Battlemind should be surrendered

Battlemind should be surrendered.
by
Kathie Costos

They started to talk about Battlemind in 2005. The post I did earlier along with all the news reports of PTSD and suicides prove Battlemind does not work. They must have pulled the video to Gilgamesh . The link no longer works. Were they humiliated into removing it? The odd thing is the coding on the following links still has gilgamesh in the link. Very odd.

Clinical practice guideline has http://www.pdhealth.mil/gilgamesh/training_briefs/1.Introduction.wmv and so on. The cartoon itself seems to be gone.




DoD/VA Post-Deployment Health Clinical Practice Guideline (PDH-CPG)
Training Table of Contents
PDH-CPG Training Briefs are seven condensed (7-12 minute) training modules produced by the DoD Deployment Health Clinical Center. These modules were designed to provide clinicians with guidance on implementation of the DoD/VA Post-Deployment Health Clinical Practice Guideline (PDH-CPG).(Produced by DoD Deployment Health Clinical Center)
Introduction
Primary Care Screening
Primary Care Evaluation
Clinical Management and Follow-up
Clinical Health Risk Communication
Coding and Documentation
Post-Deployment Health Assessment (PDHA)
These are pretty good. The problem is that Battlemind is still being used on the troops as well as their families. The death rates related to PTSD have gone up and so have the divorce rates.


This is the attitude of most of the professionals in the DOD and the VA who actually treat the men and women who serve this nation instead of those who come up with crap to act as if they do.

"Therefore, the number-one thing we can do to help vets is to prevent avoidance," said Phipps, who admitted that she's not offering a magic bullet. "They don't need to hear 'Get over it,'" she said. "We should be saying, 'Get through it.'" Kelly Phipps, Ph.D.: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/9/2

Operation Homefront ouit of Illinois did an online survey. The numbers are very telling of the hardships they go through.

Military Family Survey Results
Release of results from on-line survey regarding military families and deployment.Operation Homefront Illinois conducted an on-line survey from October 1 of 2007 until January 28, 2008 on our website

www.Operationhomefront.net/Illinois.

The purpose of this survey was to assess what the families of the military need and what is needed to support them. The survey was open to all members of the military and their families. The results of the survey highlighted several problems that military families have been going through for several years.

Highlights of the Survey
Forty six percent (46%) of the families felt that they were not given proper information regarding their loved ones deployment prior to them being deployed.

Forty-seven percent (47%) of the families communicated with their Servicemember via email or instant messenger on the internet.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of those surveyed were married 4 or more years.

Twenty eight percent (28%) stated that the deployment has had a significant or major impact on the child of a deployed Servicemember.

Eleven percent (11%) of the children of deployed Servicemembers required professional counseling to deal with the deployment.

Forty-seven percent (47%) of the families communicated with their deployed Servicemember via email or instant messenger on the internet.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of the families surveyed were not told about the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Ninety-two percent (92%) of the Servicemembers surveyed were not tested nor had no knowledge of being tested for PTSD.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of the Servicemembers surveyed either suffer from PTSD or are unsure if they suffer from PTSD.

Forty-one percent (41%) are not getting treatment for PTSD

Twenty-two percent (22%) were not able to find employment when coming off of Active Duty

Forty-six percent (46%) of the families surveyed find it difficult to impossible to attend a Family Assistance program.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) of the families and Servicemembers surveyed required financial assistance either during or after deployment.

Eighteen percent (18%) of deployed Servicemembers credit ratings went down as a result of being deployed.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) had issues with creditors

Comments from those who took the survey:

I believe that FRGs still exist primarily to "distract" wives and families during deployments. As such, they lose a very valuable opportunity to prepare families with knowledge and support to mitigate the effects of PTSD and other injuries. They also deny these families the valuable wisdom that a parent of a soldier may poses.

Deployment affects families very profoundly - and ways need to be found to lessen the negative impacts - and promote a positive caring environment among these groups with less emphasis on military needs and more emphasis on family needs. The military is correct in its assumption that they need to keep "strong" families behind their Servicemen and women - but they have in no way addressed what that looks like.

The "Battlemind" program dealing with PTSD and TBI is simplistic almost to the point of being insulting - dealing with two very complex issues as a simple "cause and effect" scenario. The psych care afforded to active duty military personnel is at best "sketchy" and at worst, dangerous.

Physicians are encouraged NOT to use best practices in dealing with these cases and rather than making decisions based on the best interest of a sick soldier - instead defer authority to the command making the primary interest "the mission". Unless and until these things change - I believe that our military readiness will continue to decline - as people "get out" to seek appropriate care for the seen and unseen wounds of war - that affect both our men and women in uniform and their families who love and care about them.

go here for more
http://www.polishnews.com/section,204,military-family-survey-results.html

So what good has come with programs funded with tax dollars like Gilgamesh and Battlemind produced? When will they get serious about all of this? Your guess is as good as mine and mine, is never. They know what redeployments do to the troops and the families, but they do it anyway. They know what the extended tours do to the troops and their families, but they do it anyway. They know just about everything they need to know but still have to "study" the problem instead of solving it. For all they know you'd think they would have been able to find solutions for some of this but they haven't.

Experts in their right mind know early treatment works best but as you can tell by the survey above it must be mostly lip service because it isn't being done. The press releases sound as if they are taking all of this seriously but then a few months down the road we find out that nothing has been accomplished on the kind of grand scale it was sold as. These are the reasons we are still losing more when they come back home that we do from a bullet or IED. The problem is in all likelihood we will keep burying more and more on our soil from the enemy they brought back with them then we do from the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan.