Combat PTSD, the "psychomoral" wound around the world

The UK has been working on Combat PTSD and suicides. So has Australia and Canada. The truth is, it is a human issue that has been documented throughout the centuries. As long as there have been wars and war fighters, there has been the psychomoral wound. I didn't spell it wrong. I didn't just made it up. It is actually a great way to explain the difference between Combat PTSD and Law Enforcement PTSD. There is a huge difference between what these groups suffer from and what "victim survivors" have to overcome.

This isn't from the USA. It is from India.

Definitions This Conference on “Urban Catharsis: The Psycho-Moral Cleansing Effects of the Literatures in English” has a dual purpose: First of all it is a sincere attempt to encourage research and aesthetic study of literatures in English rediscovering or focusing the elements /situations or characters or incidents that bring out the moral, spiritual or emotional cleansing of the reader resulting into a certain positive change. The equally important second purpose is to appreciate the value of those literary creations that employ this therapeutic modality and to acknowledge and honour their creators for their conscious or unconscious contribution towards the human welfare. For the very purpose, join our venture to dive into the depths of the ocean of Literatures in English to pick up the pearls of humanitarian values of Literature.

This isn't from the USA. It is from Turkey.

The General Staff has launched a training program designed to provide psychological support in a bid to tackle the increasing number of suicide cases within the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

Based on a protocol between the Ministry of Defense and the Rector’s Office of Ankara University, the newly commissioned and non-commissioned officers are being trained in areas such as “skills in interpersonal communication and assistance, noticing a soldier with problems and providing the relevant guidance,” Anatolia news agency reported April 8.

The move by the General Staff apparently comes as part of a recently launched campaign in response to growing public awareness of the high number of suicides and controversial deaths occurring among conscripts engaged in compulsory military service.

Family from Maitland FL talks about Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel terror

Maitland family tells of Taj ordeal
Hiding under a bed in their hotel room, Luis Allen and his family could hear the explosions of grenades as they rocked the historic Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel.
Sara K. Clarke | Sentinel Staff Writer
December 1, 2008

Hiding under a bed in their hotel room, Luis Allen and his family could hear the explosions of grenades as they rocked the historic Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel.

They could smell the smoke from fires. They listened as a woman pleaded with someone before shots rang out.

The Maitland family recalled the terror of their vacation Sunday from the home they thought they might never see again.

Luis Allen, a psychiatrist, and his wife, Maxine Williams Allen, were on their last night of vacation in Mumbai, India, with their sons, Brandon, 13, and Jonathan, 10.

They encouraged their children to keep the faith. The children weren't scared; the youngest often slept. But when Maxine put the phone number of their aunt in her youngest son's pocket -- just in case she and her husband didn't survive -- Jonathan grew upset.

"He said: 'I don't want to go to your funeral,' " Maxine recalled.

Then the older boy said: "We live together; we're all going to die together."
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Photos: Mumbai terrorist attacks
Last of the bodies cleared from Taj hotel
Dec 01, 2008 16:13 -0500
Updated: 26 minutes ago
Confirmed foreigner deaths in Mumbai attacks

In Mumbai hospital, dying and maimed ask: Why me?

In Mumbai hospital, dying and maimed ask: Why me?
Wards fill with victims of massacre as doctors struggle to cope with aftermath of attack
Randeep Ramesh in Mumbai guardian.co.uk,
Saturday November 29 2008 00.01 GMT The Guardian,
Harishchandra Shiverhankar scribbled furiously on a notepad, gesturing with his fingers to explain his last bloody memories of Wednesday night before waking up in an unfamiliar hospital bed.

The 56-year-old was walking towards the Metro cinema when he felt his legs collapse - a bullet had been shot through his lower back. A hand then grasped his hair, pulled back his head and a blade slit his neck. He had been caught in the vortex of violence unleashed by people who wanted to murder, not just maim.

Setting down his pad he manages to croak: "This should have never happened to me."

The office worker's story, told from his bed in Mumbai's JJ hospital, is part of a largely hidden tragedy - that behind the headlines of wealthy westerners fleeing Mumbai's terror frontline it was ordinary Indians who bore the brunt of the bloody attack on this city of 19 million people.

Next door to Shiverhankar lies Jayaram Chavan, his leg shattered by bullets. He had been running for his train home to the western suburbs amid the Victorian splendour of Mumbai's main Chhatrapati Shivaji rail terminal when two young men with guns in their hands opened fire. "I wanted to go home, that's all. Why me?"

Outside the private Bombay hospital journalists jostled for news of the three British nationals inside, but little was heard about the 70 Indians that lay next to them. Part of the reason for the lack of publicity about local casualties is that hospitals themselves have banned journalists, pointing out that the militants had targeted wards in the first wave of attacks. No one, unless they could prove they were hospital workers or related to the victims, was supposed to be allowed in. But the Guardian was allowed access by doctors keen to publicise Mumbai's suffering.
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Scores die in India rampage with hostages held

Scores die India rampage; hostages held
Gunmen have targeted nine locations in south Mumbai, including two luxury hotels. A state spokesman put the death toll at 78. Gunmen are holding hostages at the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, police said. One witness told reporters gunmen had tried to find people with U.S. or British passports. developing story
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Truck opens fire; bystanders duck Photos
Witness: 'I was splattered with blood'

India:Teenage boy thrown under train by mob over love letter

Teen thrown under train for writing love letter
Mom begs for mercy, watches 'helplessly' as India boy dies in caste conflict

PATNA, India - A teenage Indian boy was thrashed, paraded through the streets with his head shaved and then thrown under a train for daring to write a love letter to a girl from a different caste, police said Thursday.

Manish Kumar, 15, was kidnapped by members of the rival caste on his way to school and was killed as his mother begged for mercy, police in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar said.

One man has been arrested and a policeman suspended.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27821172/

India:Kashmir, Conflict's Psychological Legacy

In Kashmir, Conflict's Psychological Legacy
Mental Health Cases Swell in Two Decades
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 1, 2008; Page A09

SRINAGAR, India


Suraya Qadeem's brother was one of the Kashmir Valley's brightest students. Handsome and disciplined, he had been accepted into a prestigious medical school in Mumbai. But just weeks before Tahir Hussain was to pack his bags, the 20-year-old was shot dead by Indian forces as he participated in a peaceful demonstration calling for Kashmir's independence.

At his funeral, Suraya Qadeem, also a medical student, wept so hard she thought she might stop breathing. Seventeen years later, she spends her days counseling patients in Indian-controlled Kashmir who have painfully similar stories.

In the sunny therapy rooms of a private mental hospital here in Kashmir's summer capital, Qadeem listens to young patients, nearly all of them children scarred by the region's two-decade-old conflict. Most suffer from depression, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction and suicidal tendencies in numbers that are shockingly high, especially compared with Western countries.

Srinagar, a scenic lakeside city nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, once had among the lowest mental illness rates in the world. But in 1989, leaders of the region's Muslim majority launched an armed separatist movement, one of several said to have been backed by predominantly Muslim Pakistan, which has fought two wars with Hindu-majority India over Kashmir since India's partition in 1947. Srinagar became a battleground as hundreds of thousands of Indian troops quelled the uprising. The fighting has left a powerful psychological legacy.

The number of patients seeking mental health services surged at the state psychiatric hospital, from 1,700 when the unrest began to more than 100,000 now. Last year, they were treated at the hospital or the recently opened Advanced Institute of Stress and Life Style Problems, where Qadeem works.
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Children trampled as 145 die in Hindu temple stampede

Children trampled as 145 die in Hindu temple stampede

By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi
Monday, 4 August 2008

A religious pilgrimage turned into a disaster when at least 145 people – most of them women and children – were killed as a crowd of thousands stampeded at a Hindu shrine in northern India.


Police said that a crowd of up to 10,000 pilgrims may have panicked yesterday morning after heavy rains caused loose stones to tumble down a hillside as they made their way up a narrow two-and-a-half mile path to a hill-top temple in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh.

As the stones began to move, people started running down the mountain, breaking iron railings and trampling people underfoot as they made their way to safety. At the same time, thousands of people were still trying to make their way uphill to the temple. The scene of the carnage was littered with discarded sandals, flowers and torn clothes last night.

"We have confirmation now that 145 people have been killed," Daljit Singh Manhas, a senior police officer, told Reuters. "We found eight to 10 stones which had fallen off and probably scared the people, causing the stampede." A total 37 people were injured and taken to hospital, the police said.
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