Need for face to face counseling made clear in Texas

When you read this, consider how many are deployed with medication and no therapy at all, then you may be a bit closer to what we've been screaming about since the Hartford Courant did the report years ago.

Potent Mixture: Zoloft & A Rifle

LISA CHEDEKEL And MATTHEW KAUFFMAN

Hartford Courant
May 17, 2006

When Army Sgt. 1st Class Mark C. Warren was diagnosed with depression soon after his deployment to Iraq, a military doctor handed him a supply of the mood-altering drug Effexor.

Marine Pfc. Robert Allen Guy was given Zoloft to relieve the depression he developed in Iraq.

And Army Pfc. Melissa Hobart was dutifully taking the Celexa she was prescribed to ease the anxiety of being separated from her young daughter while in Baghdad.

All three were given antidepressants to help them make it through their tours of duty in Iraq - and all came home in coffins.
Potent Mixture: Zoloft and A Rifle

Maybe they should have paid attention in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, or maybe in 2007 when I posted how if we thought PTSD was bad, it was going to get a lot worse?

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Combat PTSD and the blissful ignorance of the nation
This is why I do what I do and the thousands of others around the world do the work we do. Yes, I said around the world. Trauma does not stop at the edge of a nation. It is a human illness and does not distinguish between social classes any more than it separates people by color. As bad as we think this is right now, we are not even close to reaching everyone needing help. Over thirty years later, we are still in the beginning stages of trying.

Sickening when you think of the research around the world going into PTSD and the dedication involved.I came late into working with veterans with PTSD. I've only been at this twenty five years. By the time I started the service organizations had published their research, the DOD was getting up to speed and the VA was recognizing they had a very serious problem on their hands. In all of this I've written many times of the frustration I feel seeing that we have not accomplished very much.All these years later, all the work being done to inform the public and attempt to end the stigma, the issues of PTSD are still strongly a deterrent.

People still to this day have no clue what PTSD is. The families don't and a lot of the GIs don't. Some think they will just get over it as time goes by. Too many are seeking help only to be trapped in long lines and then redeployed before their healing even comes close to beginning. They face the most horrible futures there is without help.Families to this day are falling apart as marriage collapse and children blame themselves for the way their parents are acting. Extended families repeat the same mistakes other generations of them made when it came to veterans being wounded. They support the end of a marriage instead of supporting the family as they try to cope with the combat wound. All this out of ignorance.

Now we see spouses taking on the battles of the combat veteran because they can no longer advocate for themselves. We see them having to cope with dealing with the effects of PTSD on their lives, fighting the government and then trying to find support for what they are going through. There is not enough available in terms of information and in terms of qualified councilors, psychologist and psychiatrists.

Hiring more becomes a problem because of the lack of space and all of this is due to the lack of planning for the hundreds of thousands they should have known would come.We see them facing life after the combat veteran commits suicide.

After Vietnam, they had ignorance as an excuse. Over thirty years later, this is no longer acceptable. We already knew too much to have failed so miserably.

Civilian mental health workers are inexperienced dealing with PTSD because no one ever pushed for them to focus on Post Traumatic Stress. The sense of urgency is not there because you do not hear reporters talking about this every night of the week any more than you hear them talking about Iraq or Afghanistan.

As the media fought over who would have the first interview with Paris Hilton following her release from jail, none of them even bothered to interview the families or the veterans dealing with this silent killer. Just goes to show where the priorities of this nation are when ignorance is bliss to the population and deadly to those who serve the nation.
Combat PTSD and the blissful ignorance of the nation

But why would they listen when they wanted to focus on the "mission" and getting them into Iraq and Afghanistan instead of caring about what comes after? They are not listening still. They give them pills to calm the nerves and flashbacks, pills to sleep and more to stay awake. These pills also come with warnings about being under the supervision of a doctor but they deploy for a year or more and don't have anyone watching over them. They come home and again, they are given more pills but no counseling. Most end up without a clue what PTSD is but they are told there is a pill for it. Just keeps getting worse for them at the same time the military keep telling us they get the message.

The former Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Dr. S. Ward Casscells, said, "It's the face-to-face counseling that's so important for preventing and treating PTSD."

North Texas Family Feeling The Effects Of PTSD
By Melissa Newton
NORTH TEXAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21)

Joel McCartney is a proud and patriotic father. But when his 22-year-old son, Joel Jr., returned home from Iraq this summer, McCartney realized something had changed.

"He has nightmares, he'll break out in a cold sweat," McCartney explained.

Army counselors diagnosed the North Texas soldier with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The anxiety disorder is triggered by being involved in or witness to a traumatic event and can have long-lasting effects.

"Intrusive memories of the event, whatever the trauma was, hyper arousal, always being on edge. If someone comes up behind you, you jump," psychologist Alina Suris said of PTSD symptoms. The doctor at the Dallas VA Hospital and UT Southwestern went on to say, "Nightmares are another common symptom of PTSD."

The disorder has become almost commonplace in our nation's military. "Folks are getting redeployed over and over and over," Suris said. "Research shows the more exposure you have to trauma; the more likely you are to get PTSD."

As a concerned father McCartney said, "When they [service people] come back, I don't think there is adequate care for our military personnel."
read more here
http://cbs11tv.com/health/post.traumatic.stress.2.1308792.html