"Secret" PTSD review.

It is with fear and trepidation that I write this letter. I am the daughter of a World War II veteran, now deceased. I watched as his decades of 100% disability rating were summarily ended without warning by a single visit to a VA physician. (It was regained a couple of years later.) I have spent 30 years assisting my husband, a Vietnam veteran, to secure treatment for the physical and mental wounds resulting from his service in that war. With your invaluable help he has been rated at 100% for the past 10 years by reason of physical disability and unemployability.

For the veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other service-connected disabilities, an attempt by the VA to proceed with secrecy to alter the way disability is decided and treated does not encourage their trust or diminish their fear.

We have had communication from veterans and their families concerning a VA-ordered review of PTSD being conducted by the Institute of Medicine. (See page 5 in this issue of DAV Magazine.) I believe the Institute of Medicine review of PTSD merits your prompt and public response. Name withheld by request.