Fort Gordon Captain victim in murder-suicide

Murder victim was Army Reserve captain
The Augusta Chronicle
From staff reports
Monday, July 1, 2013

Capt. Angela Lee was signal officer in the Army Reserve assigned to the 15th Regimental Signal Brigade, the statement said. She worked as an operations officer for satellite communications supporting training at Fort Gordon.

Lee was killed by her by her husband, Timothy Lee, during an argument Sunday morning, the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday. Timothy Lee then turned the gun on himself and took his own life.

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"27 Things to Know” is only mostly true

Reading the list within "June 27 is PTSD Awareness Day by Rebecca Matteo, PhD, Web Content Manager, VA’s National Center for PTSD" it showed there is much they still have left to learn. While they got most of it right, here is what they got wrong. You can read from the link what they got right.

To mark PTSD Awareness Day, here is a list of “27 Things to Know” about post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sexual assault is more likely to result in symptoms of PTSD than are other types of trauma, including combat.
FALSE They also claim most sexual assaults are not reported. If they are not reported, then how would they know? In general sexual assaults are "more likely" because it happens more often in the general population than troops go into combat.

Social support is one of the greatest protective factors against developing PTSD after trauma.
FALSE if they do not feel comfortable talking about what happened, what is going on with them or worse, end up with a bad response, it does not help.

Research suggests that social support is an even more important resilience factor for women than men.
FALSE see answer above

PTSD does not cause someone to be violent.
FALSE If they have you on some medications, it can make you violent. Anger is a huge issue with veterans but once you make peace with others and yourself, anger usually subsides.

Many people recover completely from PTSD with treatment.
FALSE, it cannot be cured. It can be healed and you can live a better life. The sooner you get the proper help, the better the results. Vietnam veterans have proven it is never too late to get help but why suffer all those years when they know more now?

PTSD treatment has been shown to decrease suicidal ideation.
FALSE the majority of veteran suicides happened after they went for help. 57% committed suicide after seeking help a report from Senator Joe Donnelly when he presented his latest bill.

Research suggests that variations in a number of genes may be risk factors for developing PTSD after trauma.
FALSE it is not genetic. Few researchers have linked PTSD to genes so important to notice the "may be" since PTSD does not run in families but trauma does. There is a side of PTSD that is not talked about often enough and that is secondary PTSD caused by living with someone with PTSD. It can also hit therapists.

This one they got right but the DOD may not have.

People who have PTSD also have a higher risk for substance use disorders.
TRUE it is called self-medicating

Help not getting to veterans and military members who need it

Help not getting to veterans and military members who need it
WAVE News
By Janelle MacDonald
Posted: Jul 01, 2013

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Even as the U.S. military presence overseas begins to drop, the wounds of war are becoming increasingly present back at home.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says post-traumatic stress disorder poses a rising risk to our veterans. So many free resources are available out there to not only current military members and veterans, but also their families and friends. In too many instances, it's not getting to the people who need it most.

Sean Cassedy inspired his mother's new career and her new life's work.

"I don't know where this is going to take me but I know that I'll be working as a psychiatric nurse for the rest of my life," Carol Cassedy said.

Sean, a decorated marine who served several tours in Iraq, suffered wounds of war, as he told us in a 2007 interview.

"I had spider fractures through both my legs, I had a fractured pelvis, I had a fractured hip and gunshot wound to the right inner thigh," he said.

For two years his mother Carol was Sean's primary caregiver but there were wounds that would not heal.

"The physical ones healed relatively quickly but it was the mental, the psychogenic issues that we continued to struggle with," Carol said.

"I was just trying to work myself until I was exhausted and I couldn't think and then I'd go to sleep and I'd wake up repeat the cycle," Sean said in 2007.

Sean ended up taking his own life, one of the approximately one service member every hour to do so. Stories like his are the reasons that gatherings like this are so important.

"Part of the problem that we have is even if we have the services, many people don't know about them," said Kentucky First Lady Jane Beshear.

She and those who work at the Robley Rex Louisville V.A. Medical Center on Monday urged service members and their families to take the help that's out there: a veterans crisis line available 24 hours a day, free access to therapists and peer support to help veterans find available resources including mental health treatment.
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Congressman Miller missed a few things on his VA claims history lesson

"I want to show you how it has increased since then 327,275 in June of 04. In June of 08 it was 404,161 and 913,690 in June of 2012."

Congressman Miller missed a few things on his VA claims history lesson.

January 2007 Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have already filed 176,000 new disability claims, but have run into a VA backlog of more than 400,000 cases.

VBA's pending compensation and claims backlog stood at 816,211 as of January 2008, up 188,781 since 2004

April 2008 “Since 2006, the number of claims has grown 15 percent. The amount of time it takes to make decisions on disability claims is two to three year. On an average, it takes four years to get an appeals decision.”

June 2008 VA reported 879,291 claims were in backlog
July 2008 there was this report

The title of the House committee report sums up what happened: “Die or Give Up Trying: How Poor Contractor Performance, Government Mismanagement and the Erosion of Quality Controls Denied Thousands of Disabled Veterans Timely and Accurate Retroactive Retired Pay Awards.”

The report by the majority staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform domestic policy panel, released Tuesday, concluded that at least 28,283 disabled retirees were denied retroactive pay awards because rushed efforts to clear a huge backlog of claims led program administrators to stop doing quality assurance checks on the claims decisions.

And of the original 133,057 potentially eligible veterans, 8,763 died before their cases could be reviewed for retroactive payments, according to the report.

August 2008, there was this VA expects to receive almost 900,000 benefits claims this year, and has a backlog of about 400,000 claims. In mid-July, VA officials reported that they were beginning to make a dent in the backlog because they were hiring new claims workers and using better training and a more efficient claims management process.

And in March of 2009 there was this

A new report about Veterans Affairs Department employees squirreling away tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims is sparking fresh concerns that veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of money.

VA officials acknowledge further credibility problems based on a new report of a previously undisclosed 2007 incident in which workers at a Detroit regional office turned in 16,000 pieces of unprocessed mail and 717 documents turned up in New York in December during amnesty periods in which workers were promised no one would be penalized.

Since we didn't fix it back then and after it gets better this time, how long do you think it will take before it gets bad all over again?

CBS News reports on Vietnam veteran keeping bones as keepsake?

Some reporters have just lost their minds! I read this whole article and all I could think about was how terrible this story is. While as a doctor, the Vietnam veteran operated to save a North Vietnamese soldier's life. That part is good. Especially when they did not return the favor to our troops. The problem is what came afterwards. Other medics took the amputated arm and boiled off the flesh so he could keep it as a "keepsake" but it seems like a strange choice of words for an even stranger action.

U.S. doc returns Vietnamese veteran's amputated arm
CBS News
July 1, 2013


HANOI, VIETNAM An American doctor has arrived in Vietnam carrying an unlikely piece of luggage: the bones of an arm he amputated in 1966.

Dr. Sam Axelrad flew into the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, on Saturday from Houston. He was traveling through central Vietnam with his sons and two grandchildren Monday to meet the amputee, Nguyen Quang Hung, a former North Vietnamese soldier.

After Hung was shot in the arm by American troops, Axelrad, then a 27-year-old military doctor, amputated his infected right arm at a military hospital in Phu Cat in central Binh Dinh province. His medic colleagues boiled off the flesh, reconstructed the arm bones and gave them to him, he said.

Axelrad, now a urologist, said he brought the skeletal keepsake back to the United States as a reminder of doing a good deed. They sat in a military bag in Axelrad's closet for decades, and he didn't look at them because he didn't want to relive his wartime experiences, he said.
read more here

Victim of Fort Bliss Chaplain re-victimized by Army

Assault survivor talks of retaliation, re-victimization
Sex assault victim: 'I would never ... ever report again'
Army Times
By Joe Gould
Staff writer
Jul. 1, 2013

The victim of a Fort Bliss, Texas, chaplain who groped and licked her, Michelle Ten Eyck, is saying the Army mistreated her.

The 42-year-old Army contractor was vindicated in court last month, as her tormentor, Maj. Geoffrey Alleyne, pleaded guilty in a military court to charges that include assault and battery against a civilian employee on Fort Bliss, making a false official statement and conduct unbecoming an officer. He was sentenced to six months of confinement June 19.

“There was no protection for me in the system, and I was constantly revictimized,” Ten Eyck told Army Times in a tearful June 26 interview. “Plea deals are done, and we have no say.”

Ten Eyck said she received no comfort from the sentence, which she characterized as “a slap on the wrist.” The ordeal, she said, has left her emotionally and physically spent.

“I’m tired, because this took such a toll on me, on my family,” the mother of six said. “You can only be beat up so many times before you go crazy.”
read more here

Twisted priorities of the American public

Twisted priorities of the American public
Wounded Times Blog
Kathie Costos
July 1, 2013

I was just reading Fourth of July fireworks scrapped at some military bases due to budget cuts and got furious. Are fireworks fun to watch? Sure they are but people seem more upset about losing something fun for them than they are losing so many to suicide each year. They also ignore the fact that with the personnel cuts young men and women will end up losing the jobs they always wanted to do. It is almost as if the American public has forgotten what the celebration is all about.

JULY 4TH OVER THE YEARS
Today, Americans from coast to coast spend July Fourth celebrating our nation's independence and the freedoms we enjoy as a result. Over the years, many important events have occurred on this day. The following are some of the most historic.

1778 – From his headquarters in Brunswick, N.J., General George Washington directs his army to put "green boughs" in their hats, issues them a double allowance of rum and orders a Fourth of July artillery salute.

1781 – The first official state celebration occurs in Massachusetts.

1787 – John Quincy Adams celebrates July Fourth in Boston, where he hears an oration delivered at the Old Brick Meeting House.

1788 – July Fourth celebrations first become political as factions fight over the adoption of the Federal Constitution.

1791 – The only Fourth of July address ever made by George Washington takes place at Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

1798 – George Washington attends the celebration in Alexandria, Virginia, and dines with a large group of citizens and military officers of Fairfax County. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the keel of the 20-gun sloop of the war vessel Portsmouth is laid.

1800 – In New York City, the first local advertisements for fireworks appear. At the Mount Vernon Garden there, a display of "a model of General Washington's Mount Vernon home, 20 feet long by 24 feet high, illuminated by several hundred lamps" is presented. In Hanover, N.H., Dartmouth College student Daniel Webster gives his first Fourth of July oration in the town's meetinghouse.

1801 – The first public Fourth of July reception at the White House occurs.

1804 – The first Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi happens at Independence Creek, Idaho, and is celebrated by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

1805 – Boston has its first fireworks display.

1819 – An early and rare example of an Independence Day oration is presented (to a group of women) by a woman ("Mrs. Mead") on July 3 at Mossy Spring in Kentucky.

1821 – President James Monroe is ill, and the Executive Mansion is closed to the public. John Quincy Adams reads an original copy of the Declaration of Independence at a ceremony at the Capitol.

1825 – President John Q. Adams marches to the Capitol from the White House in a parade that includes a stage mounted on wheels, representing 24 states.

1826 – The 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is celebrated (referred to as the "Jubilee of Freedom" event). Two signers of the document, Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both die on this July 4.

It has always been about the independence of this nation obtained and retained by Patriots willing to give their lives for it. How can our "enjoyment" watching fireworks be more important than they are?

This was part of the long list of headlines last year around this time

Army Suicides Double From June to July
Military.com
by Richard Sisk
Aug 16, 2012

More U.S. soldiers killed themselves in Julythan were killed by the enemy in Afghanistan as the Army's monthly suicide rate for active duty troops more than doubled to a record high of 26.

Another 12 potential suicides occurred among Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers who were not on active duty. The total of 38 suicides in July surpassed the total of 32 soldiers killed in Afghanistan last month, the Army reported Thursday.

The suicide tally rose from 12 active-duty soldiers in June to 26 in July, while the numbers remained the same for the Reserves and National Guard – 12 in June and July.

The increases baffled and frustrated Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the Army's vice chief staff, just as they did his predecessor, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who struggled to erase the stigma in the military that sometimes attaches to soldiers who seek help for emotional problems.

"Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced in my 37 years in the Army," Austin, the former commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, said in a statement.

"And it's an enemy that's killing not just soldiers, but tens of thousands of Americans every year. That said, I do believe suicide is preventable," Austin said. "To combat it effectively will require sophisticated solutions aimed at helping individuals to build resiliency and strengthen their life coping skills."

The other services also faced increased rates of suicide and the same daunting task of finding methods of prevention.

Reminder about the headlines of this year talking about last year.

A more complete tally of U.S. military suicides last year: 524

So how did this happen? Because we cared more about what they could do for us than what they needed from us in return.

Fundraiser to help combat veterans reintegrate into families

Fundraiser to help combat veterans reintegrate into families, communities
The Spectrum.com
Written by
Brian Passey
June 30, 2013

Dr. Sid Young knows a thing or two about the psychology of war.

Not only is he a licensed psychologist and president of the Utah Psychological Association, he also spent 22 years as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. As a lieutenant colonel, he deployed in various campaigns from Desert Storm and Desert Shield in the 1990s to the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He’s also the clinical director for The Core Veteran Integration Program, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping war veterans with the often difficult process of returning home.

“We want the individuals to be able to come back to their core being after being involved in war,” he says.

The program is designed to help combat veterans reintegrate with themselves, their families and their communities as they make the transition back to civilian lifestyle. Young says this is especially important for those in the National Guard or in a reserve unit because they often don’t have the same resources found on a military post or base.

Young says this reintegration can be difficult because soldiers are often only focused on one mission at a time when deployed, but when they return home, they have to balance family, employment and other things like church responsibilities.
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PTSD I Grieve from Kathleen "Costos" DiCesare on Vimeo.

19 firefighters killed in Arizona blaze; 'Our entire crew was lost'

19 firefighters killed in Arizona blaze; 'Our entire crew was lost'
CNN
By Holly Yan
Mon July 1, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The 6,000-acre fire is the deadliest blaze for firefighters since the 9/11 attacks
It has destroyed more than 100 structures northwest of Phoenix and is still burning
19 members of a "hotshot" team from Prescott died in the wildfire
The team's job was to create a firebreak and get as close to the fire as safely possible
Are you near the Arizona wildfire? Please send your photos, videos and updates to iReport. But make safety your top priority.
Read more about this story from CNN affiliates KPHO, KTVK, KPNX and KNXV.

(CNN) -- They were part of an elite squad who confronted wildfires up close, setting up barriers to stop their destructive spread.

But the inferno blazing across central Arizona proved too much.

The 19 firefighters were killed Sunday while fighting the Yarnell Hill fire, northwest of Phoenix. It is the deadliest blaze for firefighters since the 9/11 attacks.

"Our entire crew was lost," Prescott Fire Chief Dan Fraijo told reporters Sunday night. "We just lost 19 of some of the finest people you'll ever meet. Right now, we're in crisis."

The tragedy decimated the Prescott Fire Department by about 20%. Fraijo said one member of the team was not with the other crew members and survived.
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Alarming trend of family members committing suicide

"Alarming trend of family members committing suicide" is the headline on a report from NBC. It is heartbreaking but far from alarming. Much like civilian family members unable to move past the grief of losing someone they loved, it happens. They take their own lives. This has more to do with the lack of grief counseling than it has to do with much else. Mental healthcare has not been taken seriously enough in much of what people in general suffer with. "Take a pill" leaves the pain waiting until the medication leaves the body. They need true therapy but too many do not get it. Even more do not seek it.

Survivor Suicides
Alarming trend of family members committing suicide after service members die in battle
NBC Washington
By Tisha Thompson and Rick Yarborough
Thursday, Jun 27, 2013

Bill and Christine Koch had it all.

“I would describe us as the all-American family," Bill said.

Good jobs. Three kids. Family vacations.

Christine Koch agreed. “I would do it all over again. We had a fairytale life.”

Until a year into their youngest son Steven's first deployment in Afghanistan. Christine said she can still remember how he admitted on the phone for the first time to her that he was scared with the increasing number of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

"He said, ‘I don't know how much longer my luck is going to hold out,’” Christine explained. “He actually said that to me and my heart sunk."
read more here

The "alarming" fact is the media should be investigating mental healthcare in the whole country. They should be investigating why military suicides have gone up along with veterans committing suicide. Why have military families been left out of all of this and why have they not been getting the help they need?