VA to ease up on benefits for veterans with PTSD

The government is preparing to issue a new rule that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) to receive disability benefits, a change that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

The regulations from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will take effect as early as Monday and cost as much as $5 billion over several years according to congressional analysts, will essentially eliminate a requirement that veterans document specific events such as bomb blasts or mortar attacks that might have caused PTSD, an illness characterized by emotional numbness, irritability and flashbacks.

For decades, veterans have complained that finding such records was time-consuming and sometimes impossible. And in Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans groups assert that the current rules discriminate against tens of thousands of service members — many of them women — who did not serve in combat roles but nevertheless suffered traumatic experiences.