Feminists

t is striking to note, for example, that from 2000 to 2010 more than 31,000 veterans were discharged having been diagnosed with a “personality disorder.” (Neither the Department of Defense nor the Pentagon has said how many of these cases involved MST, which can affect men as well as women.) Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine and now executive director of the veteran’s advocacy group Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), told CNN in an April interview that she sees “a pattern of the military using psychiatric diagnoses to get rid of women who report sexual assaults.” In the case of a “personality disorder,” described by psychiatrists as a long-standing, inflexible pattern of maladaptive behavior, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) becomes a pre-existing condition rather than a service-related disability. That means MST victims with personality disorder discharges don’t receive benefits. The military can simply dismiss them rather than treat them. And according to military records obtained by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic and reported by CNN, the diagnosis of personality disorder is used disproportionately on women.

The betrayal is profound, says Mary Ellen Salzano, mother of a Marine and founder of a statewide collaborative for military families in California. “The first thing you learn in the military is ‘I don’t need help,’” she says. “Someone needs it more and you give it to them. So when a soldier or Marine asks for help themselves they are revealing a vulnerability that it is hard to acknowledge. And if they can’t trust their own to help them they suffer ‘institutional trauma.’ They feel crushed. They start questioning everything. It’s huge.”