Veterans For America

WWNY TV 7/ WNYF Fox 28 (Watertown, NY)

Fort Drum is recruiting psychiatrists, even as post officials defend the post’s record for helping soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental illnesses.

In advertisements placed in the medical community, psychiatrists are offered an annual salary of $260,000 plus having their malpractice insurance costs covered.

The headline on the ad: “Our soldiers need you now more than ever!!!”

That, as the commander of the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum’s top medical officer both dispute a report’s claims that soldiers at the base weren’t receiving timely care.

Major General Michael Oates says the report from the Veterans for America brought up previously identified shortcomings and incorrectly characterized other facets of support being provided to soldiers at Fort Drum.

The report criticized Fort Drum as having a reliance on self-reporting of mental health problems.

“While I don’t think the self referral process is always the most effective screening tool, we have been expanding the effort to more direct interviews…,” Oates said in a statement.

“But admittedly the screening process is not where we want it to be.”

Fort Drum officials say they had already made some of mental health care the changes recommended in the report.

“We’re learning some lessons,” said Col. Jerry Penner, health services director.

“Post traumatic stress…it’s taken us several years and multiple deployments to realize how much of an impact that’s having on our soldiers.”

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is defined as “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma.”

Our definition is from Wikipedia, which has a long posting on the illness here.

Watch the video here.