Falsely claiming PTSD for VA benefits?

I'm dealing with this daily and have done everything I can to educate the Bonham VA mental health personnel about this issue. Pills are the only answer you get and if refused or you stop taking them too suddenly lockup is their treatment of chose. Symptoms for PTSD can be downloaded from the internet but it ranges in severity. Root cause can be from childhood and that needs to be addressed before they sign the papers. Neuro psychologist are highly trained in detecting false claims of trauma related to military service. I see practitioners in the VA untrained and uninterested in the research of what trauma is in regard to the nervous system itself. Constant increased adrenaline in your system to react to an immediate threat becomes a conditioned response even when the threat is no longer there. Physical, not mental. The sounds associated with the threat are still searched for by the brain. Sound bounces off walls, too much sound causes stress trying to isolate the one meaning you must respond, thus your back against the wall. Similar are nurses listening constantly for cardiac alarms, patients in distress doctors barking orders and patients dying around you. Medics on the battlefield. There is so much more the VA has never addressed. No accountability for employees and policing themselves to avoid addressing the obvious problem that supervisors are more interested in covering for staff than correcting them. I see the VA system as having fill in the blank forms and personnel knowing the buzz words to fake a days work at the expense of the Veterans sitting in front of them. A spread sheet of patients seen, by who, what for and prescribed treatment will weed out chronic abusers of resources and pinpoint weaknesses in personnel, including patient advocates. As most employees in medical facilities are women I see a pattern I call sorority sister syndrome. Playground behavior where being popular is more important than treating patients. The abuse I've seen with the older patients drives me crazy after what we went through during the Vietnam era. It just never ends.

Nobody comes to the VA asking for help on a winning streak. It is usually the last option for many of us who are hopeless and beaten down by the civilian world. We can't judge one another based on combat or service merit otherwise it will just become another polarizing force that keeps us from helping one another when we need to come together the most.

I was put out after 16 years for having PTSD. The Air Force decided that, I didn't, yet the VA denied claims and benefits for more than 20 years and it wasn't 100%.

As far as the person in question here, consider this. You're peacefully walking down the street, maybe to work or towards your car. Something loud happens and you find yourself under cover and looking desperately for the chemical gear and weapon you know you just had. When you calm down you realize that weapon you know you had, you had more than 30 years ago. Same for the chemical gear, you just had it in your hands more than 30 years ago. You haven't had a full night of sleep in that same 30 years because in your nightmares you relive the multiple events that caused your problem to begin with. Don't make the mistake of thinking nightmares fade with time, they NEVER LET UP! Even after having a massive heart attack and being beyond the painful stage you're happy to have the PTSD let up finally let up, only to have some meddling people call and ambulance and have equally meddling ER and cardiology people completely disregard the Do Not Resuscitate hanging around your neck and return you to the pain and nightmares you have lived with since the PTSD started.

That's on a good day, don't get me started on what the bad days are like.

First folks need to stop analyzing other people’s VA claims, that’s the job of the VA personnel; second stop broadcasting your situation/compensation with every Tom, Dick and Harry...my two cents.

All over the place but not hard to follow. First PTSD does not require one to have been in combat, or fired a weapon, or even in the military. PTSD comes from a "brain overload" as it were resulting from a very traumatic episode that one has endured or witnessed. Was he fit for duty in the National guard, maybe the better question is was he fit for duty period. It would seem that someone somewhere along the way would have noticed if he was "all there" for lack of a better term, and had it looked into. If his visits to the Psychologist were a matter of record, then that would preclude him from ever owning a firearm legally. As far as defrauding the government, I would say that this is a good possibility, I would also say that the decision to award full disability was in error and should not have been done so quickly. While it seems the VA doesn't care, they do, just not enough. And they do have a path to pursue an investigation, all they need is a credible report with actual evidence to support those claims. To me, and this is only my personal opinion from life's experience and 34 years in the military, 22 years as an MP/ Investigator, this stinks of fraud all the way up and down. And sadly, this kind of thing will not end as this is where we as a society are heading....

I know this is an old post and my answer isn't really for the OP, but more so for others.
YOU ARE NOT THE VA RATING POLICE!
Don't worry about what someone gets from the VA legit or not. If they're defrauding the VA, trust me, it'll come out in the wash.
The VA has no issue with letting veterans know that they caught someone pulling a scam and that they are doing time and/or paying money back.
This is for the current active service members, once you get out, you really aren't your brothers keeper.
You stay in your lane and you do you, you shouldn't have time to worry about someone else and if you do, then you're wrong.

Infact PTSD diagnosis only needs one event. I am married to an active duty soldier I am the one that has complex severe PTSD ! I got it from a series of life-threatening events domestic violence abuse as a child. PTSD is not just for soldiers and that is extremely insulting in fact the highest rate of PTSD is in women! PTSD is not combat related
As TV and movies would like you to believe that you’re someone is raging and see bombs going off and being shot it in your head that is not PTSD that is TVSD !
Sadly my husband now has PTSD but he did not before he became a soldier his PTSD however does not have anything to do with combat but accidents he was involved in and saw during regular duty on the base. so you can put your pistol away it’s not about gun fire!!

There are many that are abusing this whole PTSD thing. From a legal standpoint, it is better to not claim PTSD in the long run. If you even get in a fight, divorced, receive any sort of false claim, or in any way have to defend yourself on the civilian side, you will loose. To claim PTSD, in the eyes of the civilian world, is to claim to be crazy, unhinged, abusive, and dangerous.

We are now living in a time where everyone wants to be the victim. There is more benefit in being weak and broken than there is in being strong and having self-control. People would rather encourage self-destruction instead of provide correction.

Anyone collecting VA disability for PTSD should be banned from possession of firearms

To start, everyone's triggers for what eventually becomes PTSD are different, and everyone's resilience is also different. It's currently known as post TRAUMATIC STRESS disorder, not post combat or post rape. Just the stress alone is enough, such as excessive bullying or too many long hours with little to no decompression time. A mere deployment is enough to add stress. A unit that overtly or covertly shames members for needing proper stress relief is part of the problem. Commaders who don't follow the rules should be made examples of.

But what of the guy who is committed fraud? How do you know? I certainly don't. I have anger management issues which tick off some of the PTSD boxes, but am well adjusted in the other categories. So if I request PTSD compensation, I should expect it to be denied. PTSD is pretty much cross 50%, you're 100%; fall short and you're 0%. Until the VA recognizes that someone is partially affected and should be compensated, this will encourage someone to overstate their symptoms.

The VA has a bad track history of looking for one tiny justification to deny a claim, so that only encourages legitimate claimants to blow things out of proportion to only get what the deserve.

If the facts are true as presented, this appears like fraud. Someone that disabled to gain a PTSD diagnosis and compensation likely needs regular counseling and medications. You don't get cured with today's science short of death. PTSD is a result of permanent changes to brain chemistry and trying to find the right combination of drugs just helps you get the brain chemistry close to where it should be. Unless this guy magically got cured through experimental therapies, he still has PTSD. If he really says he no longer needs drugs, then he's inadvertently admitting he's no longer disabled. That means fraud.

If no one is listening, keep yelling. You have to find out who can investigate. Get your ducks in a row. They don't want to investigate and waste their time. Find out how PTSD is dignosed and treated. Help the investigator by checking all those fraud boxes for him or her. The easier their job is, the more likely the fraudster will get caught.