BVA Case 94-661: Ptsd

In order to conduct meaningful research, the veteran must provide the "who, what, where[,] and when" of each stressor.

The Board concluded that an acquired psychiatric disorder was not present during service or within one year following the veteran's separation from service.

A well-grounded service-connection claim generally requires medical evidence of a current disability; medical or, in certain circumstances, lay evidence of in-service incurrence or aggravation of a disease or injury; and medical evidence of nexus between an in-service injury or disease and a current disability.

Where the determinative issue involves either medical etiology (such as with respect to a nexus between a current condition and an in-service disease or injury) or a medical diagnosis (such as with respect to a current disability), competent medical evidence is generally required to fulfill the well-grounded-claim requirement of section 5107(a) that the claim be "possible" or "plausible".

in a PTSD case is the equivalent of in-service incurrence or aggravation; and medical evidence of a nexus between service and the current PTSD disability.

This medical evidence of a generalized connection between the veteran's PTSD and his war experiences 11 is sufficient to provide the requisite medical evidence of a nexus between service and a current disease that is necessary under Caluza to well ground a PTSD claim.

idence that the claimed in-service stressor actually occurred; and (3) medical evidence of a causal nexus between current symptomatology and the specific claimed in-service stressor.

Only when there is, as there was in this case, a medical opinion as to the first (an unequivocal, current PTSD diagnosis) and third (nexus of current symptomatology to claimed in-service stressor) § 3.