Megan Krause left Iraq the last week of July 2006. The next month, she was a full-time student at Penn State.

“It was a nerve-wracking experience, to the point that I very specifically remember calling my mother and saying ... ‘I want to be back in Iraq,’ ” Krause said last week.

Krause stuck it out though, and she came to feel that she fit in on campus. But two and a half years later, as she was dealing with the stress of preparing to graduate, the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder started to surface.

“I think I was the last person to notice it. There was a lot of alcohol. A lot of alcohol involved,” she said in an interview as part of the national Real Warriors Campaign, aimed at encouraging veterans to seek needed help. “I always just wrote it off as I’m in college. This is what you do. You know, who cares that I’m 26 years old and I’m drinking a bottle of wine in the evening just to get to sleep.”

Krause is one of the more than half-million veterans who sustained an injury while serving on active duty during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Since March 2003, the start of the Iraq War, 579,019 veterans have left the military and qualified for disability payments, according to a McClatchy Newspapers analysis of millions of disability records from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

In Pennsylvania, the 64,913 veterans who left the service after the Sept. 11 attacks make up about 6.73 percent of the total veteran population. And, of the 95,840 veterans of all wars who receive disability payments in Pennsylvania, 13,338 — 13.96 percent — left active duty after the start of the Iraq War.

The state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs estimates that there are about 9,000 veterans in Centre County, about 895 of whom receive disability payments. Of those, 211 are Iraq-era veterans, according a Centre Daily Times analysis of the McClatchy data.

“They’ve seen a huge increase at the State College VA outpatient clinic,” said Holly Serface, director of the county Office of Veterans Affairs.

Many veterans have injuries that aren’t obvious. When it comes to documented cases of injuries for

SOURCE: Veterans Affairs

Iraq-era veterans in Centre County:

•Four have the federal VA’s highest disability rating of 100.

•11 have traumatic brain injuries.

•12 have major depressive disorders.

•23 have degenerative arthritis.

•36 have post-traumatic stress disorder.

•72 have a VA disability rating between 50 and 100.

•77 have a have a persistent ringing noise in one or both ears, a condition known as tinnitus.

One of the most common injuries, with 67 cases in Centre County, is back strain.

“A lot of that has to do with wearing heavy body armor,” said Dave Petrak, a VA program manager in Altoona, who works with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from Centre County. “They often don’t seek help when they’re in there because they don’t want to be judged by their peers. ... A lot of them, because they’re younger, they think the pain’s going to go away.”

College after war

Last year, leaders from the Centre County Office of Veterans Affairs partnered with the Community Help Centre and the Retired Senior Volunteer Program to raise $20,000 for a van to transport county veterans to the VA hospital in Altoona. The nonprofit group Disabled American Veterans agreed to match those funds and pay the maintenance, insurance and fuel costs for the program.

The van is intended for people without other means of transportation, and volunteers are in charge of driving it. It took its first trip to Altoona in September.

In October, 10 veterans made appointments for the van service. For the month of December, there have been 20 requests so far.

Other services for veterans have increased in the county in recent years.

“It could be word of mouth,” said Serface. “My best advocates are other veterans.”

Pa.’s disabled vets County’s disabled vets

CDT graphic/David Kubarek

Penn State said there are about 1,000 veterans at the University Park campus and 3,500 at all 25 campuses, including the online World Campus program. Those figures have increased in recent years — by as much as 28 percent from the spring of 2009 to the spring of 2010 — thanks in part to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which included educational subsidies.

The World Campus has seen the largest expansion in recent years. Active-duty personnel and veterans make up 14 percent of the student population there.

Veterans often opt for the World Campus for the same reason that other older adults do.

“They are primarily interested in, ‘Do you have the program of study that I’m interested in?’ … They’re typically looking for convenience and flexibility,” said Ginny Newman, the university’s assistant director for military education. “Veterans, many times, already have another job.”

Newman said veterans with disabilities also opt for online programs because their injuries have made them unable or less interested in studying on a campus. Yet others are transitioning from the military to college life.

Starting this spring, the university organized five online training seminars for all of its campuses, focused on the best practices for recruiting and retaining veterans.

“That’s one way that we’ve tried to ramp up,” Newman said.

Petrak started working for the VA in 1980, a few months before post-traumatic stress disorder was formally recognized in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

He said the organization has improved its outreach and service efforts in the years since. And he said this generation “of veterans appears to be more amenable to dealing ... with the bureaucracy of the government. They accept it more. And they’re willing to work with the system.”

The biggest challenge, he said, is convincing veterans to seek help.

Mental injuries

Krause served as a medic during the Iraq War, first flying injured patients from Baghdad to Germany for treatment. Later, she was stationed outside Tikrit in northern Iraq.

“We got mortared a lot, and we always say that when everybody else has to turn away and pull security, we have to turn around and face the damage,” she said during the video interview for the Real Warriors campaign.

When she left Iraq, she didn’t think she’d have any psychological health issues. She didn’t consider herself the type of person who would clam up and not talk about her problems. And later, after being home for a while and having served as a noncommissioned officer in a reserve unit, she figured the occasional nightmares were normal.

But others saw she was struggling. A fellow soldier reached out to her, then a supervisor encouraged her to seek help.

“What I wish that more warriors would realize is that I was getting worse and worse and worse because I didn’t go get help,” she said. “Because it wasn’t until I got the emotional help that I needed that I was able to fix the rest of my problems.”

Krause graduated from Penn State after two and a half years, in December 2008, because some of her military service earned her college credits.

She agreed to participate in the Real Warriors campaign, which was launched in 2009 by the Defense Department, to encourage other veterans to seek help for mental health issues.

She now works as the associate director of military programs for American Council on Education, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that represents more than 1,600 college and university presidents, as well as 200 related associations.

The council has offered advice on programs and services to help universities attract and accommodate veterans.

“It is not a one size fits all,” she said. “Veterans are as diverse as our academic institutions are.”

Ed Mahon can be reached at 231-4619.