First off, to successfully file and be service-connected (SC) for PTSD, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA, do not confuse with the healthcare parts of DVA) needs four important elements to be present:
1. There must be verifiable documentation that a specific event claimed “PTSD stressor” event has happened;
2. There must be verifiable documentation that you were present to have experienced the event;
3. There must be a current diagnosis of PTSD by a qualified medical professional;
4. The qualified medical professional must provide a medical opinion using the appropriate legal terminology that the current diagnosis is related to the verified event.

Parts 3 and 4 are entirely in the hands of the medical community, and there is not much either VBA or the veteran can do about those two parts. However, to successfully get SC, the veteran must get the first two parts completed and presented as a part of their claim.

As you might imagine, for some people this is absurdly easy; for others very difficult; some others, quite simply impossible.

Part 1 will discuss the easy cases.

This applies to those people who experienced combat, and have clear documentation of that participation in combat. For you, all you have to do is claim PTSD due to combat, discuss your current symptomology or point out that you are getting current treatment at a VA Medical Center or Vet Center (this is evidence that you have a current condition), and point out what documentation shows you participated in combat.

Do not waste time and effort giving details of the particular combat event; if you have the medal, that is all VBA needs to request the VA exam.

BTW, statements from friends, family, etc about your symptoms have no weight or use as far as establishing that an event happened, or to provide a diagnosis. They are not medical professionals (unless they actually ARE, and can document that they are an RN, MD, et al), so their lay testimony has a virtually negligible probative weight.

However, if you are being evaluated at a VA exam (because the stressor was conceded), the lay statements will be of great value to the medical professional in making his/her diagnosis.

Typically, this will be a CAR, CIB, CMB, or CAB on your DD 214, or on your DD 215 if it was added (if you do not know these acronyms, why the hell are you even reading this post?) ; or a copy of the orders awarding the CAB subsequent to issue of the DD 214. (there is a laundry list of qualifying medals that VA recognizes – I am sure someone else can provide a link to those medals). After all, if you got a combat award, it is itself proof that combat happened and you were there.

If you do not have a CAR, but got the Fleet Marine Force Combat Operations Insignia, or a bronze arrowhead for a combat landing – it is a little bit more difficult. VA Central Office does not mention these devices as usable to concede combat, but your local VA Regional Office may accept them anyway; if not, you can get a copy of the Army/Navy/MARADMIN regs which show these devices are only awarded due to combat. Note: The FMFCOI does not get listed on your DD 214 ever; it will be a part of your personnel records, however.

In short, simply state you are claiming PTSD “due to combat”; cite your proof of combat; provide the evidence of current symptoms. Your claim should go through quickly, as all the evidence needed to complete the claim to the point of ordering the VA exam is present up front.

Part 2; Veterans without a combat medal, but able to provide evidence of event and their presence without any additional research by VBA.

Now it gets harder. You have no DIRECT evidence that you were in harms way in service. Harder, however, does not mean impossible (that comes later).

First off, the same four elements are needed as discussed in the first post.

How to get this documentation? Well, there are ways, depending on your circumstances.

For example: Vietnam era veteran – PTSD due to attacks at your base/post.
Okay, for the most part, VBA can only accept evidence from .mil or .gov sites. Do not waste your time sending in pages from randommilitaryunit.org sites – they will not be even be looked at.

However, Texas Tech University http://www.virtualarchive.viet...tual/vva/virtual.web) has a section of archived Vietnam-era records which VA will accept, as TTU was accredited. Therefore, you may find your documentation of the attack that traumatized you at X location on Y date when you were assigned to Z unit, print the report out (along with sufficient additional pages such as the first page of the cited report and screenshots to show the document came from the TTU archive), highlight the relevant section regarding the event in question, and state that your claim for PTSD is based on that event. If you had already gotten a copy of your personnel records from www.archives.gov, send in a copy of the page that shows your units of assignment to show you were at that unit. Hopefully, the VARO already has a copy of the Vietnam Order of Battle book, which shows where most of the units were stationed at during the VNW. Or provide the relevant pages yourself.

So, again, you can show that an event occurred, and that you were there to experience, based on documentation VBA can accept as verified, so that the VSR can go right to ordering the PTSD exam.

Another example: Veteran was attending the 1988 Rammstein air show. The veteran volunteered to drive many wounded and burned victims of the crashed aircraft to the base hospital. The veteran’s Airmen Performance Report and Meritorious Service Medal citations specifically mention his achievements on that day. Again proof of event and presence at the event is provided, allowing the VST to immediately concede the stressor and set the exam.

Third example: Veteran claiming mortar attack while in Iraq; provides a copy of the base newsletter for that month mentioning the attack and its aftermath as an admonishment to maintain rigorous physical security. The newsletter is an official, although informal, government publication and can be accepted as evidence, especially if the veteran can show the document was pulled off a .mil archive website, and the veteran can show his physical presence at the base by referring the VSR to his Post-Deployment Health Assessment form in his service treatment records, which lists his dates of deployment and the FOB/LSA etc to which he was assigned. Once again, event and physical presence are immediately established using official government sources, allowing the VSR to concede the stressor and request the VA exam.

Part 3: Veterans without a combat medal, and unable to provide evidence of event and their presence requiring possible research by VBA.

First off, if the traumatically stressful event (“stressor”) was never documented, or is completely undocumentable, VBA will not be able to verify the stressor and you claim for PTSD will almost certainly fail to be approved.

Some events that cannot generally be documented:
Events involving civilians, foreign national civilians, foreign national military
Veteran’s presence in a routine convoy
Events that occurred during a convoy
Duty as a door gunner
What a veteran saw or claims to have seen
Events that almost happened
Specific duties assigned

Things a veteran saw, heard, thought, or almost did but did not do (such as almost shooting someone, seeing dead bodies on a road during a convoy) cannot be verified because there is no way to document them. Unless you were written up in some way (good or bad), there is no way to verify whether you did particularly gruesome duties (such as being detailed to scoop up body parts after a plane crash).

If the event is something that can be verified through research, and the VARO office does not have the documentation in their own internal library of verified events (some offices are better-stocked in this regard than others), if certain conditions are met, VBA can send a request to the Joint Services Records Research Center (the JSRRC has gone through many name changes, this is the current name) to research whether the event can be verified based on unit records.

Important points about this:

JSRRC will generally reject any research request that is for a period longer than two months. If the veteran provides a time period in excess of two months, VBA will simply not submit the request because they know the request will be rejected. VBA will not pick and choose a random two-month portion of a veteran’s stated time period.

JSRRC will reject any request to research an event if the event not sufficiently described to allow the research.

JSRRC can only research Army, Navy and Air Force records (perhaps Coast Guard too, but I am not sure). They cannot research Marine Corps records.

JSRRC can only verify events which were documented. If not documented, they cannot verify.

JSRRC used to take a very long time (as long as a year) to research records; they appear to have set up a database of research efforts, though, because responses get generated within weeks not months and often look very similar to similar requests.

Bad news for GWOT-era Marines: Because JSRRC cannot research USMC Command Chronologies, the VARO’s have to try and do the research themselves. However, the Marine Corps Historical Center will not provide any records research services for any Post-9/11 events “due to operational security concerns”; they refer all requests to the former USMC unit of the veteran. This typically means months of mailed, faxed, and telephone requests, resulting in a response along the lines of “claimed event is not documented in the unit Command Chronology or other records available to this unit.” Negative Response from Federal records source; Duty to Assist is met, development is done.

Another head-banger: With the creation of the Combat Action Badge and Combat Action Medal for the Army and Air Force respectively, with more lenient definitions of “engagement in combat” (coming under mortar/rocket attacks on your compound count), the USMC rewrote the MARADMIN to allow similar criteria for award of the CAR (you no longer had to be able to show that someone was aiming specifically at you), BUT ONLY as of eh date of the republish of the MARADMIN! So Marine A gets nearly killed by mortar fire, spoiling his last day in-country the week before the MARADMIN was released. Marine B, arriving at the same location days after the MARADMIN was released gets caught in the next round of rockets and mortars. Marine A gets no CAR. Marine B does.

So, you cannot blame the VA for EVERYTHING.