“This system is going to be overwhelmed,” he said at a Congressional hearing last month. “Let’s not kid anybody. We’re looking at a system — it’s already overwhelmed.”

Panetta said that the “epidemic” of military suicide was “one of the most frustrating problems” he has faced as defense secretary. Obama talked about the challenge of military suicides as early as the 2008 campaign, and his administration deserves modest credit for (inadequate) steps to improve mental health care. Dr. Jonathan Woodson, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told me that the military had made progress in screening and treating traumatic brain injury and mental health, so that a soldier would be more likely to get help today than five years ago, when Richards suffered his blast injuries.

“We’re light-years more advanced now in terms of how we approach these problems and what we teach troops about getting help,” he said. In particular, blast injuries are tracked and treated more rigorously, he said, but he acknowledged that more work needed to be done.

Grim experiences like the one Richards endured might create an opening for Mitt Romney, but he isn’t taking it. As a governor and candidate, he has had a weak record on veterans, and he hasn’t shown leadership on the issue. He managed to speak to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last month without addressing veterans’ issues in a substantive way.

In any case, my take is that whatever political leaders say in Washington, and whatever directives emerge from the Pentagon, not nearly enough is changing on the ground. Mental health still isn’t the priority it should be. Just about every soldier or veteran I’ve talked to finds that in practice the mental health system is clogged with demands, and soldiers and veterans are falling through the cracks. Returning soldiers aren’t adequately screened, diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury are still haphazard, and there hasn’t been nearly enough effort to change the warrior culture so that getting help is smart rather than sissy.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness recently offered an idea to help change this culture: the armed forces should award Purple Hearts for invisible, psychological wounds. That might help ease the stigma and would underscore that medical problems are real even if they are inside the head. The alliance also recommended that commanders be held accountable for preventable suicides.

While the challenges are acute for those on active duty, they often become even greater when troops take off their uniforms and become veterans seeking services from the hugely overburdened Veterans Affairs Department. Ben and Farrah have found it immensely difficult to get reliable information from the V.A. about what benefits they can count on. Richards says that in 11 phone calls, he has heard different stories every time.