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IRAQ CONFLICT REKINDLES VIETNAM VETERANS' TRAUMA --

"It will be interesting to see how much the talk of caring

for the veterans lasts after the war is over."

For more about veterans and PTSD, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=ptsd&op=and

Story here... http://www.fosters.com/apps
/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071216/GJNEWS_01/536545948

Story below:

-------------------------

Iraq conflict rekindles local Vietnam Vets' trauma

By ROBERT M. COOK
Staff Writer
bcook@fosters.com

While many Americans may find daily television news coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan disturbing, Joe Carroll finds it especially difficult.

"This war that we got now has brought everything back to me, especially the roadside bombs," said the Rochester resident, who is a Vietnam veteran.

The war on terror has sparked a resurgence of his post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, sparking a flare-up in the condition he's battled since returning from Southeast Asia 40 years ago.

He said he's started to have the same nightmares he had several years ago, nightmares that would make him wake up in a cold sweat and feel disoriented.

Carroll worked in a transportation unit that operated convoys. The trucks faced the threat of mined roads and often came under attack from snipers, he said.

"Getting hit in the convoys," is one dream Carroll often has, "or being shot from the side of the road on rice paddies."

One of his worst nightmares is related to one of the worst days he had in Vietnam. One night, members of his Army unit, the 573rd Transportation Co., were ordered to do a nighttime convoy run at high speed to reduce the risk of attack, Carroll said.

The soldiers were told that if anything or anyone got in their way they were to ignore it and keep driving. That proved tragic — Carroll said he hit and killed a Vietnamese man and child, but didn't realize it until after they'd reached their destination and saw body parts underneath the truck.

"I can still see them there," Carroll said.

He is far from the only Vietnam veteran struggling with a recurrence of PTSD. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has seen a 59 percent increase in the number of Vietnam vets seeking counseling for PTSD at its mental health centers, according to VA officials in Washington, D.C.

The number increased from roughly 123,800 vets in 2001 to more than 196,800 in 2006, according to VA officials.

Veterans centers, established after the Vietnam War, are providing much of the mental health services Vietnam vets need, according to Dr. Jim Garrett, deputy director of the northeast's veterans centers.

He said New Hampshire's veterans centers are in Manchester and Auburn. Maine has centers in Springvale, Bangor, Caribou, Lewiston and Portland. An additional New Hampshire center is to be opened in Berlin in six months, he added.

Garrett, a psychologist and Vietnam vet who served with the Marines in 1969, said his fellow vets are being attacked on two fronts: the war on terror and retirement.

Many Vietnam veterans they're treating had kept their PTSD issues in check as they worked full-time jobs and raised families. But any number of triggers ranging from the wars in the Middle East to personal problems such as divorce or seeing their children move out of the house, can bring PTSD back, Garrett said.

Vet center counselors recommend vets avoid watching too much television news about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "so they don't get obsessed with it," he said.

Roland Patnode, commander of American Legion Post 7 in Rochester, said he knows the war on terror has affected some post members who served in Vietnam.

"It can come out at anytime, like any traumatic event," said Patnode, himself a Vietnam veteran who served in the Marines there in the early 1960s.

He said he experiences his share of PTSD in the form of nightmares and cold sweats.

Garrett said returning veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who experience PTSD have an advantage over Vietnam vets because the medical community now has a much better understanding of how war affects people.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was officially diagnosed in 1980, around the same time the country opened vet centers nationwide to help Vietnam veterans, Garrett said.

Veterans with PTSD often experience nightmares or flashbacks related to traumatic experiences they had during the war that they have tried to subdue, Garrett said. They can be triggered by anything and once a veteran begins having PTSD symptoms, they are likely to occur again, Garrett explained. Garrett said some combat veterans never have PTSD.

The 39 northeast vet centers see 28,000 Vietnam veterans and their families each year, he said. Garrett said a majority of people treated at the vet centers are Vietnam veterans. He could not say how many are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans or how many are World War II and Korean War veterans.

Some of the best medicine for Vietnam vets is to talk with other Vietnam vets as much as possible in support groups, Garrett said.

"It validates being a soldier who went and did a job and the consequences related to that," said Garrett, who began counseling Vietnam vets in 1984 as a team leader at a vet center in Albany, N.Y.

Roy Driver, a team leader at the vet center in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, said he's also seeing more Vietnam vets who say they're suffering from PTSD again because of the war on terror. Driver, who has counseled veterans for 27 years, added that it reminds him of what World World II veterans experienced in the 1980s when many of them retired from the workforce.

"It's nothing new," he said.

Driver said his center will be hiring a social worker so it can be staffed with three counselors to deal with the workload.

Driver said counselors and veterans have come to realize there is no cure for PTSD.

"The memories will always be there," Driver said.

The best thing veterans can do for themselves is not to suffer in silence, Driver said.

Driver said his center and the others in Maine are "holding their own."

But as demand for mental health services increases as more Iraq and Afghanistan vets seek help and more Vietnam vets are affected by PTSD, he's not sure the system will be able to take care of the need.

"It will be interesting to see how much the talk of caring for the veterans lasts after the war is over," Driver said.

Dr. Mark Gilbertson, a clinical psychologist at the mental health clinic of the VA Medical Center in Manchester, said he has researched and treated Vietnam combat vets for 12 years.

He has seen more new Vietnam vets seek help in the last two years than in the last 12 years, he said.

In large part, the Iraq war is a "potent trigger," Gilbertson said.

He said Vietnam vets see a great deal of similarities between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam. The conflicts share having guerrilla warfare and hidden roadside bombs and booby-traps, Gilbertson said. Each war also divided the country.

He called the PTSD recurrences "natural and expected," and stressed that "it's never too late to come in and get help, even if it's been 30 to 40 years."

-------------------------

Larry Scott  --

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