Washington – The Department of Veterans Affairs must change the way it evaluates former soldiers for post-traumatic stress disorder if it hopes to eliminate the wide disparities across the country in how much it compensates those who have the disability, a new report has concluded.
Released Tuesday by the highly regarded Institute of Medicine, the report says that the recent surge in cases of PTSD, coupled with ineffective VA rules, suggests that veterans could be getting disability payments that are too high or too low.
Saying that PTSD has become a “very significant public-health problem,” one of the report’s authors, Nancy Andreasen of the University of Iowa, concluded that a “comprehensive revision is needed” of the government’s PTSD-compensation system.
Among other things, the report calls for new testing procedures and new training regimens to ensure that government “raters,” who decide on veterans’ cases, do a better – and more uniform – job.
Knight Ridder, which McClatchy Newspapers bought last summer, reported in 2005 on the VA’s unequal levels of disability compensation, particularly among more subjective conditions such as PTSD. The investigative report found that the size of the benefit varied widely by geography, and mental problems had larger variations than physical ailments.
The VA, which requested and paid for the Institute of Medicine study, said in a statement that the report was welcome. The institute is part of the National Academies, a nongovernmental, independent research organization that often advises government bodies on scientific issues.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the most prevalent conditions – mental or physical – to emerge from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
