http://www.nationofchange.org/military-still-struggling-treat-troops-brain-injuries-1325006231 
“More than 115,000 soldiers have sustained mild traumatic brain injuries, also called concussions, in the wars when shock waves from bombs rippled through their brains.”
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For the past two years, ProP­ub­lica and NPR have col­lab­o­rated on an in­ves­ti­ga­tion that looks in-depth at the mil­i­tary's han­dling of trau­matic brain in­juries, a sig­na­ture wound of the con­flicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than 115,000 sol­diers have sus­tained mild trau­matic brain in­juries, also called con­cus­sions, in the wars when shock waves from bombs rip­pled through their brains. Most have re­cov­ered quickly, but some have suf­fered last­ing cog­ni­tive prob­lems, from headaches and dizzi­ness to prob­lems with mem­ory and rea­son­ing.
As a re­sult of our work, Con­gress and gov­ern­ment in­ves­ti­ga­tors have pressed the De­fense De­part­ment to fix flaws that have pre­vented troops with TBIs from being prop­erly di­ag­nosed and treated.
In Jan­u­ary, Sen. Claire Mc­Caskill, D-Mo., ques­tioned the Pen­ta­gon's de­ci­sion to deny cog­ni­tive re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ther­apy to troops with brain in­juries. Her in­quiry came after a story we did about how the Pen­ta­gon based its de­ci­sion not to pay for such care on a much-crit­i­cized re­port from the ECRI In­sti­tute. Fol­low­ing the story and Mc­Caskill's in­quiry, the Pen­ta­gon so­licited the help of the In­sti­tute of Med­i­cine, which re­leased a re­port in Oc­to­ber urg­ing the De­fense De­part­ment to do more re­search on the ther­apy be­fore of­fer­ing it more broadly.
In­ves­ti­ga­tors at the U.S. Gov­ern­ment Ac­count­abil­ity Of­fice have also scru­ti­nized mil­i­tary pro­grams de­vel­oped to ad­dress brain in­juries. In a Feb­ru­ary re­port, the GAO said that the Pen­ta­gon's De­fense Cen­ters of Ex­cel­lence was plagued by weak lead­er­ship, un­cer­tain pri­or­i­ties and flawed ac­count­ing. The DCOE, which was cre­ated after a 2007 Wash­ing­ton Post se­ries ex­posed the poor liv­ing con­di­tions of con­cussed troops at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Hos­pi­tal, couldn't ex­plain ex­actly how much tax­payer money it re­ceived or how it was spent, the GAO re­port said.
In March, the Army re­sponded to a story we pub­lished last year about how sol­diers had been de­nied Pur­ple Hearts after suf­fer­ing con­cus­sions on the bat­tle­field. The Army is­sued new guid­ance, mak­ing it eas­ier for brain-in­jured sol­diers to get recog­ni­tion.
Among the rea­sons the mil­i­tary has strug­gled to treat brain-in­jured troops, one of the most ob­du­rate is a lack of neu­rol­o­gists, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­views and doc­u­ments we ob­tained ear­lier this year. Poli­cies is­sued in June 2010 re­quir­ing sol­diers to re­ceive a com­pre­hen­sive eval­u­a­tion when they suf­fer three or more mild trau­matic brain in­juries in one year have in­ten­si­fied the need for qual­i­fied doc­tors.
Plus, as we re­ported in May, more than half of all Iraq and Afghanistan vet­er­ans treated in De­part­ment of Vet­er­ans Af­fairs hos­pi­tals since 2002 have been di­ag­nosed, at least pre­lim­i­nar­ily, with men­tal health prob­lems.
One such vet­eran is Brock Savelk­oul, a trou­bled young man who sur­vived a blast in Iraq. Back home in North Dakota, he em­barked on an equally har­row­ing jour­ney that ended in an armed stand­off with local law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, who spent hours per­suad­ing him not to com­mit sui­cide.
Savelk­oul, who we fea­tured in a Kin­dle Sin­gle ear­lier this year, was one of about 300 troops ex­am­ined in a study con­ducted by then-Lt. Col. Mike Rus­sell, the Army's lead­ing neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist. Rus­sell pre­sented his find­ings in No­vem­ber 2009 and con­cluded that a com­puter test being used to eval­u­ate whether sol­diers had suf­fered con­cus­sions was "only slightly bet­ter than a coin toss."
Rus­sell was re­fer­ring to the Au­to­mated Neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal As­sess­ment Met­rics, or ANAM, which the mil­i­tary has given to 1 mil­lion troops since 2008 in re­sponse to an order from Con­gress.
Last month, we pub­lished a story about how the mil­i­tary came to spend $42 mil­lion on the ANAM pro­gram, de­spite the fact that the test was never sci­en­tif­i­cally proven to de­tect brain in­juries. As part of our in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we re­leased a with­er­ing re­port on the ANAM that Rus­sell de­liv­ered to mem­bers of Con­gress, which was not pre­vi­ously avail­able to the pub­lic. In his cri­tique, Rus­sell lam­bastes nearly every as­pect of the pro­gram, say­ing that "the se­lec­tion of ANAM was nepo­tis­tic, and the long delay in ex­am­in­ing al­ter­na­tive in­stru­ments is baf­fling."
Fol­low­ing our story, Mc­Caskill began an in­ves­ti­ga­tion into con­tracts sur­round­ing the ANAM pro­gram. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., co-chair­man of the Con­gres­sional Brain In­jury Task Force, pro­posed an amend­ment to the 2012 Na­tional De­fense Au­tho­riza­tion Act to help fix the be­lea­guered test­ing pro­gram, but it was pulled from the leg­is­la­tion. Pascrell is now push­ing for a large in­crease in fund­ing for the mil­i­tary's TBI ser­vices in this year's ap­pro­pri­a­tions bill.