Veterans' Affairs Symposium on PTSD: Filner's Opening

"We all know that, I think, that PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -- by the way one of the charges I'm going to give to our experts is to give me a different name. For example, 'stress injury' -- to get it out of the sense that though this is a disorder and therefore a stigma attached, therefore hard to admit, therefore maybe difficult to talk about. In my view if you don't have some of the reactions that we call, label, under this under this category you're not human. And I'd be worried more about the people who didn't have stress from the experiences that they had."

"I have a case of that has been brought to me in one of my constituents in Eagle Pass, a young lady who either was killed or accidentally died or committed suicide, and the way she was treated after she'd come back from the, from the VFW with -- number one, when they commit suicide in the military, the family gets no compensation whatsoever, no resources, they get treated very -- as if they were cowards. And you know, I'm curious to know, you gave me the data on the number of suicides that occur afterwards, I'm wondering if anybody has any information on how many possible suicides we have during, and the possibility of doing those tests while they're there."