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MONTANA'S VA SYSTEM GETS MIXED MARKS FROM

VETERANS -- System gets good reviews from some

vets while others have just walked away in frustration.

 

 

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Montana Veterans Affairs system gets mixed marks

By ERIC NEWHOUSE
Tribune Projects Editor

HELENA — It's not perfect, but the Montana Veterans Affairs Healthcare System gets high marks from at least one disabled vet who says others agree with him.

"I have nothing but good things to say about the VA in Montana," said Laurence Kiefer Jr. of Bigfork, a former soldier who was medivacced out of Iraq four years ago.
Kiefer was seriously injured as he escorted a semi-truck driven by an Iraqi who was supposed to be delivering a load of food to the commissary on the Tillil military base south of Baghdad.

"After the driver blew through the MP (military police) station, I charged my weapon," Kiefer said. "He was trying to get through the gate, so I shot him in the head and he rolled the semi. I damn near went through the windshield."

Kiefer said he had problems with the care at the Walter Reed Medical Center and Fort Carson, Colo., where he was treated for head injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"But Montana has the best VA in the country, according to my (service) brothers around the country," he said. "I tell them that the VA is doing this and this and this for me, and they tell me they aren't getting that kind of help outside of Montana."

Mission to help vets

Montana has about 108,000 veterans, putting it among the highest number of vets per capita, said Joe Underkofler, director of the Montana VA at Fort Harrison.

About 5,000 of those are Iraq/Afghanistan vets, and 1,500 of them are currently receiving medical services, he said Friday.

That puts Montana about on track with the national estimate that about one in four returning soldiers will be treated for emotional disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

However, a study last year of nearly 8,000 returning vets by the coordinator for Mental Health Disaster Preparedness & Post Deployment Activities found a more serious problem:

# 57 percent of those vets could be diagnosed with PTSD;

# 45 percent could have depression;

# 32 percent had employment issues; and

# 25 percent have trouble with substance abuse.

"We're still trying to figure out those (PTSD prevalence) numbers," said Underkofler.

"Putting together the number being treated, the number resisting treatment, and the number with latent (undiagnosed) PTSD, I think a 30-40 percent figure is probably more realistic," he added.

With the increasing workload, the VA medical center has been gearing up, he said.

"In the past two years, the resources have been much more forthcoming and our budgets have been healthy," Underkofler said.

"We've added about 15 staffers to this facility due to increased funding and a mental-health emphasis," he said. "We're about to commit to a third psychiatrist — we never had three psychiatrists before."

But it's not easy to recruit physicians to a non-metropolitan state like Montana, said Dr. Rosa Merino, chief of psychiatry for the VA Montana Healthcare Systems.

"We got a PTSD grant that provided for three positions, but we've been trying to recruit two psychologists for more than a year," she said.

Frustration and failure

For some high-strung soldiers, the VA bureaucracy can be too much.

"I gave up on them," said Jeremiah Thompson of Billings, a retired Marine who later became a private security contractor.

"I tried to fill out the paperwork to register, but they changed the form and sent it back to me," he said. "At the time, I was having a lot of problems, anxiety and depression, and I got so frustrated I gave up."

When Thompson last week told the Montana Post Deployment Health Reassessment Task Force in Helena of his plight, Eric Kettenring of the Missoula Vet Center had a quick suggestion.

"Every vet can go to the Vet Center for free, and for life," Kettenring told him.

"But it's overloaded," Thompson responded. "You don't get help because they're so swamped."

Thompson later said that a bigger problem was his private-security work.

"The Vet Center has a book that tells them if you've seen enough incidents to qualify for post-traumatic," he said. "In the Marine Corps, I didn't qualify.

"In the private sector, I was more than qualified," Thompson added. "But that wasn't their problem."

That's a problem that will have to be addressed because the Pentagon now says one in four combatants working for the federal government in Iraq is a private-security contractor.

And private-sector counselors are equally overloaded.

"Just to get in the door and talk with someone takes six months," Thompson said. "And I was told by some that workers' compensation is not an acceptable form of payment."

Combat mental triage

But Underkofler suggested that vets like Thompson would be better advised to seek help from VA Healthcare.

"The VA hospital deals with all vets, while the Vets Center deals with combat vets," he said.

Montana has Veterans Centers in Missoula and Billings that are generally staffed by combat vets who help other vets.

At a meeting of the Montana Post Deployment Health Reassessment Task Force in Helena last week, a number of people worried about vets falling through the cracks

Some suggested that counseling ought to be mandatory for the first year or two after a veteran returns from combat.

"That's illegal," responded Underkofler. "Just because someone has been in Iraq, you can't say he has to go to treatment.

"And it won't work," he added. "Treatment only works when you seek it out because you know you need it."

Vet to vet

A group of vets is working with the VA to provide an informal network of veterans to work with others who are returning and readjusting. It's a program called Vet to Vet.

"We'd be happy to sit down with any vet, have coffee and help them," said Tom Huddleston of Helena, a disabled Vietnam vet with PTSD.

Chapters have started in Great Falls, Missoula and Bozeman, he said.

"We welcome any vet who wants to join us," said Jerry Burback, co-facilitator of the group in Great Falls.

"And if a spouse wants to sit in, (he or she) is more than welcome," he said. "We want to work with the families."

It's a program that Merino is enthused about.

"This program is unique," she said. "It's all about the camaraderie of helping each other, which is what vets are all about.

"And while helping others, you also help yourself," she said. "So it shifts the whole paradigm."

Merino said preliminary data shows that about a third of the patients diagnosed with PTSD can begin to move on within the first year of treatment.

"Another third experience symptoms for the next 10 years or so, ebbing up and down," she said. "And the last group has been exposed to combat, but may have been exposed to trauma even before entering the service."

An estimated 10 percent of all Americans reportedly experience a form of PTSD as a result of repeated abuse, crime or accidents.

Thompson said he has volunteered to help start a chapter in Billings, but that he's also interested in setting up a support group.

"The main difference is that we would have professional counsel," he said. "My psychologist, Tim Richter, has agreed to work with us."

Area vets can e-mail Thompson at jeremiahthompson1200@yahoo.com.

Outlying programs are particularly important in places like Daniels County, where not much help is available, said Vera Lynn Trangsrud of Scoby, who's active in an organization called Daniels County Military Families.

The group came together several years ago to assemble care packages for a number of service members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, something it continues to do for half a dozen soldiers still deployed.

But it's evolving into a support group for families struggling with the aftermath of serving in the war, Trangsrud said.

She agonizes over her son in Billings, who is fighting PTSD, depression and thoughts of suicide.

"I have a total feeling of hopelessness," Trangsrud said. "You want to reach out, but nothing you say makes them feel any better.

"I've never in my life experienced such a feeling of helplessness," she added.

She's hoping that the VA will set up an outpost in Wolf Point to help veterans and their families in northeastern Montana.

"I think families need support groups as much as the vets do," she said.

Reach Tribune Projects Editor Eric Newhouse at 791-1485, 800-438-6600 or enewhouse@greatfallstribune.com.

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Larry Scott  --