Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Part of being tough is admitting you need help with PTSD

"Many Vietnam vets died miserable, alone and young," he said. "This is not going to happen to these guys."


Army taking stress out of seeking help
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
By NIKI DOYLE
Times Staff Writer niki.doyle@htimes.com

Program aims to fight idea that it's a sign of weakness

More than 30 years after thousands of "shell-shocked" soldiers left Vietnam, the U.S. Army is taking steps to help soldiers leaving Iraq adjust successfully to civilian life.

The Army is requiring all its employees - soldiers and civilians - to participate in a seminar on post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and mild traumatic brain injury.

........"Soldiers don't want to appear weak," Battle said. "That's the kind of statement that leaders want to fight against. Part of being tough is admitting you need help."
click post title for the rest

Monday, September 3, 2007

Soldiers Urged to Get Treatment for Stress

Soldiers Urged to Get Treatment for Stress
Stars and Stripes | Erik Slavin | August 31, 2007

CAMP RED CLOUD, South Korea — U.S. Army Garrison Red Cloud officials urged soldiers and civilians at a Thursday briefing in the theater to get help if they are dealing with post-combat stress.

Camp Stanley operations officer Capt. Lis-Mary Wilson’s briefing also encouraged supervisors to watch for signs of post-traumatic stress disorder in their workers.

The message was delivered, but its success ultimately depends on soldiers and civilians feeling comfortable enough to seek help from chaplains, doctors and social workers.

PTSD News and Resources

“No one has the right to judge you. They don’t know what you saw or what you’ve done,” Wilson told the 30 to 40 soldiers and civilians in attendance, along with about 20 South Korean soldiers.

Soldiers won’t be punished for seeking help, Wilson said. But how will a soldier who misses time at his post for long-term care be seen in the eyes of a commander? What will care from a psychiatrist mean to a promotion board?

click post title for the rest

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Suicide, is something we can live without

Suicide: ‘People think it’s a choice’

West Virginia has eighth-highest rate in country

By Mary Wade Burnside
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT — Rebecca Wells saw her husband transform from a motivated business executive who enjoyed working out to someone overcome by depression, which ran in his family.

He sought counseling, took medication and even tried shock therapy. But one day in March 2006, the Huntington man told his wife he was going out of town. Instead, he went to a nearby lake and killed himself. Authorities found him just after Wells filed a missing person report.

“I have days that I have anger, but I’m not angry at him,” she said. “I watched him struggle to get out of bed and I watched him cry.

“What really makes me angry is when people think it’s a choice. He didn’t go through what he did because he wanted to.”

Because Wells wants to spread the word about suicide, she has become a bit of an activist. She has organized a walk called “Out of the Darkness” that will take place Oct. 6 in Ritter Park in Huntington, and she also joined the board of the Morgantown-based West Virginia Council for the Prevention of Suicide.

Bob Musick, executive director of the council, which he runs from his office at Valley Healthcare System in Morgantown, began the group in 2001 to reach out statewide to help people, both those considering suicide and those who have experienced the self-imposed death of a loved one.

West Virginia, he noted, has the eighth-highest suicide rate per capita of all 50 states, he noted. Alaska ranks No. 1.

“One reason is we rank high in guns in the home,” Musick said. “We also rank high in rural areas and we rank high in the number of senior citizens. Each one adds on to it.”

To commemorate National Suicide Prevention Week, which takes place Sept. 9-15, the council will begin a Suicide Survivors Group, which will meet from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 11 at Valley Healthcare System, 301 Scott Ave., Morgantown.


click post title for the rest
Luke 10
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou?

27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt alive.

29 But he, willing to ajustify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.

33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,

34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?

37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise

Veterans deserve needed care for life

Editorial: Veterans deserve needed care for life

Eagle Editorial



Byron Hancock is a hero, a veteran of battles foreign and domestic who continues to struggle with emotional wounds suffered in defense of this country.

His war in Iraq is over, but we fear his war with his own government for the treatment he deserves will continue well into the future. Like far too many other service men and women, he has had to fight for the treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder he has received so far.

A four-part series in The Eagle this past week (www.theeagle.com) told Hancock's story in dramatic and often frustrating detail. Parts of the saga make you want to cheer. Others make you want to weep for a country that would do so little for those who have done so much for us all. It is a cautionary tale about the cost of waging war and the obligation we have to those who fight our battles.

Hancock joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 1988, while still a senior in high school near Nacogdoches. At boot camp, he was named his platoon's top graduate and earned the marksmanship and physical fitness awards. In 1992, Hancock was sent to the extremely difficult Marine Corps Sniper School. Of the 32 men who started the training, Hancock was one of only six to finish, graduating second in the class and becoming one of the elite of the elite. The next year, he became the first Reservist and the first corporal to be invited to return for advanced training.

Being a sniper requires great patience, outstanding skills and the ability to kill, even when not directly threatened. It is a thankless job, but a necessary one.

Hancock spent the next few years as part of the 15-member Marine Reserve Rifle Team, during which he continued to hone his sniper skills.

Eventually, though, he decided to return full time to his job with the Bryan Police Department. He was named Officer of the Year by the Bryan Police Officers Association in 1997 and again in 1998. Eventually, Hancock left the Marine Corps Reserves - that is, until after Sept. 11, 2001. He rejoined the active Reserves and, after service teaching sniper tactics to South American militaries, Hancock was sent to Iraq in August 2004. He fought in Fallujah, killing an enemy insurgent from 1,050 yards away - believed to be the longest successful sniper shot of this war. Months later, after six days lying in a cold, wet ditch observing suspicious activity, Hancock was ordered to kill a teenage boy who was trying to connect several improvised explosive devices that could have killed many American soldiers.

Eventually, Hancock came home, bringing with him an emotional burden that would haunt him and his family in the months to come. He began having flashbacks and nightmare images of slitting throats - events that never happened. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, an illness once denied by the government but one that continues to haunt many veterans of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and, increasingly, veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Doctors still struggle to learn all its ramifications, but treatment is available, although success rates vary with the individual.

The real problem is that the Veterans Administration is unable to handle the growing number of current and former service members needing assistance. Hancock learned that when he tried to get help for his illness from the VA. Amazingly, he was put on a waiting list for the post-traumatic stress disorder program at the Temple Veterans Administration Hospital.

The VA says between 12 percent and 20 percent of Iraq war veterans suffer from the disorder, although a study cited by a Department of Defense task force puts that number at 38 percent for Army soldiers and 31 percent for Marines. Alarmingly, the study found that 49 percent of its respondents in the National Guard reported problems.

click post title for the rest

Saturday, September 1, 2007

WOUNDS OF WAR Mental troubles plagued man before suicide




WOUNDS OF WAR
For one veteran, struggle didn't end
Mental troubles plagued man before suicide
By Laura Ungar
lungar@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal



RELATED VIDEO: Derek Henderson Interviews

Derek Henderson's hands shook as he held the railing on the Clark Memorial Bridge and stared down at the dark waters of the Ohio River.

A few feet away stood Aisha "Nikki" McGuire and her boyfriend, Patrick Craig, who had spotted Henderson while driving by. They begged him not to jump -- "It's not worth it," they said.

Henderson wouldn't say what brought him there. "I don't want to talk about it," he told Craig, before climbing over the railing and hanging for a moment off the other side.

McGuire looked at his face and saw fear. She ran to police officers who were just pulling up, as the big clock on the Colgate plant across the river in Indiana showed a few minutes before midnight.

Craig kept pleading with Henderson: "God is with you, man. Come on."

"Thank you, brother," Henderson said.

Then he let go.

On that night in mid-June, Henderson, a 27-year-old Louisville resident who'd served with the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, surrendered to an enemy that has tormented thousands of veterans.

Like nearly one out of every five Americans who have served in the conflicts, Henderson suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And like many of them, he had made the rounds of veterans' hospitals and psychiatric wards but still was unable to defeat his demons.

Although it's unclear exactly when he was diagnosed.

click post title for the rest

also from this site

MORE PHOTOS
Iraqi war veteran Derek Henderson

RELATED STORIES

Video: Derek Henderson Interviews [9.2.07]
Brain injuries haunt soldiers [7.15.07]
Veterans' ills may show MS link to Gulf War [6.3.07]
Iraq news brings on relapses for earlier war's vets [5.28.07]
Hospitals plagued by long waits, low staffing [5.28.07]
More war vets bring disabling stress home [5.28.07]
Fighting financial wounds [5.23.07]
War widow serves by attending funerals [5.23.07]
Army vows to inspect its hospitals [5.23.07]
Problems at Walter Reed spark criticism [5.23.07]
Getting 'back to normal' [5.23.07]
Many vets lose health benefits [5.23.07]
VA backs directive against recruiting [5.23.07]
Days marked by duty, dismay, death [5.23.07]
VA's ban on recruiting vets angers activists [5.23.07]

FULL COVERAGE: Wounds of War



How many times is this going to happen? How much more do we need to know before we do whatever it takes to stop them from killing themselves? When will I be able to read the reports and stop asking "why" there still isn't enough being done?

Military PTSD support for spouse on line


Spouse Calls
Stripes columnist Terri Barnes offers advice and an understanding ear to her fellow military spouses.
EMDR treatments for PTSD

Posted August 19th, 2007

by Terri Barnes
in

A Spouse Calls reader who suffered from PTSD wrote recently to tell me that she had found relief from her debilitating symptoms through eye movement desensitizing and reprocessing (EMDR). She had been following the Spouse Calls blog regarding PTSD, and wondered if her experience could help others.


A story by Steve Mraz in Stars & Stripes details how medical professionals at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany are being trained to administer EMDR to returning veterans. The treatment has been around since the late 1980's.
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If you have a family member in the military or veteran, go there and find some support. You need it as much as they do.

If you want some help understanding that what you're going through is not just you, click the link on this blog for the free book. It's about 18 years of our life together. My husband is a Vietnam Vet with PTSD. The book is For The Love Of Jack His War/My Battle. It opens in Adobe. I've been doing outreach work ever since the day I fell in love with him and my father said he had "shell shock"

As you read it, keep in mind one really important thing to find some hope. This month we've been married for 23 years.

The videos I've done are also here whenever you need them.

Clergy in New Orleans need PTSD counseling

Clergy in New Orleans need counseling

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 31, 5:20 PM ET



NEW ORLEANS - Clergymen struggling to comfort the afflicted in New Orleans are finding they, too, need someone to listen to their troubles.


By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 31, 5:20 PM ET



NEW ORLEANS - Clergymen struggling to comfort the afflicted in New Orleans are finding they, too, need someone to listen to their troubles.

The sight of misery all around them — and the combined burden of helping others put their lives back together while repairing their own homes and places of worship — are taking a spiritual and psychological toll on the city's ministers, priests and rabbis, many of whom are in counseling two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Almost every local Episcopal minister is in counseling, including Bishop Charles Jenkins himself, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jenkins, whose home in suburban Slidell was so badly damaged by Katrina that it was 10 months before he and his wife could move back in, said he has suffered from depression, faulty short-term memory, and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.

Low-flying helicopters sometimes cause flashbacks to the near-despair — the "dark night of the soul" — into which he was once plunged, he said. He said the experience felt "like the absence of God" — a lonely and frightening sensation.

Churches and synagogues have played an important role in New Orleans' recovery, supplying money and thousands of volunteers to rebuild homes and resettle families. But an April survey found 444 places of worship in metropolitan New Orleans — about 30 percent — were still closed 20 months after the storm because they were damaged or their congregations scattered. click post title for the rest.



Even clergy can feel the absence of God after trauma. It is not the only outcome of PTSD but it shows that a strong faith will not prevent PTSD. It has nothing to do with faith, nothing to do with courage, or bravery, education, intelligence, patriotism or anything else other than a human being exposed to trauma.

Think of what this event in New Orleans is teaching us about combat. Think of the results from this one storm and the flood that followed when the waters came rushing in. Leaving politics out of it ( which is very hard for me to do) this event left scars that will last a lifetime that no one else can see with their eyes.

September 11, 2001, is engrained in the soul's of the people from New York more than anyone else in the nation, while the nation feels the heart tug, we were not there. Some felt as if their lives were in danger across the nation, but they were not there witnessing it in real time. We are still seeing the numbers increase from those exposed to this one day's events.

Now add in these traumatic days, acknowledge the wounds the people exposed to them carry, then think about experiencing them everyday for a year or now for fifteen months, and still knowing that when you go home, the safety of home will not last because you will be re-attacked all over again in the next round of redeployments. Some are on their fifth tour.

Then think of the people having to live in Iraq. Those who do not get to go home for a rest because it is their homes being attacked on a daily basis. They did nothing wrong and they lived in relative peaceful neighborhoods before the invasion. The Iraqi people have traumatic events happen daily, horrifically and without end.

Why is it we can understand the effects of Post Traumatic Stress when it happens here but we can never accept it when it happens someplace else? Each time this nation experiences a traumatic event, there are after shocks reverberating for many years and yet this nation still regards PTSD as if it were some kind of personal defect.

The plain simple truth is, you cannot expose a human to trauma and expect them to just get over it. No one ever lives their lives the same way after trauma. A part of them changes. Sometimes it is only slight changes but other times it is truly life altering.

Friday, August 31, 2007

PTSD Vet Of Iraq War Honored In Launch Of Foundation



Aug 30, 2007 4:27 pm US/Central
Vet Of Iraq War Honored In Launch Of Foundation (AP) Minneapolis Robert Herubin knew his friend Jonathan Schulze, after a tour of combat duty in Iraq, was on a downward spiral.

Depressed, drinking heavily and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, nobody was able to reach the troubled Marine before he killed himself in January. Herubin and others close to the Purple Heart recipient wondered what more could have been done. An answer has since emerged in the form of the Jonathan Schulze "I Can't Hear You" Foundation, which aims to pair veterans returning from combat with other veterans who have experienced war. Such a relationship might have saved Schulze, believes Herubin, himself a veteran of the first Gulf War.

"This is about these guys being able to talk to someone who's been there and done that.

Someone who knows what it's like to fight and kill," he said. Herubin came up with the foundation's name while he was at Schulze's wake. Herubin had placed a cap next to Schulze's body with the words "I Can't Hear You!" emblazoned across the front.
It's a phrase often doled out by drill instructors to their timid new recruits, but as Herubin stared into Schulze's coffin, it suddenly meant something else. "You were right there," Herubin recalled thinking, "and I couldn't hear you." The group is launching its first chapter at a VFW post in suburban Prior Lake, where Herubin first met Schulze after he returned from Iraq and a grueling tour that included door-to-door combat in the city of Fallujah. go here for the rest http://wcco.com/local/local_story_242173154.html


If you watched Death Because They Served (video at the bottom of this blog) you will see Jonathan in the video, along with over a hundred more. It took a long time to find their stories. Stories very few even want to hear, yet these men and women, so wounded by combat, could not find anyone to help them heal. Love cannot cure PTSD no more than time can. You cannot wish it away or ignore it away. Jonathan tired to get the help he needed but it wasn't there for him when he needed it. Too many have been sent away because no one bothered to prepare for these combat wounded before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq happened. History had already recorded the battle wounds of those who came from other wars, in other times and in nations around the world because history knew those who participated in combat were only humans exposed to the most horrific experiences known to man.


There are many who succeeded in committing suicide, while many more have tired. They have been redeployed tragically wounded with a boat load of pills to keep them useful, instead of healing their wounded minds. Rob Withrow is one of them. He tried to commit suicide four times but they sent him back all the same.



Broken Warrior: One soldier's struggleFirst it was the horrors of Iraq. Now, Rob Withrow is locked in a fight with his own Army superiors.
He wants mental health treatment -- they want him to face a court-martial
By CAROL SMITHP-I REPORTER

Rob Withrow was a good soldier until he got back from combat duty in Iraq.
Now by his own admission, he is no longer anyone's idea of a model fighting man. He screwed up, and he's screwed up -- an assessment the Army would agree with.



Mike Urban / P-I

U.S. Army soldier Rob Withrow, photographed among the yellow ribbons tied to the Freedom Bridge across Interstate 5 near Fort Lewis. Since his problems began, Withrow has been reduced in rank from sergeant to private.
But that's where their agreement ends.

Withrow wants mental health treatment. He has tried to commit suicide four times since returning from Iraq. He has been hospitalized in Madigan Army Medical Center's inpatient psychiatric unit on multiple occasions and is currently on a cocktail of antidepressants and psychoactive drugs. He is a month out of treatment for an addiction to narcotic pain pills that he began taking to "numb out" the month he returned from Iraq and he does not fit the Army's new criteria for deployment.
But now the Army wants to redeploy him to Iraq, and court- martial him over there.
The charges stem from his pattern of not showing up on time, or sometimes at all.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/311672_soldier14.html
He is not the only one this happened too. There have been over 22,000 given a dishonorable discharge instead of being appreciated and treated for their wounds received while serving the directives of this administration. They have done every duty the other wounded and fallen accomplished and yet their wounds are to be ignored, treated as a burden to society and cast aside as if suddenly they are no use to the military they loved and the nation they served.

The shame is shared by everyone in this nation who believes sticking a removable magnet to the back of their vehicle is all that is needed to support those we send. It is remarkable that this is also the attitude they show to the wounded where their "support" is as removable as the magnet that leaves no trace when taken away. The traces they cannot see or feel because that is reserved for those who truly cared about them and for them.

Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Dave Matthews fighting for those who fight for us

Why do veterans have to fight for their wounds to be treated and to be compensated for what they have lost? What about the dignity of those who have earned everything they are asking for and need? Why do they have to beg and plead with the country for help that should have been ready and waiting for them? kc


Dave Matthews Fights for Vets' Rights
Load: jimstaro
Dave Matthews Fights for Traumatized Troops http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/Voices/story?id=3378402

Voices: Pushes to Ensure Those Who Served Aren't Denied Disability Benefits Matthews Urges Better Care for Troops

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=3379596

Dave Matthews Band Petition Drive Urges Better Mental Health Care for Troops For more information on the Dave Matthews...Tags: Iraq Afganistan War VeteransRights Veterans DaveMatthewsBand MilitaryCare

Spc. John R. Fish death suspected suicide

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Associated Press

EL PASO, Texas — U.S. Army officials have found the body of a 19-year-old soldier who vanished this week from a desert training range in Texas and they say he apparently killed himself.

Searchers found Spc. John R. Fish, clad in his Army uniform, Wednesday afternoon while flying over a patch of rugged desert surrounding the Dona Ana Base Camp, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Fort Bliss in New Mexico, said Jean Offutt, a fort spokeswoman. His body was found about 1 1/2 miles (2.4 kilometers) north of the camp.

Fish suffered what investigators believe to be a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Offutt said. His weapon was found near his body, Offutt said.

Fish was reported missing Monday morning when he did not show up for morning roll call. Army officials later found a handwritten note on his bunk reading: "I have some things to take care of. I won't be coming back."

Fish vanished that morning wearing his camouflage uniform and carrying a squad automatic weapon.

He served a yearlong tour in Iraq, returning in November, but was assigned largely non-combat jobs, said Lt. Col. Ina Yahn, who commands Fish's 589th Brigade Support Battalion.