Department responds to appeals of PTSD patient

After a West Virginia veteran was featured prominently in a Washington Post article, The Department of Veterans Affairs has doubled his disability benefits and assured him he will receive mental health services to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder. The action followed a visit to Troy Turner and his wife by Antonette Zeiss, deputy director for mental health services for the entire VA system.

The former infantry scout acknowledged yesterday that VA’s decision will help him, but he expressed concern about others caught in the backlog of claims and appeals. “I just hope they do it for the rest of them,” Turner said. “Not just for me, but for all of us.”

… Acknowledging that not all disabled veterans get their compensation doubled overnight or receive house calls from VA’s deputy chief of mental health, Lisette M. Mondello, VA’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said yesterday, “It was an opportunity to take one person’s experience to see how we are handling it, and translate it to see if there are more things that can be done for other patients.”

See earlier post here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 4:01 am and is filed under PTSD, veterans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post