By DON DARE
6 News Reporter
KNOXVILLE (WATE) - A group of area Vietnam veterans diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder received some disturbing news recently. Their group counseling sessions are going to be broken up and may end altogether.
Post traumatic stress disorder is a relatively new phrase.
During the Civil War, doctors started diagnosing soldiers with exhaustion after the stress of battle. In WWI and WWII, the professionals called it battle fatigue and shell shock, but there was little therapy available.
It's different today. The Veterans Administration says thousand of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with PTSD. The initials entered the American vocabulary with returning Vietnam veterans.
Every Monday morning for the last nine months, a group of Vietnam veterans has been meeting with a psychologist at Knoxville's VA outpatient clinic.
They've all been diagnosed with PTSD, but the vets say their counseling sessions at the facility are numbered, and the VA hasn't explained that very well.
"They are ending the program as it stands today. There are 23 members in the original group," said Ed Junod.
"We wanted to know why. He couldn't give us an exact answer as to why," Freddie Owens said.
Regardless of which war you consider, high rates of post traumatic stress have been found in combat veterans. Vietnam veterans believe their plea for help from the government was ignored too long.
"I know it took a long time for the VA to help Vietnam veterans, but now that we've got this and all of a sudden it's going to come to an end. It's really hard to deal with," Steve Merriman said.
Every one of the men told a similar story. Before their group therapy began last year, dealing with their demons alone was next to impossible.
George Thomas says before he became a member of the group, "I was fighting a constant war with myself. I was reliving Vietnam. I was smelling Vietnam."
Since they started getting together at Knoxville's outpatient clinic in April 2011, the men say they've seen improvement in each other.
"The outpatient clinic of Knoxville helped me," Thomas said. "It helped everybody in the group up until recently, and they decided to do away with the group."
"This group has helped me avoid going back to my old ways," Michael Harter said. "We can talk to each other. We can confide."
The vets say they need to stay together, but that likely won't happen. "What we are told is that they need to split the group up in smaller groups at different locations," Junod said.
One of the locations is the VA annex in West Knoxville, where they might be divided into a group of 10.
"They want to split us up, go down to the annex which is a 10-man room. Split us up, and I ain't going down there," Larry Clemmer said.
A spokeswoman for the Veterans Administration says health groups, like the PTSD workshop, are being evaluated to determine the benefits and how the members are being helped.
The vets have been told their weekly sessions will continue where they are through the end of March.
The men have presented the VA with options so their unit can stay together. "The alternative that we gave them is that we're willing to give up one of our weeks and come every two weeks, some every other week," Freddie Owens said.
"There are some guys in the group that I fear for them if they discontinue this," Howard Jenkins said.
The veterans hope to receive new information Friday about the future of their counseling sessions.
6 News learned on Thursday that U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander's office in Washington made an inquiry to the VA on behalf of the Knoxville vets in the PTSD workshop.
