CBS: Troops With Stress Disorders Being Redeployed

CBS News) Army Staff Sgt. Bryce Syverson spent 15 months in Iraq before he was diagnosed by military doctors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sent to the psychiatric unit at Walter Reed Medical Center, CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports.

"It ended up they just took his weapon away from him and said he was non-deployable and couldn't have a weapon," says his father, Larry Syverson. "He was on suicide watch in a lockdown."

That was last August. This August, he was deployed to Ramadi, in the heart of the Sunni triangle -- and he had a weapon. He's still there. Under pressure to maintain troop levels, military doctors tell CBS News it's become a "common practice" to recycle soldiers with mental disorders back into combat


Meanwhile, Bryce Syverson is still in Iraq. He sent this e-mail home:

"Head about to explode from the blood swelling inside, the lightning storm that happened inside my head."

He wrote that it was the anti-depressants that were making him feel bad, so he told his father he may stop taking them. "Who knows what could happen? There are soldiers depending on him, and other soldiers are expecting Bryce to react," his father says. "Who knows how he will react under live combat fire."

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