At Fort Bliss, Brain Injury Treatments Can Be as Elusive as Diagnosis
This is the stuff that breaks your heart.
From ProPublica:
“At Fort Bliss, we found that even soldiers who are diagnosed with such injuries often do not receive the treatment they need.
Most specialists say it is critical for patients who show lingering effects from head trauma to get intensive therapy as soon as possible. In the civilian world, such therapy is increasingly seen as the best way to minimize permanent damage, helping to retrain the mind to compensate for deficits.
Yet brain-injured soldiers at Fort Bliss have had to wait weeks and sometimes months just to get appointments with doctors, medical records show. Many have received far less therapy than is typical at well-regarded civilian clinics. In some instances, Fort Bliss medical officers have suggested that the soldiers are malingerers or that the main root of their cognitive problems is psychological.”