Vet: VA Psych Ward 'Worse Than Hell'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.military.com/news/article/vet-va-psych-ward-worse-than-hell.html?wh=wh">Vet: VA Psych Ward 'Worse Than Hell'
April 16, 2008
Dallas Morning News

The voices in Jack Edenburn's head began soon after he returned from Vietnam. They told him to end it all.

He ignored them for almost 40 years, until the day he stood at the railroad tracks near his Lancaster home, fantasizing about stepping in front of a train. That's the day he went to Dallas VA Medical Center. And some days, he says, he regrets that decision.

"Imagine hell," he said of his five days in the psychiatric unit, "then think worse."

Patients soiled with feces and soaked in urine wandered aimlessly, screaming, rolling delirious on the floor. One woman, he said, removed ceiling tiles and crawled into the space above the day room.

"I was more traumatized after five days in the VA than I was when I was admitted," said Edenburn, who works in the mail room of an insurance office. "And remember, I was suicidal when I went there."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/vet-va-psych-ward-worse-than-hell.html?wh=wh



uhc comment: If you've never walked around a VA facility, I recommend you do. You'll see the way vets are medicated to the gills and left to their own devices. It ain't pretty.