I don't really know how it works in the US but I would assume some medical professional will have to give you a diagnosis.
There are no clinical scans, blood tests, there is no way to rule out these conditions. They are not illnesses but they are clusters of symptoms that have been labeled so as to medicate or "treat" them without promising cures or healing.
Therefore all you need to do is convince a few psychiatric clinicians that your mental processes and behaviors are sufficiently non-standard and boom, you've got a mental illness that will never be cured, never be healed, and makes you a highly-valuable repeat customer up to and beyond the hour of your death.
And that's how you get 100% VA disability. Congratulations!
I personally never saw someone who was determined to be 100% service connected purely for PTSD, but I am also not a psychiatrist so it's possible that there is a selection bias there.
If the system had 0% fraud rates, then it kind of implies that many real people have been denied because they failed to jump through the hoops.
And we have collected data on humanity for 20 years in Google and FB. If science goes were the data is, the true neuro-science/psychology today is proprietary and sold in chunks as a service to governments.
Might aswell ask Palantir directly about what humanity is really like without the grand illusions of a surplus of resources spend on postponing the eternal crisis that is our home.
No need to take Freuds last standing followers serious, just because they perpetuate a "Can-do-fix-all-things" illusion, we cling to while drowning in the things we can't fix.
Also, if this is a legit shadow practice in the US military, the issue isn't people claiming disability, but our collective lack for caring for them.
The suffering that they have is real, whether or not we debate the appropriateness or usefulness of the labels that have been placed on that suffering. Attempting to shame people for discussing those labels (even extremely negatively) as if the discussion itself damages the sufferers is darkly ironic, because the suppression of the discussion of that distress will result in a failure to improve the treatment of that distress.
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edit: I do understand the sentiment, but it's one that has long been cultivated through patients' groups that are founded and funded by pharmaceutical and other medical companies, and push the treatments that their funders push. Their funders are generally deeply invested in the status quo and cast objections to current received wisdom as attacks on the sick, unless they're trying to push a new drug, which is when they push change.
A patients' group can atrophy into an organization with no members, a single funding source, and a lawyer who spends an hour writing a press release every few months, and hires someone to update the website once a year.
I was quite perplexed by the width of severity of who was eligible for the class.
There was certainly a overprescription of needing to go in that class -- or maybe the diagnosis itself.
For instance, if you have erectile dysfunction then it's a 10% disability claim. They take you at your word, no "proof" needed. Same with 10% for tinnitus (ringing of the ears).
For PTSD there is a screening process but if you were verifiably in combat, something that less than 5% of the military ever experienced even when the wars were actively going on, then the screening consists of a single session talking to a psychiatrist. It's known in the community what you need to say and do during that interview to get 100% rated.
Similar with you're a woman who claims you were sexually assaulted during your service. Basically, the only hurdle is you being willing to lie.
For chronic pain claims the process is more drawn out but essentially if you're willing to persistently lie then you can get a 100% rating. It will take a year or two of going to doctors' appointments and insisting that you're in pain regardless of what tests they run who but eventually you'll get a diagnosis of some unknown condition with a 100% rating.
I've never done this, but I know a few people who have to varying degrees of legitimacy. For what it's worth the 100% claims I've seen are far closer to exaggeration than outright fabrication. Someone who probably actually should be 60% rated or whatever working the system to get up to 100%. You hear stories out people completely faking it but I don't know them personally. That could just be my cohort though, I was in the Marine Corps Infantry on combat deployments during my time do pretty much everyone I know has something legit wrong with them.
And I will say the VA is an absolute nightmare. I feel some incredibly blessed to have a software career where I don't need to rely on the VA. I've never seen a better argument against socialized medicine in the US than just experiencing the VA firsthand.
> if you have erectile dysfunction then it's a 10% disability claim. They take you at your word, no "proof" needed.
A stamp technique was developed to detect complete nocturnal erections for the evaluation of impotence. The test correctly detected complete nocturnal erections in 22 potent men and absence of complete nocturnal erections in 11 impotent men (P value under 0.001). This is a simple, useful screening test for organic impotence. https://www.goldjournal.net/article/0090-4295(80)90414-8/
edit: and getting a diagnosis for something real is probably a lot harder.