Questions? Call 888-624-8373

PAPERBACK + PDF
your price: $42.50
add to cart

PAPERBACK
list:$45.00
Web:$40.50
add to cart

PDF BOOK
your price: $28.00
add to cart

PDF CHAPTERS
your price: $3.30
select

Rights & Permissions

topleft topright

PTSD Compensation and Military Service (2007)
Board on Military and Veterans Health (BMVH)
 Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences and Education (BCSSE)

Page
2
bottomleft bottomright
  E-mail
 Facebook
 Digg
 Stumble
 Twitter
More

The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy.

PTSD Compensation and Military Service

  • hyperarousal—often manifested by difficulty in sleeping and concentrating and by irritability.

A 2005 investigation by the VA Office of the Inspector General found that the number of beneficiaries receiving compensation for PTSD increased significantly during Fiscal Years 1999–2004, growing by 79.5 percent, from 120,265 to 215,871 cases (DVA, 2005). The report of that investigation noted:


During the same period, PTSD benefits payments increased 148.8 percent from $1.72 billion to $4.28 billion. Compensation for all other disability categories only increased by 41.7 percent. While veterans being compensated for PTSD represented only 8.7 percent of all claims, they received 20.5 percent of all compensation benefits.


Against this backdrop, VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) asked the National Academies to convene a committee of experts to address several issues surrounding its administration of veterans’ compensation for PTSD.

INTENT AND GOALS OF THE STUDY

The committee was charged with reviewing:

  1. VA’s compensation practices for PTSD, including examining the criteria for establishing severity of PTSD as published in the Schedule for Rating Disabilities;

  2. the basis for assigning a specific level of compensation to specific severity levels and how changes in the frequency and intensity of symptoms affect compensation practices for PTSD;

  3. how VA’s compensation practices and reevaluation requirements for PTSD compare with those of other chronic conditions that have periods of remission and return of symptoms; and

  4. strategies used to support recovery and return to function in patients with PTSD1 (Szybala, 2006).

These four general charges were operationalized into a series of issues that VA identified as being of particular interest. The committee organized these into three general categories: those related to the PTSD compensation

1

A separate National Academies committee is addressing PTSD treatment issues; its report will be released later in 2007. This report limits its review of the topic to the effect of compensation on strategies used to support recovery and return to function in patients with PTSD.
Page
2