[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 191 (Thursday, December 13, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2578-E2579]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     MENTAL HEALTH CHALLENGES AT THE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DONALD A. MANZULLO

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 13, 2007

  Mr. MANZULLO. Madam Speaker, I rise to raise awareness about a mental 
health concern that is afflicting our brave veterans. Post-Traumatic 
Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an illness that can have devastating 
consequences if not treated. For too long, those suffering from PTSD 
have been unfairly stigmatized. On December 12, 2007, Mike and Kim 
Bowman traveled from their home in northern Illinois to testify about 
the immeasurable tragedy their family has suffered as a result of the 
suicide of their son Specialist Tim Bowman.
  Specialist Tim Bowman was 23 years old when he lost his battle with 
PTSD only eight months after returning from active duty in Iraq. The 
Department of Veterans Affairs needs to do more to ensure that all 
members of the armed services receive the care and attention they 
deserve. Mike and Kim's story is one that is all too often repeated 
around the country. As Mike Bowman said in his testimony, ``we must all 
remove the stigma that goes with a soldier admitting that he or she has 
[PTSD].''
  I enclose for the Record the testimonies of Mike Bowman and author 
Ilona Meagher. I encourage all Members to read their statements and 
judge for themselves the level of the mental heath challenges that 
exists. It is time that this country recognizes what is going with PTSD 
and takes appropriate action now. No one should suffer a day longer.

                        Testimony of Mike Bowman

       Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my wife and I are 
     honored to be speaking before you today representing just one 
     of the families that lost a veteran to suicide in 2005.
       As my family was preparing for our 2005 Thanksgiving meal, 
     our son Timothy was lying on the floor of my shop office, 
     slowly bleeding to death from a self inflicted gun shot 
     wound. His war was now over, his demons were gone. Tim was 
     laid to rest in a combination military, firefighter funeral 
     that was a tribute to the man he was.
       Tim was the life of a party, happy go lucky young man that 
     joined the National Guard in 2003 to earn money for college 
     and get a little structure in his life. On March 19th of 2005 
     when Specialist Bowman got off the bus with the other 
     National Guard soldiers of Foxtrot 202 that were returning 
     from Iraq he was a different man. He had a glaze in his eyes 
     and a 1000 yard stare, always looking for an insurgent.
       Family members of F202 were given a 10 minute briefing on 
     PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) 2 months before the 
     soldiers returned and the soldiers were given even less. The 
     commander of F202 had asked the Illinois Guard command to 
     change their demobilization practices to be more like the 
     regular army, only to have his questions rebuffed. He knew 
     that our boys had been shot up, blown up by IED's (Improvised 
     Explosive Device), extinguished fires on soldiers so their 
     parents would have something to bury, and extinguished a fire 
     on their own to save lives. They were hardened combat 
     veterans now, but were being treated like they had been at an 
     extended training mission.
       You see our National Guardsman from F202 were not out 
     filling sand bags. They departed in October of 2003 for 6 
     months of training at Ft's Hood and Polk. On Tim's 22nd 
     birthday, March 4, 2004, Foxtrot left for Iraq where they 
     were stationed at Camp Victory. Their tour took them directly 
     into combat including 4 months on ``the most dangerous road 
     in the world'', the highway from the airport to the green 
     zone in Baghdad. Tim was a top gunner in a humvee. Tim as 
     well as many other soldiers in F202 earned their Purple 
     Hearts on that stretch of road known as Route Irish. We are 
     STILL waiting for Tim's Purple Heart from various military 
     paperwork shuffles.
       When CBS News broke the story about Veterans suicides, the 
     VA took the approach of criticizing the way that the numbers 
     were created instead of embracing it and using it to help 
     increase mental health care within their system. Regardless 
     of how perfectly accurate the numbers are, they obviously 
     show a trend that desperately needs attention. CBS did what 
     NO government agency would do; they tabulated the veteran 
     suicide numbers to shed light on this hidden epidemic and 
     make the American people aware of this situation. The VA 
     should have taken those numbers to Capitol Hill asking for 
     more people, funding, and anything else they need to combat 
     this epidemic. They should embrace this study as it reveals 
     the scope of a huge problem, rather than complaining about 
     its accuracy. If all that is going to be done with the study 
     is argue about how the numbers were compiled, then an average 
     of 120 soldiers will die every week by their own hand 
     until the VA recognizes this fact, and does something 
     about it.
       The VA mental health system is broken in function, and 
     understaffed in operation. There are many cases of soldiers 
     coming to the VA for help and being turned away or 
     misdiagnosed for PTSD and then losing their battle with their 
     demons. Those soldiers, as well as our son Timothy, can never 
     be brought back. No one can change that fact. But you can 
     change the system so this trend can be slowed down 
     dramatically or even stopped.
       Our son was just one of thousands of veterans that this 
     country has lost to suicide. I see every day the pain and 
     grief that our family and extended family goes through in 
     trying to deal with this loss. Every one of those at risk 
     veterans also has a family that will suffer if that soldier 
     finds the only way to take the battlefield pain away is by 
     taking his or her own life. Their ravished and broken spirits 
     are then passed on to their families as they try to justify 
     what has happened. I now suffer from the same mental 
     illnesses that claimed my son's life, PTSD, from the images 
     and sounds of finding him and hearing his life fade away, and 
     depression from a loss that I would not wish on anyone.
       If the veteran suicide rate is not classified as an 
     epidemic that needs immediate and drastic attention, then the 
     American fighting soldier needs someone in Washington who 
     thinks it is. I challenge you to do for the American soldier, 
     what that soldier did for each of you and for his country. 
     Take care of them and help preserve their American dream as 
     they did yours. To quote President Calvin Coolidge, ``The 
     nation which forgets its defenders will be itself 
     forgotten.''
       I challenge you to make the VA an organization to be proud 
     of instead of the last place that a veteran wants to go. It 
     is the obligation of each and every one of you and all 
     Americans, to channel the energies, resources, and the 
     intelligence and wisdom of this nation's Best and Brightest 
     to create the most effective, efficient and meaningful 
     healthcare system for our men and women who have served. You 
     must find a way to remove the stigma that goes with a soldier 
     admitting that he or she has a mental problem. We have the 
     technology to create the most highly advanced military 
     system, but when these Veterans come home, they find an 
     understaffed, underfunded, and underequipped VA mental health 
     system that has so many challenges to get through it, that 
     many just give up trying. The result is the current suicide 
     epidemic among our nation's defenders, one of which was 
     Specialist Timothy Noble Bowman, our 23 year old son, 
     soldier, and hero.
       Our veterans should and must not be left behind in the 
     ravished, horrific battlefields of their broken spirits and 
     minds. Our veterans deserve better!! Mr. Chairman, this 
     concludes my testimony. Thank you.

                       Testimony of Ilona Meagher

       Chairman Filner, Ranking Member Buyer, and other 
     distinguished members of the Committee, I thank you for the 
     opportunity to appear before you today.
       To open, I'd like to briefly share my thoughts on why it is 
     that I believe I'm here. I am not only someone who's spent 
     the past two years researching and writing about post-
     traumatic stress in our returning troops, I'm also a 
     veteran's daughter. My father was born in Hungary, served two 
     years in antitank artillery as a Hungarian Army conscript, 
     fought against the Soviet Union on the streets of Budapest 
     during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and later fled to 
     America where, in 1958, he again became a soldier, this time 
     wearing a United States Army uniform, and serving as a combat 
     engineer stationed in Germany.
       My father's unique experience of having served on both 
     sides--East and West--in such differing armies during the 
     Cold War, gave him a unique perspective on military life.
       And so, growing up, my sisters and I often heard my father 
     say, ``You can always tell how a government feels about its 
     people by looking at how it treats its soldiers.''
       Looking at our returning soldiers and their widely-reported 
     struggles with the military and VA health care systems they 
     rely on, of being stigmatized from seeking care or of being 
     placed on lengthy VA waiting lists when they need immediate 
     help--some even committing suicide before their appointment 
     dates arrive--have raised this citizen's alarm bells.
       We have had a ``see no evil, hear no evil'' approach to 
     examining post-deployment psychological reintegration issues 
     such as suicide. After all we have learned from the

[[Page E2579]]

     struggles of the Vietnam War generation--and the ensuing 
     controversy over how many of its veterans did or did not 
     commit suicide in its wake--why is there today no known 
     national registry where Afghanistan and Iraq veteran suicide 
     data is being collected? How can we ascertain reintegration 
     problems--if any exist--if we are not proactive in seeking 
     them out?
       As late as May 2007, Department of Veterans Affairs 
     spokeswoman Karen Fedele told the Washington Post that there 
     was no attempt to gather Afghanistan and Iraq veteran suicide 
     incidents. ``We don't keep that data,'' she said. ``I'm told 
     that somebody here is going to do an analysis, but there just 
     is nothing right now.''
       Meanwhile, the Army reported its suicide rate in 2006 rose 
     to 17.3 per 100,000 troops, the highest in 26 years of 
     keeping such records. At long last, the Associated Press 
     revealed that the VA is finally conducting preliminary 
     research. They've tracked at least 283 OEF/OIF veteran 
     suicides through the end of 2005, nearly double the rate of 
     the additional 147 suicides reported by the DoD's Defense 
     Manpower Data Center.
       Looking only at the these suicide figures from the VA (283) 
     and the DoD (147), there have been at least 430 Afghanistan 
     and Iraq veteran suicides that have occurred either in the 
     combat zone or stateside following combat deployment. Lost in 
     the VA and DoD counts are those veterans who have returned 
     from their deployments, are still in the military and not yet 
     in the VA system. The DoD says they do not track those 
     incidents, and I assume neither does the VA because these 
     veterans are not yet on their radar.
       Yet even with this omission, many of these 430 confirmed 
     suicides are a result of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 
     should--but won't--be listed with the DoD's official OEF/OIF 
     death toll of 4,351. It bears mentioning: Currently 10 
     percent of the overall fatal casualty count of these wars is 
     due to suicide.
       Dismissing the issue of veteran suicide in the face of this 
     data is negligent and does nothing to honor the service and 
     sacrifice of our veterans and the families and communities 
     that literally are tasked with supporting them once they 
     return.
       Yet, prior to last month's CBS News investigation, which 
     revealed that 120 veterans of all wars committed suicide 
     every week in 2005 and that 20-24 year old Afghanistan and 
     Iraq veterans are two to four times more likely to commit 
     suicide than their civilian counterparts, the scope of the 
     problem has been largely unknown because no one with proper 
     resources and access to do the compiling of data came forward 
     to do so.
       In my written testimony, I've included 75 suicides that I 
     and other citizen journalist colleagues have been tracking 
     since September 2005 and which today reside in the ePluribus 
     Media PTSD Timeline.
       Offering only a small and incomplete sliver of insight into 
     how some of our returning troops are faring on the home 
     front--especially in light of the fact that at least another 
     355 incidents could be added among them according the the VA 
     and DoD--I believe that they collectively tell an even 
     greater tale about the failure of us as individuals and as a 
     society to ensure that our returning warriors are cleansed 
     completely from the psychological wounds of war.
       They also reflect the failure of our government 
     institutions to protect those who protect us.
       While I realize that these distressing stories are the 
     exception and not the rule, to our exceptional military 
     families having to deal with the deterioration of a loved one 
     they thought had safely returned from combat, they are the 
     rule. In 1956, the same year that my parents fled to this 
     incredible country, the 84th Congress--in the very House that 
     we sit in today--had this to say in a presidential commission 
     report on veterans' benefits:
       ``The Government's obligation is to help veterans overcome 
     special, significant handicaps incurred as a consequence of 
     their military service. The objective should be to return 
     veterans as nearly as possible to the status they would have 
     achieved had they not been in military service . . . and 
     maintaining them and their survivors in circumstances as 
     favorable as those of the rest of the people. . . . War 
     sacrifices should be distributed as equally as possible 
     within our society. This is the basic function of our 
     veterans programs.''
       I am not a pedigreed expert or a government official 
     seasoned in testifying before you, but those who are from the 
     GAO and the Congressional Research Department and even the 
     Veterans Administration itself, have sat in this very seat 
     over the years and told you we are falling far short in 
     providing the resources and programs our returning troops and 
     military families need to successfully return to their 
     personal lives following their service to the nation.
       To those who resist hearing the cold hard truth of where we 
     are today, I'd like to say: The time is here to stop fighting 
     the data, and to start fighting for our troops.
       This is America. We can do better. We must do better.

                          ____________________