Thursday, November 1, 2007

Web-Based Treatment for PTSD


Web-Based Treatment for PTSD
Reductions in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression among military service members were greater with an 8-week program of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) delivered over the Internet than with Internet-based supportive counseling. Of 24 patients randomly assigned to online CBT, 25% no longer had a PTSD diagnosis after treatment or at 6-month follow-up, compared to 5% after treatment and 3% at 6 months for those assigned to online supportive counseling. Litz et al. (CME, p. 1676) present details of DE-STRESS (DElivery of Self-TRaining and Education for Stressful Situations). Each patient had an initial face-to-face interview with a therapist and was allowed telephone and e-mail contacts during treatment. The web program included symptom ratings, CBT content, and homework assignments. Dr. Ruth Lanius relates these findings to the complexity of PTSD in an editorial on p. 1628.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/164/11/A42

You know I'm a believer in helping them on line, but this study was very small. I think it does offer hope that on-line help does in fact help. Even the tiny bit I do, at least gets them to the point where they are willing to go for help. Once they open up, they begin to feel better about themselves and have more hope once they understand what PTSD is. Given the fact the VA and the DOD are so far behind on playing catch up, this needs all the fresh, new ideas it can get. I do know that if the net was available when they came home from Vietnam, you wouldn't have had them suffering while walking around for over 30 years without knowing what it was. The support system is a great tool for them to cope and heal.

War death count not close or real

At Least 430 Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans Have Committed Suicide
by War Comes Home
Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 12:45:52 PM PDT
[Promoted from the Diaries by Meteor Blades.]

It's time to change of count of American war dead upward.

At least 430 American soldiers have committed suicide since returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that doesn't even include those who kill themselves before being discharged from the military or commit "suicide by cop."

Regardless, it's clear is that we need to change our count of casualties upward from 4,229 .U.S military deaths (3,842 in Iraq and 387 in Afghanistan) to closer to 5,000 -- possibly more when you consider those deaths that still haven't been counted.
go here for the rest
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/1/14399/0929



I love the Daily Kos but even they got this wrong. I understand it was a link to another site they picked up, but it does not even come close to the real numbers we are talking about.

Begin with the testimony from the VA
Confirming that figure is difficult, but the VA Inspector General, in a report last May, noted that Veterans Health Administration mental health officials estimate 1,000 suicides per year among veterans receiving care within VHA and as many as 5,000 per year among all living veterans.
http://www.townhall.com/news/us/2007/10/23/house_backs_plan_to_reduce_vet_suicides




There is a nice little game being played with the media. Since they cannot seem to understand that the DOD and the VA hold different records, tracking the deaths associated with Iraq and Afghanistan will not even come close unless they put the figures together.

Why do I say "not even close" when addressing the true death count? Because they will only put in the figures they have to. Some, as with the VA, do not list the numbers of Iraq or Afghanistan veterans linked to service if they have not approved the claim. They don't have to acknowledge the death if they have not approved the claim. As for the DOD who hold the records until they have been discharged, they do not report the suicides when they happen back home. Not that it is entirely their fault because some of the deaths are never linked to PTSD. Not that they would try to find out anyway.

There are hundreds of thousands of veterans who have committed suicide and no one knows their story or their number.

Several sites have tried to track these uncounted but it is nearly impossible to get a true figure. Reading the obituaries is a guessing game when you read "sudden death" or lengthy illness tied to a veteran.

When the deployed return home to bases across the country they are not reported as linked to Iraq or Afghanistan death counts except on the rare occasion pressure places them in a direct tie to deployment.

This is one of them

Soldier Who Killed Self Added to War Casualties
By Theola S. LabbeWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, May 30, 2005; Page A16
A U.S. soldier who committed suicide at Walter Reed Army Medical Center nearly two years ago has been added to the official Defense Department tally of Iraq war casualties.
The name of Army Master Sgt. James C. Coons, 35, was added last month to the more than 1,600 other "Fallen Warriors" of Operation Iraqi Freedom who are listed on a public Web site of the Defense Department, http://www.defendamerica.mil/ . A military casualty board ruled in December that Coons's suicide in July 2003, which came after he received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and was evacuated from Kuwait, should be considered a casualty of war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/29/AR2005052900918.html



Most are not counted. This is very rare. While we may read some of their stories in the Washington Post, Hartford Courant or other publications, putting all of them together is nearly impossible. I know because I tried for several months to do this. I thought it was important to have their stories told when I was putting together a suicide video Death Because They Served.
While we may hear names like Omvig, Barber, Shultz or Bowman, we hardly ever hear of the rest. It is almost as if by design.
3,845 Iraq
457 Afghanistan
4,302 with both as of today according to ICasualties. org


But these do not include those who have died after they returned home. They do not include the deaths of those who have died from their body wounds or by suicide because of their wounded minds.


Six years of Afghanistan and you would have to add in 1,000 by the VA counts for suicides alone. That adds in another 6,000. Then you would also have to add in those who fall outside of the VA system, which the VA estimates at 5,000 per year. That means we are talking about another 30,000. How many of them are connected to Iraq or Afghanistan, no one knows. The VA however could actually find out if their systems were up to date and they actually checked to see denied claims and the words, Iraq veteran or Afghanistan veteran.


Then there are the contractors. Oh, sure, they don't count because they only have equal numbers of troops in Iraq, but they are not military. There have been over a 1,000 of those. Again, those are just the ones we know about but how many of them died after they came home or after PTSD claimed their minds to the point where they committed suicide as well? Is anyone counting them?


It is even nearly impossible to find out how many veterans have PTSD because of how many claims the VA has tied up and not approved. Then add in the over 22,000 discharged from the DOD with the "personality disorder" label and you have an enormous shell game. Also worth noting at this point is that there are more out in the country with no clue what's wrong with them and they have yet to even apply for disability or seek treatment.

When you have only the families counting the life lost, it is easy to hide the true count of war casualties. We also have to remember what a "casualty" really means. It means that it is either a wound or a death. A price paid.

Main Entry: ca·su·al·ty
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'ka-zh&l-te, 'kazh-w&l-, 'ka-zh&-w&l-
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
1 archaic : CHANCE , FORTUNE
2 : serious or fatal accident : DISASTER
3 a : a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment, or capture or through being missing in action b : a person or thing injured, lost, or destroyed : VICTIM



When they die from depleted uranium, as with the case of Agent Orange, they are not counted in on the death count.

So as hard as most of us try, we cannot track or find all of them. We can only try. We do not trust the numbers the media comes up with because one week they will include figure putting together the DOD and the VA and other weeks they don't. One week they will report on information coming out from congressional testimony and another week, that testimony is forgotten. Even as bad as this is, we also never even try to count the number of family members dealing with the loss. I wonder what kind of numbers we would come up with then?

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

State Department denies treatment for PTSD

Envoys Resist Forced Iraq Duty
Top State Dept. Officials Face Angry Questions

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2007; Page A01

Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday challenged senior State Department officials in unusually blunt terms over a decision to order some of them to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs.

At a town hall meeting in the department's main auditorium attended by hundreds of Foreign Service officers, some of them criticized fundamental aspects of State's personnel policies in Iraq. They took issue with the size of the embassy -- the biggest in U.S. history -- and the inadequate training they received before being sent to serve in a war zone.

One woman said she returned from a tour in Basra with post-traumatic stress disorder only to find that the State Department would not authorize medical treatment.

Yesterday's internal dissension came amid rising public doubts about diplomatic progress in Iraq and congressional inquiries into the department's spending on the embassy and its management of private security contractors. Some participants asked how diplomacy could be practiced when the embassy itself, inside the fortified Green Zone, is under frequent fire and officials can travel outside only under heavy guard.

Service in Iraq is "a potential death sentence," said one man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran. "Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now," he said to sustained applause.
click post title for the rest

How can the State Department deny a claim for PTSD when they send them into a war zone? Even the Green Zone gets bombed! She was in Basra.

Depressed Vets Have Seven-Fold Higher Suicide Rate

Depressed Vets Have Seven-Fold Higher Suicide Rate

By Neil Osterweil, Senior Associate Editor, MedPage Today

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.November 01, 2007


ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 1 -- The veteran with the highest risk for suicide is a younger white man, according to a longitudinal study of VA data from 1999 to 2004.


The study of more than 800,000 U.S. veterans showed that in addition to being young and white, a history of substance abuse or hospitalization for psychiatric reasons in the year before a diagnosis of depression also put veterans at increased risk for suicide, reported Kara Zivin, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan, and colleagues, online in advance of publication in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.


Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was associated with a lower risk for suicide, but only in older veterans who had been diagnosed with depression, possibly because older soldiers are more likely to be receiving medical care already, the authors speculated.


Overall suicide rates among depressed veterans treated in the VA systems were seven- to eight-fold higher than among the general population, although they were similar to those of civilian men being treated for depression in a large managed-care cohort, the authors noted.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Depression/tb/7187

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Army Captain's Mom wins Above and Beyond Award for work in PTSD

Alumna ‘Above and Beyond Award’ finalist 10/31/07
In 2004, Molly VanDuser, AU class of 1999 of Fuquay Varina, NC,had a comfortable life and a thriving practice as a professional counselor in western New York State where she had lived for 45+ years. But she was moved deeply when her son, an Army captain, called from Afghanistan to say, “We need more counselors like you at Fort Bragg -- my guys have seen too much.”

Within two months, Molly rented out her home and moved to be near the base, armed with only three weeks’ of clothes, a computer, and her books on treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Molly worked briefly at Fort Bragg with the Victim’s Advocate Program and began volunteering as a guest speaker on mental health to help veterans and military families deal with PTSD. She then joined Webster University as an adjunct faculty member at the Pope Air Force Base satellite unit, where, today, she teaches graduate-level counseling students who are also military personnel.That began her efforts to train and mentor as many local therapists as she could to treat for trauma/PTSD. Molly presents regularly at regional workshops and at state and national conferences as an expert on combat stress. She has worked with the American Counseling Association as a member of their Governing Council and has chaired the Task Force to study and disseminate information on military family resiliency.In 2007 she formed a corporation, Peace of Mind, Inc., the first trauma treatment specialty clinic in her area to offer best practices in mental health.
http://www.alfred.edu/pressreleases/viewrelease.cfm?ID=4335

Molly VanDuser is a licensed professional counselor who earned a master’s degree in counselor education from Alfred University in 1999 after working for more than 15 years in the area of career counseling, human services and education. Practice areas have included college counseling centers; mental health agency and community settings; school-based counseling; employee assistance programs; private practice; and military installations.

Areas of expertise include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociation; Military Family Adjustment Issues; Childhood Sexual Abuse; Domestic Violence; Crisis and Disaster Counseling; and Stepfamily Dynamics. Molly has completed a 3-year term on the American Counseling Association’s Governing Council; has been published in professional journals; and has presented workshops nationally.

Currently, Ms. VanDuser is an adjunct professor at Webster University’s Pope Air Force Base’s graduate counseling program, teaching Research and Evaluation, and Professional Orientation and Ethics. She is also in private practice near Fort Bragg/Pope AFB.



PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS:


American Counseling Association (ACA)
American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA)
American Red Cross
Chi Sigma Iota International Honor Society for Counselors
EMDRIA
International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors (IAMFC)
Licensed Professional Counselors Association of North Carolina (LPCANC)
Lillington Chamber of Commerce
Mental Health Association of Cumberland County
National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC)
North Carolina Board of Licensed Professional Counselors (NCBLPC)
North Carolina Counseling Association (NCCA)
Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society
http://www.peace-of-mind-inc.com/index_files/Page530.htm

GFI Sponsors 'Stand Up For Heroes'

GFI Sponsors 'Stand Up For Heroes'

October 31, 2007: 11:30 AM EST

NEW YORK, October 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- GFI Group Inc. has taken 'Medal of Honor' sponsorship at next week's 'Stand Up For Heroes' - a benefit for the Bob Woodruff Family Fund.

The Bob Woodruff Family Fund helps injured members of the United States Armed Forces. Emphasis is placed on traumatic brain injury and combat stress injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder, sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan.

NBC's Conan O'Brien will host the 'Stand Up For Heroes' benefit, which will feature performances by Lewis Black, Bruce Springsteen and Robin Williams.

"The Bob Woodruff Fund does a marvelous job of helping injured American service men and women and GFI Group is proud to be supporting the Stand Up For Heroes benefit", said Colin Heffron, president of GFI.

The benefit is part of the New York Comedy Festival, which runs from November 6th to 11th.

Go to www.bobwoodrufffamilyfund.org for more on the Bob Woodruff Family Fund and nycomedyfestival.com for more on the New York Comedy Festival.

click post title for the rest

Soldier's suicide sparks inquiry in Australia


Captain Andrew Paljakka, an explosives expert with the army, took his own life after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. His death has prompted a military inquiry.
Photo: PA
About 1200 claims from the 16,000 veterans of the East Timor peacekeeping operation have been filed with Veterans Affairs for shell-shock and post-traumatic stress disorder.


Soldier's suicide sparks inquiry in Australia

Les Kennedy
November 1, 2007

HE SERVED in Afghanistan for just six weeks, but it was enough time to see things that would haunt Andrew Paljakka long after his tour of duty ended.

He told of having witnessed a child being raped, and of having to listen to the "gurgling sound" of a man he had shot slowly dying.

After Captain Paljakka, 27, returned to Australia last year, he began drinking heavily and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and severe depression. In February he was admitted to a private hospital in Richmond, NSW, but discharged himself. On February 26, he took his own life. He left a young widow.

His death may prove to be a watershed. Amid growing concern over the psychological impact of modern military service in war zones ranging from Afghanistan to East Timor, a military board of inquiry will sit privately in Sydney to examine whether his suicide may have occurred in the course of his service.

The NSW Coroner will await the outcome of the inquiry before deciding whether to hold an inquest, a spokesman said yesterday.

Captain Paljakka was the youngest army recruit to graduate as an officer from Duntroon Military College in Canberra, and went on to become an expert on major explosives............

..........His suicide follows that of another Afghanistan returnee, former SAS trooper Geffrey Gregg, who took his own life in Perth.

..........In August 2005, two years after being discharged from the Royal Australian Navy after rising to the rank of lieutenant commander, David Buck, 53, a Timor veteran, tried to get NSW police to shoot him dead by staging a robbery at the Umina Bowling Club with a fake bomb.
click post title for the rest

Soldiers in Iraq seek help in mental health

Soldiers in Iraq seek help in mental health
Attitudes toward treatment change
October 31, 2007

BY JAY PRICE

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- U.S. troops in Iraq, facing the stress of multiple, extended combat tours, are increasingly willing to seek mental health counseling while in the field, military medical experts say.

Combat-stress experts from the 785th Medical Company, an Army Reserve unit from Ft. Snelling, Minn., that originally deployed to Iraq in 2004 and redeployed in August after two years in the United States, say they've noticed a substantial change in attitudes toward mental health treatment, which has long been stigmatized.


"There hasn't been that challenge of having to go out and kind of sell ourselves to make sure people know that we're here and this is an important part of the combat experience for everybody," said Capt. Troy Fiesel, the company's operations officer.

"Now we've got people walking in and saying, 'Hey, I know I have got this issue,' or 'I had this problem last time and I need to keep working on it.' "

The willingness to seek help comes as the Pentagon pushes mental health care as some troops enter their third or fourth deployments in a war with no front lines and no safe rear areas and as the first tours of duty that were extended to 15 months grind to an end.
click post title for the rest

Who is counting PTSD suicides besides families?

A total of 147 troops have killed themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the wars, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center, which tracks casualties for the Pentagon.

Add the number of returning veterans and the finding is that at least 430 of the 1.5 million troops who have fought in the two wars have killed themselves over the past six years. And that doesn't include people like Gallagher's husband who committed suicide after their combat tours and while still in the military — a number the Pentagon says it doesn't track.

That compares with at least 4,227 U.S. military deaths overall since the wars started — 3,840 in Iraq and 387 in and around Afghanistan.


Iraq, Afghan Vets at Risk for Suicides
By KIMBERLY HEFLING – 9 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mary Gallagher did not get a knock at the door from a military chaplain with news of her Marine husband's death in a faraway place. Instead, the Iraq war veteran committed suicide eight months after returning home.

She is left wondering why.

It's a question shared by hundreds of families of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have taken their own lives in a homecoming suicide pattern of a magnitude that is just starting to emerge.

Preliminary Veterans Affairs Department research obtained by The Associated Press reveals for the first time that there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001 and the end of 2005.

The numbers, while not dramatically different from society as a whole, provide the first quantitative look at the toll on today's combat veterans and are reminiscent of the increased suicide risk among returning soldiers in the Vietnam era.

click post title for the rest

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Pot use to treat PTSD

PTSD and Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy -VS- Marijuana
by Dr. Phil Leveque

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - According to almost anyone suffering from PTSD, their pharmaceutical therapists, psychotherapists, psychologists and any of thousands of workers in this field admit if truthful that almost nothing tried thus far has worked.

The first written reference to PTSD was in 1900 B.C. by an Egyptian Army physician who called it "hysterical reaction to trauma."

This was reported nearly 4,000 years later by Veith in 1965. It is probable that it occurred in every war since, and it is also probable that the self-medicating treatment was alcohol, which is still used widely today.

The U.S. Civil War produced "soldiers disease" which was most likely PTSD plus opium addiction, and opiates are still used for PTSD today. The Spanish-American War gave us Cuba Libras (rum & lime juice) and World War I gave us Cognac, lots of French wine and probably lots of opiates.
click post title for the rest


One way to find out if it is good at treating PTSD is to go here for a study
Cannabis (drug)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cannabis, also known as marijuana[1] or ganja,[2] is a psychoactive product of the plant Cannabis sativa L. subsp. indica (= C. indica Lam.) and Cannabis sativa L. subsp. sativa. The herbal form of the drug consists of dried mature flowers and subtending leaves of pistillate ("female") plants. The resinous form, known as hashish,[3] consists primarily of glandular trichomes collected from the same plant material.


A dried flowered bud of the Cannabis sativa plant.The major biologically active chemical compound in cannabis is Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), commonly referred to as THC.

Humans have been consuming cannabis since prehistory,[4] although in the 20th century there was a rise in its use for recreational, religious or spiritual, and medicinal purposes. It is estimated that about four percent of the world's adult population use cannabis annually and 0.6 percent daily.[5] The possession, use, or sale of psychoactive cannabis products became illegal in most parts of the world in the early 20th century. Since then, some countries have intensified the enforcement of cannabis prohibition while others have reduced the priority of enforcement, almost to the point of legalization, as is the case in the Netherlands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)

But it looks like the Netherlands has already studied it and use it. It also looks like throughout history, a lot of other nations have used it, including our own.