Thursday, April 2, 2015

Can Some Tell Researchers Soldiers Are Not Rats?

Keeping this one really short since my head is about to just explode! PTSD Patients May Benefit From Blueberries; Blueberries deserve raspberries (Bronx Cheer)
"People who face death, serious injury, have become victims of sexual violence, or have witnessed their loved ones in the same situation, are at high risk of suffering PTSD. As a prolonged stress response, it is associated with an increase of stress and inflammation in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus — two critical regions of the brain responsible for how we process, remember, organize thoughts, and act."
"Researchers studied a group of rats with PTSD. Half were given a standard diet, while the other half had a diet consisting of two percent blueberry-enriched. A third group without PTSD was given standard diet without blueberries for the purposes of comparison."

Vietnam Veteran Survived Combat, Then Suicide Attempt After VA Didn't Help

Local Veteran no longer in ICU 
KRISTV.com
April 2, 2015

Raymond Harding suffers from PTSD, he is in the ICU after attempting suicide. (KRIS) 

CORPUS CHRISTI
The Vietnam Veteran who was hospitalized following a suicide attempt is no longer in the intensive care unit.

Hospital officials tell us Raymond Harding, a Vietnam veteran who suffers from PTSD, is listed in critical but stable condition.

Harding shot himself last Friday afternoon after.

His wife tells us, the VA failed to provide her husband the treatment he needed and had been requesting for a decade.
read more here


Reporters seem to have forgotten Vietnam veterans are the majority of the suicides reported across the country along with every other veteran over the age of 50.
"Veterans over the age of 50 who had entered the VA healthcare system made up about 78 percent of the total number of veterans who committed suicide"

But why would we want to understand that simple fact? Why would we want to understand that Vietnam veterans pushed for all the research done on PTSD in the 70's? Why understand that all these decades later, with all the things done to "help" them after combat, it is now worse than ever?

Because then we'd actually have to acknowledge that what works has been forgotten. The only reason that would happen is, there just wasn't enough money in it for people looking to cash in.

Simple really.

Peer support works best but all across the country programs offering veterans groups have been cut. Sure charities claim to be doing it, but when the veteran offering support understands very little, it is more like the blind leading the blind. Training is almost non-existent but it sounds good to say it is offered.

This is what veterans not only need, it is what they seek out. They want to fit back in and they do exactly that within other groups of veterans. It doesn't cost a lot of money and isn't something that would get efforts a lot of attention.

So the VA hands out drugs, then more drugs when those drugs weren't working good enough. Pharmaceutical companies make money. Then you have the politicians pushing for all the fixes, getting their names on bills at the same time they slam the VA so that no one actually thinks about how all of this was allowed to get this bad after decades of "fixing it" by both political sides.

Then they really don't want any of us to understand that in order to privatize the VA, they have to destroy it first. That is really the only way veterans and citizens will ever accept the notion that private for-profit medical groups would be better to spend more money on instead of just fixing the VA once and for all veterans.

If you want to sleep better at night and support the famous charities out there not taking care of all veterans, remember what you just read and then ask yourself what it will be like when the newer veterans are their age and no one cares.

OEF OIF Veteran Writes Book to Tell Daughters PTSD Pain Isn't Their Fault

Army veteran tackles PTSD struggles with children’s book
KSN.com
By NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
Published: April 1, 2015
“Sometimes life isn’t perfect, but we are a family, and we will stick together and love each other forever.”
(NBC) PTSD can feel like a private prison for our men and women returning from the battlefield, but one veteran found a way to bridge the gap that PTSD created between him and his children.

It’s not every night the author of your bedtime story reads it to you.

“Mom, why is dad so mad all the time?”

But this book was written by Reagan’s dad after he came back from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Dad was different when he came home from overseas.”

“It’s like dad always has a fire in his chest.”

Retired Army First Sergeant Seth Kastle is one of the 10 to 22 percent of recent vets who struggles with PTSD.

And he struggles to explain it to his girls.

Seth: “I want them to know they aren’t responsible for that.”

Hallie: “Do you think they feel responsible?

Seth: “I don’t know. I hope not. I looked for something to have this conversation with my kids and it wasn’t there.”

That’s the reason he wrote “Why is dad so mad”.
read more here



It's not everyday I start off crying but this story did it to me. This is very important because this Dad decided that he needed to tell explain what most adults don't understand. What PTSD does is not the fault of children or a spouse any more than it is the fault of the veteran.

By the time our daughter was born, I had been working on this for 6 years. I knew everything I needed to know so that she knew she was not responsible for any of this. It was easier for me but almost impossible for other Vietnam veterans families.

The bad days we had came flooding back into my mind and when I read this story, I cried knowing what it is like for this family and far too many more.

They don't need to know what happened in combat. They do need to know their parent is suffering because of what happened. They do not need to know all the complexities behind any of it. All they need to know is, they are loved and they are not to blame for any of this.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Military Suicides Up Again for 2014

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Release No: NR-106-15
March 31, 2015

Department of Defense Releases Fourth Quarter 2014 Suicide Information



Today, the Department of Defense released the Quarterly Suicide Report (QSR) for the fourth quarter of calendar year 2014.

The report summarizes confirmed suicide counts for all services and components during the months of October through December of 2014, and also includes total suicide counts for 2014, 2013 and 2012.
In the fourth quarter of 2014, there were 69 suicides among service members in the active component, 21 suicides among service members in the reserves, and 18 suicides among service members in the National Guard.
In calendar year 2014, there were 268 confirmed suicides in the active component, up slightly from 254 in 2013; 79 in the reserve, down from 86 in 2013; and 87 in the National Guard, down from 134.
The QSR is available here. Additional information is available on the Defense Suicide Prevention Office website at www.suicideoutreach.org.
Service members and their families who need support can reach out to the Military Crisis Line, which offers free and confidential support for those in crisis. The Military Crisis Line is staffed by caring, qualified responders from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, many who have served in the military themselves. Support is available through the crisis line phone number, online chat, and text-messaging services for all service members (active, National Guard and reserves) and veterans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year by visiting the Military Crisis Line website 

Female Veteran Committed Suicide In VA Parking Lot

Veteran commits suicide in VA parking lot 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Madasyn Czebiniak

April 1, 2015 A Plum woman shot herself in the head Monday afternoon in the parking lot of the H.J. Heinz campus of the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System in Aspinwall. 

The Allegheny County medical examiner’s office identified the victim as Michelle Langhorst, 31, and said the suicide took place at 1:37 p.m. in the parking lot at 1010 Delafield Road.
read more here

Air Force Song Book Includes Raping Women As Fun?

Air Force Songbook Again Cited, This Time in Sex Assault Lawsuit
Stars and Stripes
by Travis J. Tritten
Apr 01, 2015

WASHINGTON -- Sex assault victim advocates on Tuesday again pointed to an unofficial Air Force songbook with derogatory lyrics about women and gay airmen as a reason for filing a new lawsuit against the Defense Department.

The 130-page book was originally made public by an assault victim in 2012 and is stamped with the playing-cards logo of the 77th Fighter Squadron, which is known as the Gamblers and based at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. Despite an Air Force crackdown, advocates claimed too little was done and such songbooks are still being used by officers and commanders.

The lawsuit by sexual assault victims was filed in a Virginia federal court and calls for the DoD to stop using convening authorities to judge whether such cases go to court-martial. As the military struggles with an epidemic of sex assaults, the use of such authorities has brought widespread scrutiny from the public and some on Capitol Hill who say the practice is biased toward perpetrators.

The songbook is part of a continuing culture in the Air Force and military that glorifies sexual violence, said retired Air Force Col. Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group for military sex assault victims.

"This is something that is used by Air Force officers today," Christensen said. "These are the commanders who sing songs about raping women as fun."
read more here

Suicide Study Shows No Link to Rest of Reports

I am a researcher by nature as well as profession. Understand something. A researcher will find only what they are looking for and only see as much as they want to find. Simple as that.
When a headline screams,
Study Finds No Link Between Military Suicide Rate and Deployments
.....some folks won't even read the rest of the article. After all, they just found out all they wanted to know. They'd miss the second paragraph,
The findings are the latest in a series of studies prompted by a military suicide rate that has nearly doubled since 2005. The study’s authors and other researchers cautioned, however, that the findings do not rule out combat exposure as a reason for the increase in suicides, adding that more information was needed.
.....and then miss this part as well.
The suicide rate for troops deployed in support of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the study found, was only slightly higher than for troops who did not deploy to that area or remained stateside — 18.86 deaths versus 17.78 deaths per 100,000. The national average is about 13 deaths per 100,000.
They wouldn't know that suicides went up after "prevention efforts" were pushed across all branches and repeated even though the evidence showed more harm than good coming out of all of it. Yet again, some researchers didn't see it.

They didn't want to look at what tied everything all in together.

When we have state after state declaring the rate of veteran suicides were double the civilian population with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans triple their own peer rate, that says something right there especially when there are now more things being done to "prevent" them from happening.

Oh, almost forgot to mention that even as suicides went up, the attempted suicides also went up within the military and in the veterans community.

Army STARRS study busting myths on suicide from 2013
The coalition of researchers found a statistically significant rise in suicides following initial deployments. This finding contrasts sharply with a study featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Aug. 7 edition. Led by personnel at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego, that study found no association between deployments and increased suicide risk.

That's just not the case for the Army, as depicted by Army STARRS data, said Dr. Michael Schoenbaum, collaborating scientist at NIMH.

"Soldiers who have deployed at least once do have an elevated suicide rate compared with Soldiers who never deployed," Schoenbaum said.
COMBAT MOSs HIGHER RISK

Troops in combat jobs have a higher propensity to commit suicide, the Army study found, and that may help explain some differences in conclusions.

"We've identified some MOS (military occupational specialty) categories that are associated with elevated suicide risk," Schoenbaum said. Those military occupational specialties include artillery and infantry.

Willingness to take risks might be a factor in Soldiers choosing a combat MOS, proposed Dr. James Churchill, NIMH program officer.

"They might be risk-takers, willing to step out into the street and lead their platoon," Churchill said, adding that it could help them excel at their jobs. "But at the same time, it might put them at risk for other types of things as well."

These Soldiers have an elevated risk for both fatal accidents and suicides.

Pretty much meets with the report of Special Forces committing suicide at higher rates as well.

VA Ordered X-Ray on Missing Limb?

Heard about this story from a buddy of mine earlier today and my head exploded listening. Since I was in work, there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it but I promised to do some checking on this story when I got home.

As near as I can find, the Blaze did the original story mentioning the Glenn Beck Show.
Veteran Says the VA Did Something Absurd to His Artificial Leg to Prove He Was Actually an Amputee

Chad Fleming, a veteran who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, says the VA took an X-ray of his artificial leg to prove he was actually an amputee. Though they could have referenced his extensive medical history or just used their eyes, he said, they wasted precious resources taking an X-ray of a leg that “doesn’t exist.”

I read the story and seems to be missing a lot. Is it possible? Sure it is. Strange things like this happen all the time.

We've all heard stories on veterans going to a VA hospital then missing a perfectly fine limb because of errors but walking in with a missing one that had to be x-rayed just doesn't make sense. Did they need to get his prosthesis on film because they were replacing it? Not sure but I couldn't even find what hospital this happened at or when.

Hope some of the missing pieces get filled in (no pun intended) but considering how the press operates, they are probably happy with it the way it is.

Spokane Beauty School Makes Veterans Cry For Good Reason

Spokane beauty school cuts veteran's hair for free 
KREM.com
Whitney Ward
March 31, 2015
One of the instructors at Glen Dow helped launch a new policy at the teaching salon in 2014.

The salon now offers free haircuts to every veteran every single week.

"Sometimes we get vets in here that cry when they hear that we do the free haircuts thing," said Siobhan Brown, an instructor at the beauty school.

"And sometimes it makes you wonder how humbled you can be at times. Because we're thanking them. 

It's about time they get something for the service they've done."

Instructors said they give about 40 free haircuts each month to veterans since the policy began.
read more here
Iraq veteran with service dog gets his hair cut at Glen Dow in Spokane. 
 (Photo: KREM.com)

Michigan Veterans Not Aware of Benefits or Help

Thousands of Michigan veterans miss out on benefits
The Detroit News
Melissa Nann Burke
March 31, 2015
"I never really took the time to look into it because I was told you had to be a dismembered person in order to get these benefits," said Thomas Kline, a 66-year-old Vietnam veteran in Wayland, who recently began receiving compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Thomas Kline of Wayland, a 66-year-old veteran, didn’t realize he was eligible for VA benefits until last year. He consulted with a counselor in Grand Rapids, who guided him through the process.
(Photo: Katy Batdorff)
Hundreds of thousands of Michiganians who qualify for veteran benefits aren't using them, and many vets don't know they're eligible.

As a result, Michigan ranks among the bottom five states for federal spending per veteran. Veterans' benefits can include health care, monthly disability checks, life insurance, home loans and education through the GI bill. Benefits at the state and local levels include vocational training and the Michigan Veterans Trust Fund.

Only 22 percent of Michigan's estimated 660,800 veterans used their health benefits from the U.S. Veterans Administration in 2013 — the most recent year for which data is available. Roughly 13 percent of Michigan veterans received disability checks, according to federal data.

Officials are trying to reverse the trend by raising awareness of how and where veterans and their families can access the benefits they earned. Advocates have seen progress, they say, but funding, misinformation and reticence by veterans can be a challenge.
read more here