The mental health of soldiers has been a growing concern over the years, and the military community has taken some measures to address it. But Vickie Kurtz, sister of James "Jimmie" Selby, believes that more could be done for soldiers and should have been done for her brother after he returned from war.

NationalJournal.com's Michelle Williams spoke to Kurtz about why she feels so strongly about mental health care for soldiers and how, as a victim of sexual abuse herself, she feels about Jenny's Law.

NJ: Who was Jimmie?

Kurtz: He was my baby brother. Aww, Jimmie was awesome. He was the one we always knew we could count on no matter what. If it hit the fan, no matter what we were dealing with we could call him and he would drop everything and he would be there in a minute. He just fiercely loved his entire family. To me that's who Jimmie was.

NJ: What made Jimmie decide to join the military?

Kurtz: That took him a long time to decide. We discussed it for many, many days. But ultimately in the end, he realized that a lot of things could happen, and it could result in him maybe not coming back or coming back in some way injured and incapable of supporting his family. But ultimately when he decided to go ahead and join, it was because he felt like no matter what, serving his country was the most important thing he could do for himself and his family.

NJ: What did he do in the military?

Kurtz: He didn't go into a tremendous amount of detail about that. Now I know that he was in the infantry. He said he had some responsibility in helping to bag up bodies, I'm not exactly sure what all. He said, you know, you just can't be there, you can't just see that and not be changed. I can't tell you how right he was because the person who came back was not my brother.

NJ: Why do you say that?

Kurtz: After he came back from the war, his entire attitude was pretty different. It was like, "It's just the way things are. Life goes on." He was night and day, two different people. Before he went to the war, he cared about things. He cared about what people felt. He cared about what people thought. He was very involved. If you were hurting, he empathized with you.

NJ: You noticed this change, so did you do anything?

Kurtz: The only thing I can tell you about that is I made several attempts. I contacted his immediate commander, and that man was very cold-hearted to me. All I wanted was to get my brother help. So I simply asked him what can I do to make sure that they're doing a very thorough psychological discharge because I knew, I knew there was something terribly wrong. He was just like, "Well, he needs to just suck it up and get over it." I knew that was a dead end.

I talked to a friend of mine who worked at the Provost Marshall's Office later on to find out if there was anything else that could be done and he basically explained to me that because of the way the laws are written, there was little or nothing anyone could do for Jimmie without Jimmie's permission. The problem was Jimmie was completely unaware that he was having problems. We tried to explain it to Jimmie, but he didn't see any problem.....

After we contacted the military, I tried contacting the local police department to see what if anything we can do. And they basically told me until he commits a crime, they can't do anything.

The other problem was when he came back from the war, he didn't trust anybody anymore. He wasn't going to go talk to no doctor. He wasn't going to talk to no priest. He wasn't going to talk to anybody. So it made it doubly impossible to acquire the help he needed. We knew if something didn't happen, if he didn't get some sort of medical attention for the way he was thinking and the way he was acting, then something horrible was going to happen, and that's exactly what happened.

NJ: Did you request military honors?

Kurtz: Well, the papers said that my mother demanded a military burial. In reality she wasn't even aware that he was entitled or not entitled. She didn't know. And one of the ladies at the church told her she should call the military because she's struggling financially. You have no idea. She had a couple of bypass surgeries. So she called to find out, and the man that she talked to just took off with it. The next thing I know, she's getting a phone call telling her where, when and everything. It was bizarre. If they handled mental health as efficiently as they handled getting her the assistance for his funeral, maybe we wouldn't have ever had to have that funeral.

NJ: I've read that your brother had received full military honors.

Kurtz: Oh, no, ma'am. That is not correct. There was no honor guard. There was no color guard -- nothing like that. There were a couple of older gentleman and a lady who actually ran the facility.... It was just like three people. The gentlemen who actually dig the graves were the ones who carried the coffin because there was nobody there. It was outside. The winds were whipping. It was freezing cold. It was horrible. It was truly horrible. There was no honor at his funeral.

NJ: Jimmie's father was a child molester.

Kurtz: That's correct. Jimmie was predisposed to that. But Jimmie was not raised with his father. His father left and divorced my mother when Jimmie was a very, very small child. Jimmie was not raised with that man. He was not exposed to that level. And without doubt, the trauma involved in a wartime situation may have been enough of a catalyst to trigger what happened with Jimmie when he returned. He could not settle back to civilian life. For him it didn't make sense anymore. He was hyper-vigilant, he was distant, he was resistant.

NJ: Do you think society treats the soldiers who are injured differently than those who have mental health needs?

Kurtz: Oh, certainly they do. It's easy for us to look at a soldier who comes back missing an arm and a leg and say, "Oh my God, he has given so much for his country." We see this. We feel it. We empathize immediately with them. But mental health in this country is the dirty secret. Nobody wants to talk about it, nobody wants to be part of it. We need to recognize that mental health issues are real. And I don't believe, up until this point, I don't believe we have addressed it very seriously in this country.

When those soldiers are sent off for their training, they are trained to such a degree, they're broken down to nearly nothing and they are retrained to think in that group, military mentality. It allows them to dehumanize people and it allows them to be able to go to war and fight a war and be able to survive, come back and survive with all those emotions that they would otherwise feel. And to react in those terrifying situations without having to stop and think what do I need to do next, they just react. And we bring them back here to this country, but we're not deprogramming them. We are not doing anything to help them reacclimate back into society. And so they come back here hyper-vigilant and struggling on an emotional level because to them, they're still at war. How do we turn that off? Yeah, we neglected their mental health, and we have a responsibility in this country to address it.

Jimmie served his country. He sacrificed his mental health and when he needed help, they did nothing for him. They cut him loose as fast as they could because he was a problem. They basically turned him loose on an unsuspecting public and even though his family knew and we tried to get him help, and everybody we turned to, we couldn't get the help he needed. So in the end, he destroyed the lives of a lot more people and finally destroyed himself.

NJ: Do you think this legislation will help victims?

Kurtz: I don't believe so. I don't see how. I mean it might give them a moment of satisfaction, but I don't see how it's going to close any of the problems for them. Those victims are going to carry scars for a long time. Denying him his burial, frankly, to my brother, he wouldn't have cared one way or another whether or not he would have gotten buried in a military cemetery. It wasn't about glory and all of that for him. It was about doing what he thought was right for his country. The direction he went mentally, I don't think at that point he would have cared. I don't see how denying burial in a military cemetery is going to help these people. I don't see how that can give them back their sense of power.

Yeah, I realize, the things that Jimmie was accused of were horrific. And I have nothing but empathy for those people. I do. I've been there. But it's not going to help change it. What I'd like to see happen is we actually take some active stand toward changing those things that created this situation.

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