McCain Refusing To Release His Psychiatric Records... Salon [View All]

This is a great article that covers not only McCain's fuckups with airplanes
but PTSS and its implications







What's in John McCain's medical records?

He'll be releasing everything about his repeated cancer surgeries. But he won't release his psychiatric records, which hold clues to the effect of his Vietnam captivity.

By Mark Benjamin




May 22, 2008 | Presidential candidate John McCain has survived three plane crashes, four melanomas, and more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, enduring torture and solitary confinement. There would be questions about his health and his fitness for the office he seeks even if he weren't turning 72 in August, and even if he weren't likely to be running against a man 25 years his junior.>>>>snip


In 1999, McCain responded to the questions about his mental health by allowing selected reporters to peruse 1,500 pages of his health records dating back to his release from Hanoi in 1973. Reporters were not permitted to photocopy any of the documents. The reporters who looked at the records did not describe any mention of a PTSD diagnosis. However, they failed to note that it would have been impossible for McCain to receive such a diagnosis -- since the term "post-traumatic stress disorder" was not in use until seven years after McCain's release from captivity. The term first appeared in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980.

There are behaviors associated with the candidate that would be consistent with a diagnosis of PTSD. Author Robert Timberg mentions McCain's intense explosions of anger --- a hallmark sign of lingering mental trauma from war -- in his book "John McCain: An American Odyssey." Timberg describes the episodes as "an eruption of temper out of all proportion to the provocation." Timberg, who McCain has said "knows more about me than I do," wrote that McCain's sudden fury is a result of Vietnam coming "back to haunt him." McCain has himself described having an adverse reaction to the sound of jangling keys, which reminds him of his Vietnam jailers. McCain also told doctors that during solitary confinement he had strayed pretty "far out" and had referred to himself as "mentally deteriorating." >>>>>snip


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/05/22/mccain/