Monday, November 16, 2009

Is Camp Lejeune Next?

"... in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness -- literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience ... inadequate treatment ... callous indifference ... This is akin to somebody dying on the battlefield and not being attended to. These guys are saying they are broken and need help, and the system is saying, 'next, next, next.'"
---Psychiatrist fired from Camp Lejeune after reporting inadequate treatment for combat-stressed Marines.

He wrote that in a letter to President Obama in August, according to a shocking article in Salon.

Last April, two Marines at Camp Lejeune predicted to a psychiatrist that some Marine back from war was going to "lose it." Concerned, the psychiatrist asked what that meant. One of the Marines responded, "One of these guys is liable to come back with a loaded weapon and open fire."

They weren't talking about Marines suffering from a tangle of mental and religious angst, like news reports suggest haunted the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The risk they reported at Camp Lejeune was broader and systemic. Upon returning home, troops suffering mental health problems were getting dumped into an overwhelmed healthcare system that responded ineptly to their crises, the men reported, and they also faced harassment from Marine Corps superiors ignorant of the severity of their problems and disdainful of those who sought psychiatric help.

As Dr. Kernan Manion investigated the two Marines' claims about conditions at the North Carolina military base, the largest Marine base on the East Coast, he found they were true. Manion, a psychiatrist hired last January to treat Marines coming home from war with acute mental problems, warned his superiors of looming trouble at Camp Lejeune in a series of increasingly urgent memos.

But instead of being praised for preventing what might have been another Fort Hood massacre, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him, NiteLines Kuhana LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm says it let Manion go at the Navy's behest. The Navy declined to comment on this story.

SNIP

Manion left Camp Lejeune after he got fired, but he did not stop worrying about the potential for violence there. In mid-September, Manion filed a 14-page complaint with the Department of Defense inspector general. On Sept. 29, he warned the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery inspector general in writing of "serious mismanagement of post-deployment mental health services that was both endangering patient, staff and community safety as well as severely compromising the quality of care" for returning Marines. Manion noted that the poor care at Camp Lejeune continued despite "the ever present threat of life-threatening violence by distraught service members towards themselves or others."

Finally, Manion wrote President Obama that same day. "Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness -- literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience," he wrote to the president. Manion added, however, that at Camp Lejeune, that immense problem was being met with "inadequate treatment" and "callous indifference."

He still worries. "I don't like seeing these guys mistreated," Manion said. "This is akin to somebody dying on the battlefield and not being attended to," he added. "These guys are saying they are broken and need help, and the system is saying, 'next, next, next.'"

Read the whole thing.

1 comment:

Rich Miles said...

When is the military going to stop "disdaining those who seek mental help"? This is so fucking stupid, and it's been decades now that we've known this sort of thing happens. People - note I don't say "men" - go to combat, see hideous things happen to their fellow soldiers or sometimes to themselves, and their minds simply can't handle it. The fear of death is the worst fear we can have as humans. We are the only species who can visualize our own deaths. And seeing it over and over, as so many of these soldiers and Marines do, causes the mind to become unhinged.

And still, some upper-echelon types "disdain" those who seek help. Buncha fuckin' bastards.

And every time someone, or several someones die from this syndrome, it's always a surprise. No one expected it. Well maybe it's time they DID expect it, and did something to prevent it.

These people are suffering every bit as much as anyone wounded by a bullet or shrapnel. They just don't bleed. At least, not until they snap and kill someone or themselves.

How long is it going to take you to learn this, brass?