Fort Carson may finally get it right on PTSD

It's been an up and down ride when posting about Fort Carson. First hope they know what they are doing, followed by more suicides, more arrests and more terrible reports about how much they've gotten wrong. Then hope returns when they appear to be trying at the very least.

It is not that they don't care, it has been more about what they don't know that has come back on them and the troops paid for it.

PTSD is not the end of a career. Generals have come out over the last year or so, talking about their own struggles. With the right kind of treatment and with treatment early, most can not only recover from PTSD, they can come out on the other side stronger. Even with all the time Vietnam veterans went without help, their lives are far from over when they are helped to heal, but some parts of their lives, some of their symptoms, cannot be reversed. They do learn how to cope with what remains and life, life is something to rejoice with as a survivor instead of exist in. None of this is hopeless. Once they understand it, they begin to heal partly because they stop beating themselves up over it.

Maybe Fort Carson is getting it right now but diagnosing them is just the first step. Healing them is the biggest challenge of all. As long as they are not trying to just medicate the "problem" away, then there is hope but if they are thinking inside the box using pills as the answer, they will have a much greater chance of replicating failure instead of saving lives.

Carson details efforts to uncover soldiers' scars of war

May 10, 2010 5:00 AM
LANCE BENZEL
THE GAZETTE
Most Fort Carson soldiers are greeted with fanfare as they return from war: cheering throngs of friends and relatives, children they haven’t seen in months, comrades who whisk them away for a night on the town.

But what happens when the homecoming euphoria fades?

As the 4th Brigade Combat Team trickles home from Afghanistan, Fort Carson says it is poised to treat the after-effects of the unit’s difficult year at war, from the depression, anxiety and nightmares that gradually afflict some returning soldiers to brain injuries that might have gone unrecognized.

Nearly 200 of the brigade’s 3,800 soldiers have arrived at Carson since late April. They will continue to return through June.

“I’m expecting to see a unit that’s been worked hard and put up wet,” said Col. John Powell, an Army physician who oversees the post’s Soldier Readiness Center, which provides mandatory medical screenings for soldiers who are about to deploy or just getting home.

Getting the soldiers the care they need is job No. 1 for the center’s healthcare providers, and signs from the warzone suggest they will be tested.

Nearly 50 of the brigade’s soldiers have died in the past year — the latest death was announced Friday — and health experts at the Soldier Readiness Center say those losses will reverberate long after the homecoming parties.

During preliminary assessments conducted in Afghanistan, approximately one-quarter of the brigade — about 920 soldiers — was flagged by unit healthcare providers to receive a closer-than-normal look after returning to post, Powell said. These at-risk soldiers were listed as “amber” under Fort Carson’s triage system, either because of concerns voiced by their commanders or because unit doctors identified risk factors that could be aggravated by sustained combat, such as a history of depression or turmoil at home.

An additional 21 soldiers were listed as “red,” meaning the Army considers them a potential danger to themselves or others.
read more here
http://www.gazette.com/articles/carson-98365-war-soldiers.html