Miller lost his foot after stepping on a mine in Vietnam and wears a prosthetic foot. He recently had pain from bone spurs.
But when he went to the prosthesis clinic at Durham VA Medical Center last year, Miller, who is president of Veterans for Benefits Justice, said he was told he should have surgery instead of having a new prosthesis built.
"I said, 'You mean I got to go through more pain just to make it fit?' "
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"Never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another."
James Starowicz
USN '67-'71
'67-'68: Meridian Mississippi/Naval Air Station
'68-'70: GMG3, Panama Canal Zone/Rodman Naval Base
'70-'71: GMG3, Coronado Calif - CounterInsurgency/S.E.R.E. School, Vietnam -- In-Country COMNAVFORV - CHNAVADVGRP MACV, RVN
Member: Veterans For Peace
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