Invisible Scars Affect 7,000 Birmingham Vets

Invisible Scars Affect 7,000 Birmingham Vets
by Mike McClanahan

CBS 42 News
2008-04-22 23:43:36.0

"We had quite a few Marines that committed suicide or killed their wives,"said Al Murphy. The Veterans Service Advocate knows how memories can bubble to the surface years after an incident and send someones life into a tail spin. He served during the Vietnam War, but was also part of 14 Cold War combat patrols in a submarine.

"Here I sit now and I was in that situation some years ago, that I was able to cock the pistol and pull the trigger, but due to actually to the doctors here at this Birmingham VA hospital are what really saved my life," said Al Murphy.

Medication and group therapy helped Murphy cope with his crisis. Now, he wants to encourage other veterans to seek help.

Dr. Bill Beidleman with the Birmingham VA Medical Center says advances in medical science have dramatically increased a soldier's odds of surviving physical wounds, but they have also increased the number of veterans living with psychological trauma.

"A lot people forget that this is a war where because of medical care and evacuation we're taking horribly injured people with just unbelievably severe injuries to their limbs, to their head, to their necks, to their torsos and they're living. They're going to be in Germany in 24 hours, they can be in the United States in 48 hours, they can be in surgery in a few hours, and they can be stabilized in minutes," said Dr. Beidleman.

Dr. Beidleman is the Assistant Chief of Mental Health at the VA and also Professor of Psychology at UAB. He said PTSD has had many names in its poorly understood past. "It was called war stress, combat neurosis, shell shock, anxiety disorder now it's called post traumatic stress disorder,"said Dr. Beidleman.

And he said for the first time many of the warriors returning from combat with PTSD are women.
(see below on this part)
"Female warriors, these are women who are in combat roles and they are firing weapons every day," said Dr. Bill Beidleman.

On top of that, doctors are also seeing an increase in veterans of other wars.

"They may be exposed to a lot of those stressors.They may see their best friends blown up, but yet they may come out of the service go right to work work for 30 years, some work for 40 years, retire, and at that point we see their PTSD symptoms get dramatically worse. And it's because they have time on their hands," said Dr. Beidleman.

But the good news is more veterans are seeking help.

"I think their is less stigma now. I think people are more likely to come forward and say not only have I been physically damaged by my service in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I've been psychologically damaged," said Dr. Bill Beidleman.

The number of new post traumatic stress disorder cases is expected to keep rising.

In response the Birmingham VA Medical Center has tripled its mental health staff from 30 to 90 people. And construction is underway on a new building dedicated solely to mental rehabilitation.



Beidleman adds that today there are off-the-record resources for veterans seeking mental health treatment.

"We do have places called veterans' readjustment centers which are not affiliated with the hospital. Nobody will ever see you walk in the hospital doors. Yet, you can go to these vet centers and you can be treated for PTSD, for depression, for mental health problems without having to officially sign up at this hospital for treatment," said Dr. Beidleman.
http://www.cbs42.com/news/local/18036194.html

Ok, I'm really wondering if Dr. Beidleman is aware of how many females came back from Vietnam with PTSD considering they did.

Am J Public Health. 1997 February; 87(2): 169–175.
Posttraumatic stress disorder among female Vietnam veterans: a causal model of etiology.
A Fontana, L S Schwartz, and R Rosenheck
Veterans Affairs Northeast Program Evaluation Center, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, West Haven, Conn 06516, USA.
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
AbstractOBJECTIVES: The Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars have awakened people to the realization that military service can be traumatizing for women as well as men. This study investigated the etiological roles of both war and sexual trauma in the development of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder among female Vietnam veterans. METHODS: Data from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study for 396 Vietnam theater women and 250 Vietnam era women were analyzed with structural equation modeling. RESULTS: An etiological model with highly satisfactory fit and parsimony was developed. Exposure to war trauma contributed to the probability of posttraumatic stress disorder in theater women, as did sexual trauma in both theater and era women. Lack of social support at the time of homecoming acted as a powerful mediator of trauma for both groups of women. CONCLUSIONS: Within the constraints and assumptions of causal modeling, there is evidence that both war trauma and sexual trauma are powerful contributors to the development of posttraumatic stress disorder among female Vietnam veterans.
Full text
Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version. Get a printable copy (PDF file) of the complete article (1.5M), or click on a page image below to browse page by page. Links to PubMed are also available for Selected References.

Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
Furey JA. Post-traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans. For some the war rages on. Am J Nurs. 1982 Nov;82(11):1694–1696. [PubMed]
Norman EM. Post-traumatic stress disorder in military nurses who served in Vietnam during the war years 1965-1973. Mil Med. 1988 May;153(5):238–242. [PubMed]
Fontana A, Rosenheck R. Posttraumatic stress disorder among Vietnam Theater Veterans. A causal model of etiology in a community sample. J Nerv Ment Dis. 1994 Dec;182(12):677–684. [PubMed]
Kessler RC, Sonnega A, Bromet E, Hughes M, Nelson CB. Posttraumatic stress disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1995 Dec;52(12):1048–1060. [PubMed]
Bentler PM. Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychol Bull. 1990 Mar;107(2):238–246. [PubMed]
Lebowitz L, Roth S. "I felt like a slut": the cultural context and women's response to being raped. J Trauma Stress. 1994 Jul;7(3):363–390. [PubMed]
True WR, Rice J, Eisen SA, Heath AC, Goldberg J, Lyons MJ, Nowak J. A twin study of genetic and environmental contributions to liability for posttraumatic stress symptoms. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1993 Apr;50(4):257–264. [PubMed]
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1380789

PTSD in female veterans is not new. It has not changed much since the first days women went to war and if you watched my video The Voice, Women At War, you know what I'm taling about. Is it harder on today's female warriors? No and it is one more reason the "experts" should have been paying attention to all of them! The only difference now is there are a lot more of them serving today. In other words, more to need help but less help for them to receive.