Post expands efforts to help traumatized troops

Leaders at Fort Carson said Friday they’re expanding community outreach initiatives in a bid to more quickly identify war-related mental illness and family problems in the ranks.

The expansion of the post’s Warrior Family Community Partnerships precedes the homecoming of nearly 4,000 soldiers who have spent the past year battling in Ramadi and Baghdad.

Fort Carson’s commander, Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, said he wants to work with police departments and schools to ensure that troops exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or brain injury get help from the Army.

Graham said his officers are contacting experts nationwide in a bid to find better treatments for PTSD, which has been diagnosed in hundreds of Fort Carson soldiers since the Iraq war began in 2003.

“There’s not one medical solution to help our soldiers and our families get through this,” he said.

Driving the efforts is the upcoming return of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is due home in January. Because the unit is on its second deployment and has seen intense combat, costing the lives of 42 of its soldiers, commanders expect a high rate of war-related mental illness that will tax the post’s staff of 37 mental health workers.

“The demand when 2nd (brigade) comes back will be really dramatic,” predicted Col. Jim Terrio, the post’s top doctor.

Terrio and Evans Army Community Hospital commander Col. Kelly Wolgast said they’re expanding efforts to send soldiers to private physicians in Colorado Springs. Soldiers and their families can go to civilian doctors through the Defense Department’s Tricare health insurance program.

Wolgast said Evans is also more than doubling the size of a unit that cares for injured soldiers, and will be able to house 600 troops as they recover from health issues ranging from gunshot wounds to PTSD.

Fort Carson came under fire last year after soldiers complained that their PTSD issues were mishandled. Similar complaints throughout the Army led to a revamping of how the service deals with mental illness, including a new program to teach every soldier in the Army about PTSD symptoms and available treatments.

Through 2006, the post had about 1,500 soldiers diagnosed with PTSD.

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