Suffering goes on and claims of learning fall flat

As hard as it is to get these men and women into treatment in the first place, what they get when they do seek it provides one more road block to healing for them. This is not the first time they have talked about the fact that when they finally go for help to heal from PTSD, they are provided with medications usually first and very little therapy if they receive any therapy at all.

One-third of veterans diagnosed with PTSD receive minimally adequate services
07 January, 2010 10:29:00 Kathlyn Stone

About 33 percent of U.S. military veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receive minimally adequate treatment, according to a study published in the January issue of Psychiatric Services.

Investigators at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Minneapolis, Minn., and the University of Minnesota analyzed records of 20,284 U.S. military veterans who had received a diagnosis of PTSD at Veterans Affairs facilities.

Approximately two-thirds of those diagnosed with PTSD, all of whom were out-patients, initiated treatment within the first six months after diagnosis. Fifty percent received a psychotropic medication, 39 percent received some counseling, and 64 percent received either medication or counseling.
read more here
http://www.fleshandstone.net/healthandsciencenews/1733.html

Admiral Mike Mullen wants to do a better job but even he admits they have no idea exactly how many men and women have committed suicide. They are doing a better job trying to find out but they are far from achieving full accountability. The truth is, it is not just a matter of the suspected suicides not being proven, or the fact that each branch of the military will do their own reporting, or the fact you have the additional National Guards and Reservists in the mix, or even the fact the VA does not account fully for all in the VA system, the truth is there is a dark hole they drop into between the military and the VA systems have the ability to track them at all.

And I don’t know how else to get at this except leadership – and figure out who’s at risk, understand it, train to it. Back to this study, I was also struck – and these were five of the leading individuals in our country on suicide from East Coast to West Coast who were leading this. And I was also struck at how from their perspective, how little national attention is paid to this issue and the tens of thousands of suicides every year; it doesn’t generate the kind of interest and effort to get at the causes across the board in America. And so this study is really part of what I would call really a landmark study upon which we are greatly dependent.

And these experts explained that they really hadn’t been able to do anything like this in the past. So I am encouraged by that as well. Like so many things, we’re trying to solve these very difficult problems while we’re in two conflicts. We’re trying to release the pressure, build resilience, understand how we identify at-risk people and then extend the web. Deb will comment here very shortly: We also find it extending into families and into children.

So how do you extend the web? How do we know as an institution? We don’t track suicides longer than 120 days after somebody is ETS. So how do we really know what’s happened to those who have served so well, who aren’t necessarily connected to the VA?
DoD/VA Suicide Prevention Conference

http://www.jcs.mil/speech.aspx?id=1314
As Delivered by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Mrs. Deborah Mullen , Hyatt Regency, Washington, D.C. Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What did they learn from other years if the numbers kept going up?

Veteran Suicides: How We Got The Numbers - CBS News
Nov 13, 2007 ... How The CBS News Investigative Unit Got The Statistics

Press Releases/Advisories - 2008 DoD Suicide Prevention ...
The 2008 Department of Defense Suicide Prevention Conference concluded April 24, 2008

DOD suicide prevention conference under way
Jan 13, 2009 ... DOD suicide prevention conference under way. More than 750 gather for the 2009 Department of Defense/Veterans Affairs

This is the part that should have all of us really concerned. Numbers rising with nothing being done to address it would make sense but the number still going up after so many attempts have been made to address suicides should have all of us demanding answers.

They didn't have the suicide prevention line but the numbers were lower.

Dr. Jan Kemp* , VA's National Suicide Prevention Coordinator, has been presented with the 2009 Federal Employee of the Year Award on September 23rd at the prestigious Service to America Medals annual gala at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kemp is being recognized for her role in the development of the Suicide Prevention Hotline in July of 2007.

Since its inception, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline has directly saved more than 5,000 lives from suicide and provided counseling for more than 185,000 Veterans and their loved ones at home and overseas.
http://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/

Many groups started their own suicide prevention efforts but the numbers went up anyway. So what's going on? While there are more veterans now than there were a couple of years ago as they tried to address this, there are also supposed to be more people working on this than ever before.

The DOD came out with programs to train the brains of the servicemen and women so they would not become wounded by PTSD and then they said the reason for the suicides was because of other problems before they had to admit it went far beyond a broken relationship. As bad as it is the numbers have gone up, what should give all of us a clue they don't know what to do is the number of graves filled and nearly filled because they still don't understand what works and what has been proven to have been failures.

Looking at history of warfare we had suicides of Vietnam veterans rise as well as the stunning figures coming out from Australia looking at the suicide rate of children of Vietnam veterans.

Massive Suicide Rate for Vietnam Veterans’ Children
Media Release - 7 August 2000
Today, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, the Hon Bruce Scott released the long-awaited report into the incidence of suicide in children of Vietnam Veterans. The report confirms that children of Vietnam veterans have three times the suicide rate of the general community.

The government responded in the May 2000 Budget after it was established in an earlier report released in December 1999 that rates of death by accident and suicide in children of Vietnam veterans were significantly elevated when compared with other Australians. The response included a 32.3 million dollar package over four years to expand existing programs and to provide additional support services mainly through the Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service.

http://www.vvaa.org.au/media12.htm

Over the years we've learned a lot when it comes to this and we knew there were more casualties after war than during it, but we have yet to find the key to stopping this from happening. If the DOD and the VA keep making the same mistakes they've been making since Vietnam, then there isn't much hope of the numbers going down. We've seen the reports as they claim they have learned from mistakes of the past but there is very little evidence they have learned the right lessons.

After Vietnam we knew that it would take the entire family being involved in the healing of not just the veteran but the family as a whole. Support groups and veterans centers opened their doors across the nation. Almost every VA hospital had support groups for the veterans and then even more for the spouses. They knew the families had to be included in on therapy because most of these men and women were reluctant to open up about what was really going on within their relationships. The spouse usually had to set the record straight that the veteran was still having nightmares and flashbacks, that they didn't talk, laugh or even come close to the way they were before. This we knew worked best along with the fact the spouse received some support to cope with the changes as well as help them to understand these changes and responses had nothing to do with them and the few responses that were in direct response to their own actions, well, they learned how to change the way they acted as well. Everyone was learning and working together to heal, now there are more and more sites online showing up trying to make a difference however, as we see the numbers keep going up on suicides and attempted suicides, drunk driving and drug related criminal issues so much so there has to be veterans courts established, divorces going up just as claims are rising, there should be a clear alarm bell sounding across the nation that while it all could be worse without these groups stepping up, it should be a lot lower if they were all working properly.

There is hope because they are trying but if they keep trying the same things that have been proven to not have worked, things that could work will never be tried. Time to step out of the box and instead of trying to make the brains of our troops change, it's time to change the approach they take when the evidence shows it does more harm than good.