"He went to Fort Lewis to kill himself to prove a point,"

"He went to Fort Lewis to kill himself to prove a point,"
by
Chaplain Kathie

" 'Here I am. I was a soldier. You guys didn't help me.' "

Those were the words Josh Barber's widow told a reporter in the article below. That's the real issue here. For all the talk about what's being done, no one is talking about what does not work and may in fact cause more harm than good. What good does it do to tell wounded veterans we're doing this and we're doing that but they still don't get the help they need? As for the "programs" they have in place, some are good but some are bad but they still use them. We don't know why they do and the widows, well they only know they sent their husbands into combat expecting they would be taken care of if they were wounded but they end up with a stranger needing help that never seems to come in time.

If anyone other than the government said they had a program that would cut down the number of PTSD cases, attempted suicide and successful ones, would you really believe them without proof? Wouldn't there have to be years of clinical trails and scrutiny from psychologist and psychiatrists from around the world before they even began to offer the program?

RELEASE #2008-01-04-1 Jan. 4, 2008

‘BATTLEMIND’ PROGRAM SEEKS TO HELP SOLDIERS DEAL WITH COMBAT EXPERIENCES
By Susan Huseman
U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart Public Affairs Office
STUTTGART, Germany – Every Soldier headed to Iraq and Afghanistan receives“Battlemind” training designed to help him deal with combat experiences, but few know the science behind the program. Dr. Amy Adler, a senior research psychologist with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research's U.S. Army Medical Research Unit Europe visited Patch Barracks here to explain the support and intervention program to an audience of medical, mental health and family support professionals.

The Battlemind system includes separate pre-deployment training modules for Soldiers,unit leaders, health care providers and spouses. Psychological debriefings are given during deployment and upon redeployment. There are also a post-deployment module forspouses and several post-deployment modules for Soldiers. Not every Soldier who deploys is at risk for mental health problems; the main risk factor is the level of combat experienced, Adler said.

Army studies show the greater the combat exposure a Soldier encounters, the greater the risk for mental health problems, including post traumatic stress disorder, depression,anger and relationship problems. When Soldiers first return home, they may not notice any problems; sometimes it takes a few months for problems to develop.For those in the medical community, “Our challenge was how to develop interventions that can get at all these things,” Adler said. “How do you develop a mental health training (program) of some sort that's going to prevent that eventual increase over time?“We realized we needed to develop some kind of alternative,” Adler continued. “Therewas no existing mental health training that made sense for these sets of questions. It’s not like there was something ‘off-the-shelf’ in civilian literature that would begin to address this.”

Post-deployment health briefings didn’t specifically target Soldiers going into combat and coming back with adjustment challenges, so researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research began to define their objectives for a mental health training program. Adler said the team needed to develop something that was “going to make sense for different phases of the deployment cycle.”“For example,” she said, “the existing mental health brief (at the time) was the same for pre- and post-deployment. That doesn’t make sense. The challenges are different.”“Secondly,” she continued, “we wanted to make sure it was integrated. If we tell somebody something at (pre-deployment), we want to make sure whatever theme we’regoing for or concept we’re trying to communicate, it’s going to connect with the same information that we’re going to talk about at (post-deployment).”The result? “Battlemind,” a term used to describe combat readiness that the researchers felt was appropriate for the training they were designing.

Adler called it a Soldier’s inner strength to face fear and adversity in combat with courage, labeling it “resiliency.”The Battlemind system is built on findings from surveys and interviews given to Soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, many of the researchers themselves have deployed.The research team gathered Soldiers’ accounts of specific events and incidents, turning them into teaching tools that warriors can relate to. “Some of these stories tell more than any briefing ever could,” Adler said.The first Battlemind product was a mental health post-deployment briefing. It quickly became a training system supporting Soldiers and families across the seven phases of the deployment cycle.

As part of her presentation here, Adler discussed various challenges in developing arelevant pre-deployment mental health briefing for Soldiers.“You have 45 minutes -- maybe an hour -- to tell Soldiers, before they deploy to Iraq, something about mental health,” she said. "What are you going to tell them? You don’t want to sugar-coat it, but you don’t want to teach them a whole lot of new information right at a time when they are focused on the task ahead of them.”The researchers first chose to identify the reality of combat and deployment. It may sound rudimentary, but earlier research found that soldiers were not telling other Soldiers what to expect.

Soldiers didn’t want to sound as if they were bragging, Adler said. Pre-deployment Battlemind tells Soldiers what they are likely to see, to hear, to think and to feel while deployed by describing the worst-case scenario.For the post-deployment phase, Battlemind addresses safety concerns and relationship issues, normalizes combat-related mental health reactions and symptoms, and teachesSoldiers when they should seek mental health support for themselves or for their buddies.The researchers realized that this post-deployment briefing, the original Battlemind, was not enough. The Soldiers they talked to were raw, edgy and angry. Another training program, Battlemind II, was developed to be given three to six months into redeployment.The system reemphasizes normal reactions and symptoms related to combat and“Battlemind checks,” which are signs that indicate mental health support is needed.“If you’re still carrying a weapon around with you during the three- to six-month postdeployment phase; ... if you’re still looking around for snipers; if your sleep is still really messed up; these might be signs that your transition is not going smoothly,” she explained. “These are signs that you need to get help."

The problem with Battlemind is that it does not work because of the mixed message they are giving.

Psychiatr News May 4, 2007
Volume 42, Number 9, page 2
© 2007 American Psychiatric Association

Professional News


Combat Stress Should Be Considered Preventable, Manageable
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/9/2
Aaron Levin
The stresses of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan need to be seen in a context that is broader than just that of PTSD risk—a context of resiliency and recovery
Soldiers returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan often bear the psychic scars of battle, but a closer understanding of their experience can help reintegrate them into civilian life and avoid overpathologizing their conditions, said two clinicians who have studied and treated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

"We need to move from an obsession with PTSD to focus on combat stress, injury prevention, and management," said Charles Figley, Ph.D., a professor at Florida State University's College of Social Work and director of the university's Traumatology Institute and Psychosocial Stress Research Program

Figley spoke at a conference on mental health needs of returning soldiers and their families in Columbia, Mo., sponsored by the International Medical and Educational Trust at the University of Missouri.

Calling wartime trauma "combat stress injury" would place it in the same light as other war wounds: preventable and manageable, if sometimes irreversible, said Figley.

However, prevention and management must begin early, he said. Troops should acknowledge the likelihood and fact of injury beginning in boot camp. Before they are wounded, troops believe they are invulnerable and even after physical injury, often deny they are hurt. To a soldier, injury, whether physical or psychological, is a source of embarrassment. They have to move from denial to needing to talk about their injuries, said Figley. click link above for more

I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist but in a sense that makes me more qualified to understand what all this mumbo jumbo sounds like to average people. First they are giving the impression that PTSD can be "prevented" but they have yet to understand why some are wounded by PTSD and others walk away. (More on this later) So how can they claim it can be preventable if they don't even know the detail? It's either one out of three, which happens to be the percentage most professionals go by or one out of five, which gets tossed around a lot but no one seems to know exactly who gets signaled out when traumatic events strike. In order to prevent it they would have to prevent humans from being exposed to traumatic events all together.

The "manageable" part, yes that is possible but that comes with knowing what it is, being treated for it and finding the best way to live your life living with it. No small task but it is possible.

I need to stress here that Battlemind is not a total bust. It does have a lot of good points like trying to make sure they get the point across this is nothing to be ashamed of, along with some other points but the problem is this information comes after this part.

"Battlemind is the Soldier's inner strength to face fear and adversity with courage. Key components include:
Self confidence: taking calculated risks and handling challenges.
Mental toughness: overcoming obstacles or setbacks and maintaining positive thoughts during times of adversity and challenge."

They actually think that you can just make your mind tough enough to handle it! What kind of a message does this send? Do they really, really think that it's only those with weaker minds? After all this is what they are telling the troops at the same time they want to deliver the message there is nothing to be ashamed of.

I tell the story often of how one of the visits to the Orlando VA, I was talking to a couple of Iraq veterans. One was a Marine. He was a tough looking Marine until he began to cry and apologized for it. I had on my Chaplain shirt so he knew who he was talking to but he still felt he needed to apologize for showing emotion. When I told him that it was actually good for him to release some of his pain at that moment he told me that I didn't understand. "I'm a Marine. We're supposed to be tough enough to take it." It took a lot of talking before he understood that he did his duty and was tough enough to get through having his life and his buddies lives on the line until they were all out of danger before he even began to think of what was going on inside of him. This is what Battlemind does. It tells them their minds are not tough enough. This damages them more than anything else ever could and reinforces the idiotic attitude that only weak minded people crash. If this was the case then they'd all be crashing in combat and not after they have already returned home. How much tougher can these men and women get to be able to do that? Did the creators of Battlemind ever think of that?

The next part about Battlemind is the lack of time they are exposed to it before they go into combat. This is from VetsVoice.

BATTLEMIND: A Guide to PTSD for Military Members and their Spouses
by: Combat Infantry Bunny
Sat Dec 29, 2007 at 13:48:29 PM EST

.........From my understanding from those deployed, they are already requiring soldiers about to redeploy this, but my friend said it was just lumped in with all the other random redeployment briefings and no one really cared.

In addition, PTSD is a post-deployment thing and a refresher is sometimes necessary. Anyway, reading this brochure and explanations for PTSD really made sense, especially when I realized I pretty much fit every description re: PTSD behavior. Again, it made me realize I had made the right decision to seek help and I hope that everyone that reads this will forward it to any military personnel they know who may have PTSD and/or to their families who may be trying to understand what their soldier is going through, I think the following explains it very well:

Battlemind is the Soldier's inner strength to face fear and adversity with courage. Key components include:
• Self confidence: taking calculated risks and handling challenges.
• Mental toughness: overcoming obstacles or setbacks and maintaining
positive thoughts during times of adversity and challenge.

Batttlemind skills helped you survive in combat, but may
cause you problems if not adapted when you get home.

Every letter in B-A-T-T-L-E-M-I-N-D, refers to a different behavior, as shown below:

Buddies (Cohesion) vs. Withdrawal
Accountability vs. Controlling
Targeted Aggression vs. Inappropriate Aggression
Tactical Awareness vs. Hypervigilance
Lethally Armed vs. "Locked and Loaded" at Home
Emotional Control vs. Anger/Detachment
Mission Operational Security vs. Secretiveness
Individual Responsibility vs. Guilt
Non-defensive (combat) driving vs. Aggressive Driving
Discipline and Ordering vs. Conflict

While he does say that Battlemind does have some good points the first point made was that it was introduced lumped in with a bunch of other stuff. This was first reported by the BBC that uncovered only 11 1/2 minutes of Battlemind are provided when they arrive "in country" along with the two days of operational briefings they have to get through.

They will be left thinking they can toughen their minds enough to not have to face PTSD and that also means that if anyone does, they are not tough enough. This includes their buddies and some of the others in their unit they may not happen to like very much and if they should end up wounded by it, well then, they must not be tough enough either. This is why Battlemind does not work and as a matter of fact very well could contribute to the increase in suicides and attempted suicides.

Army suicides rise as time spent in combat increases
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
FORT LEWIS, Wash. — Josh Barber, former combat soldier, parked outside the Army hospital here one morning last August armed for war.

A cook at the dining facility, Barber sat in his truck wearing battle fatigues, earplugs and a camouflage hood on his head. He had an arsenal: seven loaded guns, nearly 1,000 rounds of ammunition, knives in his pockets. On the front seat, an AK-47had a bullet in the chamber.

The "smell of death" he experienced in Iraq continued to haunt him, his wife says. He was embittered about the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that crippled him, the Army's failure to treat it, and the strains the disorder put on his marriage.

Despite the firepower he brought with him, Barber, 31, took only one life that day. He killed himself with a shot to the head.

"He went to Fort Lewis to kill himself to prove a point," Kelly Barber says. " 'Here I am. I was a soldier. You guys didn't help me.' "

Barber's suicide is part of a larger story — the record number of soldiers and combat veterans who have killed themselves in recent years, at a time when the Pentagon has stretched deployments for combat troops to meet President Bush's security plans in Iraq. In 2007, the Army counted 115 suicides, the most since tracking began in 1980. By October 2008, that record had been surpassed with 117 soldier suicides. Final numbers for 2008 have not been released.

Suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans doubled from 52 in 2004 to 110 in 2006, the latest statistics available, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

And the suicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is outpacing the rate among civilians, a disturbing trend because the military screens troops for mental health issues and servicemembers typically are healthier than civilians, says Han Kang, a VA epidemiologist. click link for more

So why are they still using it and why are they still pushing it as if it has done any good at all? As I said, there are some really great points to this program but they come after that damage has already been done. Believe me, I'm no genius, so I don't have all the answers but if I can figure out what harm this program has done, this bunch of "egg heads" should have been able to look past their books and see into the people this would be delivered to. They are not genius material either. They are just men and women willing to lay down their lives for what this nation asks of them. They are common people just like most Americans and words do matter to them. You can't tell them in your first breathe that they can train their brain to be tough and then follow that up with "Oh by the way, if you don't, you may end up with PTSD and need help so here's what you do then." The damage is already done to them. After that they can repeat it until they are blue that PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of and they need to ask for help because it's already in there that it's their fault.