When it comes to PTSD help heal it or get out of the way!

One more case of "but"

Military Update: Treating mental combat wounds
BY TOM PHILPOTT Daily Press
June 16, 2008

Rep. Bob Filner, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, alleged on Wednesday that Bush administration officials were continuing to downplay the mental trauma and brain injuries suffered by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Filner, D-Calif., said an April RAND Corp. study — "Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery" — justified a 10-fold jump in the U.S. casualty count, compared with the figure of 33,000 American dead and wounded used by the Pentagon.

RAND researchers extrapolated from a survey they conducted of 1,965 vets to conclude that nearly 300,000 service members and vets of Iraq and Afghanistan were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder — PTSD — or major depression. Filner told the pair of researchers, who summarized their findings for his committee, that their work probably understated the problem.

"I personally think these are low estimates, just from my own studies," Filner said. "But if you take even the 300,000, (it's) 10 times the official casualty statistics from the Pentagon. Shouldn't this 300,000 be included?"

Lisa H. Jaycox, a senior behavioral scientist and clinical psychologist who co-directed the RAND study, embraced Filner's argument.

"Well, they are (suffering) an injury condition resulting from combat deployment, and so it's a different kind of casualty," Jaycox said, "but, yes, they are very important numbers."

The three-hour hearing also included testimony from retired Navy Rear Adm. Patrick W. Dunne, assistant secretary for policy and planning for the Veterans Benefits Administration.

At the same hearing, Michael L. Dominguez — principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness — said RAND gathered solid data from its survey but drew the wrong conclusions. The study, Dominguez said, "did not, and cannot, definitively say that there are 300,000 cases of clinically diagnosed cases" of PTSD or depression among vets who served in the two theaters.

Filner angrily interrupted him, telling Dominguez that RAND didn't say it showed 300,000 clinically diagnosed cases of PTSD or depression.

"It was an extrapolation to the possibility" of 300,000 cases, Filner said.

With more than 1.6 million U.S. service members having served in Iraq or Afghanistan, Dominguez said, a finding that 300,000 vets "have experienced some kind of mental health stress is very consistent with our data. And those people do need to be discovered (and) to get help."
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Over 30 years ago, when people who got into this before I did, there was very little known about PTSD and it had just received that title because Vietnam Veterans fought for it. Five years later, I got into this because of my husband. By then a lot more was known. One of the things was that there were 500,000 with PTSD and this came from a study funded by the DAV. This study was published in 1978 before most of the people being quoted as "experts" today were even born. This is not a new illness. This is not a changing illness because humans are pretty much still made up of all the same parts of their original design.

At the NAMI convention in Orlando this weekend, we heard a lot about a lot of people suffering. A great deal of the people attending were consumers, otherwise known as patients and their families. They sat in the conference rooms right next to people who have working on helping them ranging from simple advocates like me all the way up to psychiatrists and psychologist. Why would people like us get together for 4 days of talking? Simply to provide understanding, knowledge and support to keep trying to fight for all of them. I heard a lot of heartbreak from some of the families dealing with PTSD in their own families.

Every time there was a denial of what is going on, people got up and walked out of the room. Frankly I was wondering why some of them were there are all at the head of the room instead of sitting in back and listening. No one is such an expert they have nothing to learn about this. This is why having conferences is so important for anyone living with or working in mental health needs to participate in events like this whenever and wherever possible.

Throughout the years I've come up on many articles trying to diminish the magnitude of the suffering. Whenever this happened the only question in my mind was focused on why anyone would try to do this instead of listening, learning and being quiet until they knew the answers.

While I post about medications taken totally out of the report I read, I never discuss medication when helping veterans other than to tell them they may need it, to stop self-medicating and to talk to their doctor if they feel like their medication is not working. I have very little to offer on this subject because I am not a doctor and I just don't have enough knowledge to know I am helping instead of harming with the limited knowledge I do have on this subject. In other words, a little knowledge can do a lot of harm so I keep my mouth shut on this and won't step over the line using guess work.

Why can't "experts" do the same when it comes to PTSD? If they are experts with other issues, then they should stay where they are, focus on what they know and stop pretending to be experts on what they know very little about. Why can't they except history for what it is and stop trying to stand in the way of new data drawn from history? The numbers from the Rand Study did not shock me or surprise me at all because all I had to do was pay attention in the first place to the data from Vietnam veterans to know the Rand Study is a lot closer to reality than the VA and DOD numbers are. One more thing jumping out from all of this is the fact the VA and the DAV are jumping around like their hair is on fire trying to cope with all of this. If the numbers are only about 30,000, they would be fully capable of dealing with them otherwise. They are not so inept that 30,000 would totally overwhelm them.

Just open your eyes and know what real is and what an illusion is. If you don't know what the hell you are talking about then go sit in the back of the room and open your ears as well as your mind. Otherwise, you are standing in the way of healing and that is not helping!

The following are in response to some of the things I heard during the conference which caused me to walk out of the room.

FACT: Dr. Katz did conceal the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides. The emails did not just suddenly show up on Senator Akaka's desk. The Katz emails were discovered because of the law suit brought about by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth. The emails were what he sent because he was trying to cover up the data CBS found with their own research work. The emails were about harmful conditions attempting to be covered up after we already saw too many suicides.

FACT: Norma Perez email about not doing a diagnosis of PTSD, was what it was. No it was not a poor choice of words because of what she followed up this with and mentioned cost cutting and how they "didn't have time" to do a thorough diagnosis. This email did not suddenly show up but was discovered because of a Freedom Of Information Act filed by CREW and VoteVets.

While we are reading horrible stories about suicides and suffering of our troops and veterans, we would not be reading them if they were not happening. This is obvious! How could any of the service organizations be taking on the VA and the DOD if there were not problems that enabled them to be taken on? The DOD and the VA heads will defend everything they are doing no matter what harm is being done as long as they can get away with it. It's all as simple as that. If they were just simply mistaken on what they did, then why were they not willing to correct the harm done and leave it at that instead of defending what they did and their right to keep doing it?

Folks, this is really simple. If there is damage being done and no one is addressing it, the damage will continue and nothing will be fixed. We will keep reading more and more stories about suffering instead of less and less. This blog alone has over 2,000 posts on it and I doubt there are two hundred good stories on it. That's really sad when you consider that PTSD has been known for over 30 years and reported in humans since King David's time.




You can read more about NAMI here.

NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness
The mission of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill is "to eradicate mental illness and improve the quality of life