PTSD Retired Police Officer and Veteran's Dogs Missing

Woman asks for help locating service dogs who assist her husband with PTSD
WMBF News
Friday, March 2nd 2018

CONWAY, SC (WMBF) – A Conway woman is asking for the public’s help in locating two lost service dogs that her husband relies on daily.

According to Tillman, her husband, Chris, is a retired police officer and Army veteran who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The registered service dogs help him to feel secure, she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Tillman at (843) 340-6611 day or night.
read more here

Yale Law School giving PTSD veterans fighting chance for justice

Suit Calls Navy Board Biased Against Veterans With PTSD
New York Times
Dave Philipps
March 2, 2018

The office that oversees discharges for the Navy and Marines, the Naval Discharge Review Board, rejects nearly 85 percent of requests for upgrades relating to PTSD, compared with 45 percent for the Army board.

Things got ugly for Cpl. Tyson Manker in Iraq. During a firefight in the confusion of the 2003 invasion, the 21-year-old Marine shot up a bus full of civilians. Later, during a chase, he dropped an Iraqi in a flowing white robe with a shot to the torso, only to discover afterward that he had hit a teenage girl. His squad beat detainees, and accidentally shot several other civilians.

After his deployment, Corporal Manker was kicked out of the Marine Corps with an other-than-honorable discharge — not for anything that happened in combat, but for smoking marijuana to try to quiet his nerves when he got home.

The military has increasingly acknowledged in recent years that there are tens of thousands of Corporal Mankers — troops whose brutal experiences left them with post-traumatic stress disorder, and who were then pushed out of the military for misconduct. Many were given other-than-honorable discharges that stripped them of veterans’ benefits.

The Army and Air Force have moved in recent years to make it easier for these veterans to get their discharges upgraded to honorable. But not the Marine Corps. read more here

Good time to be reminded of the fact, if they did not receive an "honorable discharge" and ended up committing suicide, they were not counted by anyone other than those who loved them!

And Yale fought for Army veterans too.

Veterans Clinic Files Nationwide Class-Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Army Veterans
Yale Law School
April 17, 2017

Two Army veterans, Steve Kennedy and Alicia Carson, filed a federal class-action lawsuit on Monday seeking relief for the thousands of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health conditions during their military service and received unfair less-than-Honorable discharges. The plaintiffs are represented by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic.

Since September 11, 2001, hundreds of thousands of veterans have received less-than-Honorable (“bad paper”) discharges imposing a lifetime stigma, impairing their employment prospects, and denying them access to critical government services, including the GI bill, mental health treatment, and disability benefits. Tens of thousands received these bad paper discharges as a result of misconduct attributable to conditions like PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

“As my PTSD became impossible to manage on my own, my commander told me that the only way I could receive treatment was by leaving the Army with a bad paper discharge,” said plaintiff Steve Kennedy, leader of the Connecticut chapter of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “Just like that, the Army wiped away years of distinguished service to my country and deemed it less than Honorable.”

Even worse, after their discharge the Army regularly denies these veterans a second chance, according to the lawsuit. While Congress created an agency called the Army Discharge Review Board (ADRB) to help veterans upgrade their unjustly harsh discharges after returning to civilian life, the clinic said the ADRB has systematically failed veterans for decades.
read more here

Veterans Fight PTSD with Tai Chi

To Control Pain, Battle PTSD And Fight Other Ills, Tennessee Vets Try Tai Chi
Nashville Public Radio
Blake Farmer
March 2, 2018

The VA acknowledges that there's very little proof that tai chi — or other alternative treatments like mindfulness and acupuncture — will do any good for PTSD or addiction, though there has been research into the benefits of tai chi related to quality of life among the elderly. Still, Aaron Grobengieser, who oversees alternative medicine in Murfreesboro, says the VA will attempt to track the effectiveness by the numbers.

Zibin Guo, a medical anthropology professor UT Chattanooga, developed a seated version of tai chi and launched at UTC.

Credit Blake Farmer / WPLN

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been desperate to cut down on the use of powerful pills. So the mammoth agency has taken a sharp turn toward alternative medicine. The thinking goes that even if it doesn’t cure a mental or physical ill, it can't hurt.

In Tennessee, treatment for veterans is beginning to include the ancient martial art of tai chi. Zibin Guo leads a weekly session at the Alvin C. York VA hospital in Murfreesboro. He guides vets through slow-motion poses as a Bluetooth speaker blares a classic tai chi soundtrack.

"Cloudy hands to the right, cloudy hands to the left," he tells the veterans, seated in wheelchairs. "Now we're going to open your arms, grab the wheels and 180-degree turn."
read more here

Someone needs to tell the VA the proof is in how they feel and if they look forward to doing it!!! They do!

Data Breach Roughly 21,426 Marine Corps Forces Reserve

Major data breach at Marine Forces Reserve impacts thousands
Marine Corps Times
Shawn Snow
February 28, 2018

The personal information of thousands of Marines, sailors and civilians, including bank account numbers, was compromised in a major data spillage emanating from U.S. Marine Corps Forces Reserve.

A U.S. Marine assigned to the cyber security technician course, Marine Corps Communications-Electronics School, work on an assignment at Marine Corps Base Twentynine Palms, California, March 15, 2017. (Lance Cpl. Jose Villalobosrocha/Marine Corps)

Roughly 21,426 people were impacted when an unencrypted email with an attachment containing personal confidential information was sent to the wrong email distribution list Monday morning.

The compromised attachment included highly sensitive data such as truncated social security numbers, bank electronic funds transfer and bank routing numbers, truncated credit card information, mailing address, residential address and emergency contact information, Maj. Andrew Aranda, spokesman for Marine Forces Reserve said in a command release.
read more here

VA’s Center for Women Veterans to highlight, connect and inform

VA’s Center for Women Veterans to highlight, connect and inform women Veterans through outreach and social media
VAntage Point
Department of Veterans Affairs
Danielle Corazza
February 28 2018

The women Veteran population is growing and VA is stepping up to meet the need through innovative programming and services specifically designed to serve women. But, once the programs are deployed, how do we get the word out? How do we ensure that women Veterans self-identify and take advantage of the benefits they’ve earned and deserve? And, how do we capture the sentiment and reality of what women Veterans are experiencing so we can raise those voices to drive effective policy?

My name is Danielle Corazza, and after 15 years serving Veterans from outside the government, I’m thrilled to be the first national outreach coordinator for VA’s Center for Women Veterans. As part of my new role and responsibilities, I’ll be working to expand the center’s outreach efforts through in-person events and digital outreach, primarily in the area of social media. Which leads me to some exciting news.

In conjunction with the Women Veteran Athlete Initiative kickoff and Women’s History Month, we are excited to announce that the Center for Women Veterans is launching women-Veteran dedicated social media channels on March 1. We will use the @VAWomenVets moniker for both Facebook and Twitter – like or follow us to stay informed.

These new accounts will give us greater flexibility in how women Veterans communicate with us and how we disseminate important news, research, events and program information to women Veterans and community stakeholders. All the information from across VA and the Veteran community curated for women Veterans, by women Veterans and in an easily accessible social media streaming format.

We hope you’ll follow us, retweet us and generally get involved in sharing your experiences and thoughts as we develop this new information pipeline. Feel free to send feedback and thoughts as the month progresses – there’s a stellar amount of information of all sorts hitting the presses soon, so stay tuned.
Women's History Month
Center for Women Veterans Facebook

Stolen Valor--Massachusetts History Teacher Made Up His Own

Mass. teacher admits to lying about military service, Purple Heart awards
FOX 25 News Boston
Updated: Mar 1, 2018

"I made up time in the Army. Over the intervening years I added details as people asked. I am deeply sorrowful for this and did not see a way out," he wrote.

TAUNTON, Mass. – A Taunton teacher whose students thought he was a decorated war hero has been fired after it was discovered he was not telling the truth.

Boston 25 News has learned that when 36-year-old Andrew Gaboury was hired to teach at Coyle Cassidy High School in Taunton four years ago he claimed to be a veteran with two Purple Hearts.

It was a big deal at the school and he was featured in the student newspaper in an article headlined "Gaboury goes from military to history classroom."

"I'm so pleased to have a man like Mr. Gaboury to be on our staff. He had a lot of experiences and was well educated. He even served for our country's military," Principal Kathleen St. Laurent said in that article.
read more here

Lebanon city councilman at-large, was found dead Thursday

Lebanon city councilman dies in apparent suicide, authorities say
Indy Star
Holly V Hays
March 1, 2018

Jeremy Lamar, Lebanon city councilman at-large, was found dead Thursday morning, Boone County officials confirm.

(Photo: Provided by the City of Lebanon)

Lamar's death is being investigated as a suicide, Boone County Sheriff's Deputy Ken Conley told IndyStar Thursday afternoon.

Authorities were called to a cemetery northeast of Lebanon around 11 a.m., where Lamar's body was found, Conley said. Investigators do not suspect foul play. A final ruling on cause and manner of death will be determined by the Boone County coroner's office.

The city confirmed Lamar's death, but did not elaborate on details, in a news release Thursday afternoon.
read more here

More BS on privatization of the VA!

More BS on privatization of the VA!

Vets groups want a meeting with Trump to sort out VA choice impasse

"Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tennessee, called on both sides of the argument to recognize that private and community care, when properly integrated with the VA's health care system, was in the best interests of veterans caught up in wait lists for appointments, or who need specialized treatment unavailable at the local VA."

NO IT WAS NOT!

Oh, well, then he must not know about what our healthcare looks like. I have to deal with what the rest of the population has to go through, and while members of Congress keep telling us how lousy our healthcare is, they want to dump disabled veterans into this mess? Are they out of their minds?

Did he bother to check the history of all this?

This should not even be debated! Fix the VA since veterans were disabled while putting their lives on the line every time Congress sent them to fight wars and risk their lives across the world! Did they forget it was their job to fix it or did they care more about breaking it to sell off the care these veterans were promised?

How much BS are we going to put up with?

Maybe someone should send him this!

Firefighters getting PTSD peer-support and stigma out of the way

Survey: Firefighters Struggling With Mental Health and PTSD
NECN
By Karen Hensel
Feb 28, 2018

“You guys all signed up for PTS, that’s what you did when you became a firefighter," Lavoie cautions. "You’re not going to get out of this without some level of PTS.”

They don’t want it to get to “the disorder part of it,” meaning PTSD. It’s why the Worcester Fire Department agreed to share their message with NBC 10 Boston Investigators

Firefighters across the country and in Massachusetts are struggling with mental health issues and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a study where NBC-owned stations partnered with the International Association of Firefighters to anonymously survey firefighters.

The groundbreaking survey gives insight into the everyday challenges facing firefighters.

Long-time Worcester, Massachusetts firefighters talked openly with the NBC10 Boston Investigators about the 1999 Cold Storage Warehouse fire, a subject which few have spoken about publicly. That is part of the issue and now, 18 years later, they face it head-on.

The Parkland, Florida school shooting had the nation gripped with emotions of grief and anger. The focus was initially on the families of the 17 killed and the mental health of the shooter. Unseen was the emotional toll on first responders.
read more here

Did you deliver early after deployment? You're not alone.

For pregnant soldiers, recent deployment linked to higher risk of premature delivery
Stanford Medicine
Erin Digitale
March 1, 2018

Giving birth soon after military deployment is linked to greater risk of premature delivery, a Stanford study of U.S. servicewomen found, but deployment history itself does not raise prematurity risk.

Female soldiers who give birth within six months of returning from military deployment face twice the risk of having a preterm baby as other active-duty servicewomen, a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has found.

The study, which examined 12,877 births to American soldiers from 2011-14, published online March 1 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. In total, 6.1 percent of births studied were premature, meaning the baby was born three or more weeks early. But among women who had recently returned from deployment, 11.7 percent of deliveries were premature. Women giving birth soon after deployment were, on average, younger than other military mothers, and with lower education and lower pay, the study found.
read more here