Afghan Shooting Highlights Military’s God-Awful Track Record on Brain Injuries

Soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, undergoing part of a grueling two-week training program for field medical staff. Photo: U.S. Army

What spurred one American soldier to allegedly massacre 16 Afghan civilians earlier this week? Thats a complicated question, and one that could take military investigators months or years to figure out.

What is known, among sparse details, is that this soldier suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). That factor will no doubt play a role in the militarys investigation, and it offers yet another reminder of the militarys awful track record in diagnosing and treating that ailment, widely known as one of the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In my years reporting on TBIs among soldiers and vets, its become increasingly apparent that problems in TBI management start even before a soldier deploys, and persist often with devastating results long after he or she comes home. We got hit a lot of times in Iraq, [so] I definitely got rattled around,Staff Sgt. Victor Medina, a soldier afflicted with TBI, told me in 2010. It wasnt until the fourth time we got hit, and I blacked out, that anyone took me to get looked at.

Medina later relied on alternative therapies like massage and acupuncture, in part because it was so tough for him to get adequate care at Fort Bliss, where he was stationed. One doctor told me I was making it all up, he said, of symptoms like stuttering and blinding headaches that followed the TBI he suffered during a massive IED explosion in 2009.

Hes hardly the only soldier to feel inadequately cared for by military docs.

Indeed, the militarys mismanagement of TBIs over the past decade is nothing short of astonishing. Military docs have failed to diagnose soldiers who showed clear symptoms of injury. Potentially thousands of medical diagnoses for TBI have been all-out lost. Soldiers sometimes wait months to start TBI treatment. Most importantly, scientists still dont even know what TBIs do to a persons body, brain or long-term mental health.

An estimated 200,000 soldiers have suffered from a TBI over the past decade. At least, as far as the military can tell. Even after the Pentagon in 2007 injected $1.7 billion into better management of TBIs, military docs still cant accurately diagnose the injuries during a soldiers deployment or upon his or her return to base.

Right now, the military typically uses a three-phase screening test to spot TBIs in personnel. One baseline test is taken before deployment, another after a possible TBI has been sustained during deployment, and a third when a soldier returns home.

But, as highlighted in a 2010 ProPublica/NPR investigation, those tests are hopelessly flawed: One screening test failed to spot 40 percent of TBI cases among military patients. Another was described as basically a coin flip, by Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the former Army Surgeon General.

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Afghan Shooting Highlights Military’s God-Awful Track Record on Brain Injuries