Veterans Administration marks milestone

TEMPLE, Texas (KXAN) - There was a small party at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Temple Thursday, complete with music, balloons and a goody bag full of gifts for an Iraqi War veteran.

Specialist Pablo Reyes, a former cavalry scout for the Army in Iraq was singled out as the 20,000th patient in the VA Central Texas area from Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. With a total patient population of almost 80,000 in this part of the state, that means the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now responsible for a quarter of all the VA's work here. Much of that work involves mental health treatment for returning troops. For Pablo Reyes, the treatment will be for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Reyes will get his treatment from the Mental Health and Behavioral Medicine Department of the Temple center. The acting chief of the department is Dr. Jeff Nelson.

"PTSD is treatable," said Dr. Nelson. "It can be very dramatic and very difficult, but it's treatable."

Nelson left a lucrative private psychiatric practice in Austin last year, to go to work for the VA bureaucracy in Temple.

"The VA was advertising for doctors," the doctor said. "It was obvious that there were so many folks coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who needed help."

Demand for psychiatrists at the VA is so strong, Nelson took only a small pay cut to go to work in Temple. What he misses more is the independence he enjoyed in private practice. Bureaucratic hurdles stand in the way of everything from getting approval for a particular drug use to scheduling time off from the extremely stressful job of treating veterans with mental health problems.

"The risk of suicide, the risk of them feeling so angry that they want to hurt somebody, the images and the experiences and the turmoil they feel and they describe to you, it's very hard sometimes," said Nelson.

That's why the doctor was not all that surprised when he learned a psychiatrist was behind the multiple shootings at Fort Hood Nov. 5. He was however, deeply saddened. He worried about the impact of the shootings on those who need psychiatric help but are reluctant to get it.

"And how particularly hard it is in the military because of all the pressure to complete the mission, do the job, ignore the mental issues," he said.

Still, the doctor is encouraged and pleased by what he sees at the Temple center.

"I see a lot of them getting better," he said, "and a lot of them are very appreciative of the care they're getting here.