Army Turns To Resilience Training Again?

The Army must have forgotten about almost half a million on this report since the news was just released this week 2 million have been deployed. The Army also seems to have forgotten that PTSD is not new, although it's been in the news. Eight years is mentioned in this article. Eight years of blah, blah, blah and billions of dollars to redo what was done over the last 30 years. At least the Army is now talking as if they get the message now.

Mind, body and spirit being addressed? Absolutely needed but do they understand why it is?

They don't seem to be able to understand why some end up attacked by PTSD and others manage to walk away. Maybe when they understand this, what sets some veterans apart, then they'll be able to figure out what to do to help them heal. Not too long ago, they still thought that men and women could train their brains to stop being human. Oh, well, looks like they still don't get this one either since resilience training and Battle Mind are both mentioned in this article as well.

If average people like me can figure this out, what's wrong with these "professionals" that they cannot figure out what most of us already know?

Trauma strikes humans and there is only one way to end up with PTSD. That's after a traumatic event. If you are human, you walk away from it one of two ways. Feeling you are one lucky son of a bitch and God was watching over you, or you were just abandoned-blamed-found guilty and PTSD is your punishment. Our brains are designed to make sense out of things but our brains only have what is already in them to use to understand situations beyond the "normal" world we were supposed to be living in.

Can they be made to be resilient? Sure if it all began when they were born. If all the dots all their lives were all connected in order without a smudge. They could be if their character was one of not caring about others very much, putting themselves first and only caring about their own needs. If it's later in life, trying to make them resilient has to be adapted to go with the baggage already on their backs.

The way the Army has been going at it, they begin with basically telling the troops if they end up with PTSD, it's their fault. This is not intentional but this is the way the message has been getting thru to them. Most of the other parts of the programs they have are good but try getting a young soldier, or even harder, a young Marine, to hear anything after "you can train your brain" to prevent PTSD. That tells them right there if they do are not tough enough to train their brain, then PTSD is because they are weak and it is their fault.

PTSD has nothing to do with strength of character or brain power. It has everything to do with who they are inside, in their soul, how they feel about others, what drives them, what caused them to find the courage within themselves they were willing to die for someone else. All this goes into the package the military is trying to "train" the brains of. It is compassion.

When they survive but others didn't they label it "survivors guilt" and this eats them deeper than just seeing the aftermath of the event itself.

When they have to take a life, this eats at them no matter how well they were prepared especially when it was an innocent person/civilian and non-combatant, carried even deeper when it was a child they ended up killing.

Witnessing these things will cut them and then added onto all of this is the fact no one knew who was the enemy no matter where they went. They come home and cannot trust anyone. The enemy is already inside of them buried in their memory.

They can heal but they can do it with therapy and medications but they have to be on the right medications and getting the right therapy or it's doing more harm than good.

If you needed brain surgery, would you go to a podiatrist? No, you'd see a neurosurgeon. Why is it then we expect the service men and women to get proper care from psychologists and psychiatrists with absolutely no background in PTSD? This happens all the time. It's one of the biggest reasons there are so many misdiagnosed cases and discharges. If they are looking for any other mental illness but are actually looking at PTSD, they'll find what they are looking for. The symptoms of PTSD are in most major mental illnesses. The key they need to use is to see if there were traumatic events in their lives or not.

They come home and if they are lucky enough to get into the VA, they are handed medications and depending on what part of the country they live in, most of the time, they are not getting any therapy at all. You cannot heal PTSD without therapy either by a member of the mental health community or a member of the clergy, as long as they are experts in this field. Otherwise more harm than good is done,

The other huge factor in all of this is the involvement of the family. If they are not included in all of this, they can make the situation worse instead of helping them heal. The families are usually left out of all treatment even though they are the ones living with these veterans 24/7. How can anyone expect them to be able to live in a household with all they have going on and leave the family out of all of it to work? It won't. Families need education and support to help the veteran heal.

Unless everything is all being done, taking into account there is no one size fits all solution, then we'll keep seeing the numbers of suicides rise just as we see the numbers of attempted suicides rise.

Army Turns To Resilience Training
By Kris Antonelli
© Stephens Media LLC 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 9:11 AM CST

As 30,000 troops prepare for deployment to Afghanistan, some for the second time, military officials stateside are working overtime to set up new mental health programs and resources to prevent and treat soldiers with a signature war injury: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

The latest in a long line of Army programs to deal with PTSD is called Resilience Training, by which soldiers are taught to alter negative thought patterns and challenge ingrained negative thought patterns that can trigger the illness. Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center will conduct the training with first-line sergeants who interact directly with new recruits.

“The time to train is not immediately before you are deployed,” says Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, who heads the new Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program, which includes resiliency training. “Drill sergeants are the key to this; they have a huge impact on new soldiers.”

An estimated 25 to 40 percent of the more than 1.6 million troops who deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan before December 2008 were suffering from some kind of psychological and neurological injuries associated with PTSD or Traumatic Brain Injury, according to a report posted by the National Council on Disability on its Web site.
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