Jim Fausone
Veterans Disability
Attorney
This
is one of those taboo subjects you just don’t bring up in polite company. But the reality is we hear from veterans
every week about their erectile dysfunction, which can be claimed as a service
connected disability in many cases.
As
recently reported in the San Diego Union-Tribune:
The
topic is blush-inducing, to be sure. But some post-9/11 veterans received frank
talk on the subject at a conference for combat veterans in Coronado last week.
“That
fiery, playful sex that people have with their partners is a huge, positive
buffer to all the other stuff you go through in life,” said U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs psychologist Linda Mona, who runs an intimacy clinic at the VA
medical center in Long Beach. …
San
Diego County is home to 39,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans — by one
measure the largest cluster in the United States. About one in three are likely
to suffer from erectile dysfunction or other sexual problems, according to at
least two studies of post-9/11 troops.
Among
people with combat stress — officially known as post-traumatic stress disorder,
or PTSD — the risk of sexual dysfunction is threefold.
In
other words, the chance of problems in the bedroom is “ridiculously high”
compared to young people who didn’t serve, said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a
urologist and surgeon who directs a monthly sexual medicine clinic at the San
Diego VA hospital.
Medication
is a factor. By one account, the average number of prescription drugs used by
America’s veterans is 17.
Some
of those medications, including antidepressants and opiate painkillers, can
affect sexual function. Goldstein called most psychiatric drugs “sex
unfriendly.”
So
if you or your spouse is feeling alone and frustrated take comfort the problem
is real and you are not alone. If you
need help sorting out if you have a service connected disability contact us at
www.legalhelpforveterans.com.
You can read more
about this problem at:
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