Murphy helping combat vets who lack honorable discharge

Senator sponsors act to provide mental health services

New Haven — A week after cleaning up the remains of a group of Afghan children who’d been blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade that they were bringing to his military base, Thomas Burke sat on the bank of the Helmand River with the barrel of his rifle in his mouth.

Months later when Burke returned from his deployment, he was charged for smoking marijuana in Afghanistan. After seeing the bloodied bodies of those Afghan children, he immediately began smoking hash from one of the locals, he said. He later received an other-than-honorable discharge.

Burke’s testimony highlights a larger issue that U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is seeking to fix through legislation he recently introduced with Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

The Honor our Commitment Act would require the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to provide mental health and behavioral services to combat veterans who received

an other-than-honorable discharge, and who have post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury or other mental health disorder. Vets with this kind of discharge are usually ineligible for most benefits provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“If you fight for this country, if you are injured in battle, then you are due services to help you deal and recover from those injuries,” Murphy said Monday at a press conference in New Haven, where he and supporters of the bill, including Burke, urged its swift passage.

The legislation would impact between 800 and 1,000 Connecticut vets, according to an estimate from Yale University’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic.

“By giving vulnerable veterans access to VA mental health care, we give them the tools they critically need to reintegrate into society. These are not men and women who are taking advantage of the system,” Burke said.

VA Secretary David Shulkin recently announced that the VA will start providing emergency mental health services to veterans with these discharges. But Murphy wants them to have access to all mental health and behavioral health services provided by the VA. The bill is a first step, he said, as he’d like to see these veterans receive other medical benefits and GI benefits.

Since 2001, more than 125,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have received bad paper discharges, according to Jonathan Petkun, a law student intern with the Yale clinic. At the same time, as many as one third of service members who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or TBI, said Petkun, who served in the Marines, including time in Iraq and Afghanistan.

PTSD and other mental health disorders can lead to bad behavior such as self-medicating or going AWOL, which, in turn, can result in a so-called bad paper discharge.

Veterans with other-than-honorable discharges commit suicide at three times the rate of other vets, according to Steve Kennedy, Connecticut team leader for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. A 2016 VA study found that about 20 veterans commit suicide each day.

“I know just how easily it could’ve been me,” said Kennedy, who served as an Army infantryman including a tour in Iraq.

After returning from Iraq, Kennedy suffered from then-undiagnosed PTSD and depression. He ended up in a high-pressure situation that he couldn’t handle and went AWOL for 10 days, he said. When he got back, a psychologist told him the Army didn’t have the resources to treat him, and he was recommended for discharge. He received a general discharge because he’d gone AWOL, despite his otherwise exemplary service.

After he was discharged, Kennedy was suicidal. He drank heavily and didn’t see any future for himself in the civilian world. His general discharge did not preclude him from certain VA benefits such as mental health treatment, which combined with the support of his wife, is why he’s alive today, he said.

A service member can request to upgrade his or her discharge status with the relevant military record correction board. But that process is cumbersome. As Margaret Middleton, executive director of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, described, it requires the expertise of an attorney, and a lengthy administrative process requiring hours of fact development, research, writing and preparing witnesses.

“Combat veterans should not need a lawyer to get urgent mental health care,” Middleton said.

Murphy’s bill is before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.