Soldiers stuck in backlogged disability system can't go forward, can't go back

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/04/13/3146563/jblm-soldier-among-those-in-limbo.html?sp=/99/296/331/354/



Although Sgt. Chris Peden suffers from mood swings and insomnia due to post-traumatic stress disorder, the Tacoma resident has had to continue going to work in his infantry battalion for the past year and a half because of the military's complicated disability retirement system. "My brain literally just doesn't work the way it used to, " Peden said.

Soldiers stuck in backlogged disability system can't go forward, can't go back
By ADAM ASHTON
Staff writer
April 13, 2014 Updated 12 hours ago

Sgt. Chris Peden is stuck. The Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier is spending his last months in the Army too damaged to be the gung-ho paratrooper of his first Iraq deployment but not ill enough to be cut loose from his enlistment with his Stryker brigade.

He’s in the limbo of a disability system the Defense Department created seven years ago with good intentions. It was designed to make sure wounded service members smoothly enroll for veterans benefits and start receiving checks within a month of leaving uniform.

For Peden, the downside comes in the hundreds of days he’s had to continue showing up at battalion headquarters even though he can’t concentrate, struggles with mood swings and has physical injuries that slow him. With little to do because he can’t handle much responsibility, he sometimes passes the time playing games on his cellphone.

“I can’t do what I used to do. I’m not capable,” said Peden, 32, a Tacoma resident diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and who endured several head injuries early in his military service.