"I don't think anybody is pretending the stigma has gone away or we didn't have significant wait times for a while," Benham said. "We understand there was an issue."
"Yes, we recognize Fort Drum needs some help, but that's something we've been working on for a year or more," he said.
GROWING CASE LOAD
Benham said visits to the clinic have risen from about 14,000 in 2001 to 26,000 expected this year. There was a big jump from 2004 to 2005 when the unit started screening all returning soldiers for mental health problems.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, can result from wartime trauma such as wounds or witnessing others being hurt. Symptoms include irritability or outbursts of anger, sleep difficulties, trouble concentrating, extreme vigilance and an exaggerated startle response.
Christopher Smith, 23, a tank mechanic who served in Ramadi, returned from Iraq in January 2006 and left the army. In the following six months, he grew increasingly withdrawn and isolated and was unable to hold down a job.
Despite what his wife Cara says were clear signs of PTSD, he managed to re-enlist in December 2006 without the recruiter noticing a problem. Sent to Fort Drum, he was diagnosed with PTSD and judged undeployable. He has been on a string of different medications, none of which he says have worked.
"It's so frustrating," Cara Smith said, describing the base as unfriendly and depressing.
"The doctors up there, they say 'Come to group therapy, we'll help you.' But because of his duty and his orders and stuff he has to do, he missed two group therapy sessions and got kicked out of group therapy," she said.
Now, she said, he has a 30-minute individual therapy session around every six weeks. "It's not really therapy, it's more of a medication appointment," she said.
About 300,000 troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer PTSD or depression, or one in five of the more than 1.5 million who have deployed, according to a report by RAND Corp.
Around 17,000 troops are based at Fort Drum, a sprawling base near the Canadian border that endures bitter winters. Around 4,000 of those are in Iraq.
