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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.
The committee was charged with reviewing:
VA’s compensation practices for PTSD, including examining the criteria for establishing severity of PTSD as published in the Schedule for Rating Disabilities;
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;
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
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
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