source Many are reluctant to seek help. Veterans worry that getting counseling could hurt their careers or alter relationships, said a study last year in the New England Journal of Medicine by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
"A lot of the younger guys won't do that," said National Guard Staff Sgt. Joseph Nelson of Bloomingdale, N.Y. "They think it makes them into wimps."
Nelson, who served in Iraq from February 2004 until last December after he was injured, suffers from PTSD and sees a psychologist once a week even though he's leery of what people think of him.
"People see me coming out of the shrink's office and say, 'What's wrong with him?' I think about it. What would they say? What's going through their minds?"
Even Cotnoir had talked about the stigma attached to asking for help.
"A lot of guys don't want to 'fess up to needing help because they want to get back to civilian life," he told The (Lawrence) Eagle-Tribune newspaper in November, about a month after he returned home.
"Of course, you don't want to be labeled. You don't want to be that guy under a bridge talking to a rock ... because you've seen it in the Vietnam era. And you don't want to be that guy walking around in a flak jacket."
Robt's comment; They don't have to worry. Staff supposedly from the Social Security Administration that are advising the VA in their reviews of PTSD disability ratings given after 1998 have reportedly said that 90% of the VN Vets with PTSD are able to return to work. I ask where... Vietnam, Iraq, or Afganistan?
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