"They just threw a bunch of pills at me" Marine said after seeking help for PTSD

"They just threw a bunch of pills at me," seems to happen a lot more than ever before. Stories like this below have a habit of giving the message that they will not receive what they need to get better and back on duty if that's what they want or onto other futures. We tell them to watch the backs of their brothers but then when they do, it does not always work.

Sloan cited a case in June in which a Marine alerted Camp Pendleton officials after seeing a disturbing message on a fellow Marine's Facebook page.

A Camp Pendleton spokesman, 1st Lt. Ken Kunze, said the Marine's command — not mental health providers — contacted the young man. He told them he was fine and was driving off base, heading home to Michigan.

The next day, the Marine was found dead, hanging from an observation tower on base, Kunze said. His family complained that not enough was done to prevent the suicide, and the Marine Corps is investigating the case.

We tell them to get help and they try to but the help they need just isn't there. We tell them to call the suicide prevention hotline and they do. Over 2 million calls into the phone lines but no one was wondering why so many would reach the point where they felt the need to call in the first place when we've been reading claims about how the Army, the Marines, the Air Force and the Navy have taken all of this seriously. We read about Congressional hearings and money pouring into programs to help the servicemen and women but what we don't see are results that work. Great programs sprout up across the country but then soon they turn into running out of funding or just too overloaded to do as much good.

Popular charities make claims they are taking care of the veterans, claiming to be working on PTSD but when you do some checking to see what they are actually doing, there isn't much being done at all other than tugging at our heartstrings so they get our money. Over the years I've actually asked supporters of some of the groups making claims so that I would get some specifics on their programs but either I didn't get an answer at all or it was too vague to really matter. Then there are the claims coming in with programs claiming they have the "cures" to PTSD which should leave all of us scratching our heads because if they really did have cures, then the military would be jumping all over them because after all, there are millions of dollars tied up in training the men and women they send into combat, millions more in equipment and they know if they are not healed, ready to go back on duty, it will cost them a lifetime of care.

Finding the answer to restoring mental health means a lot more than just doing the right thing.

Marines pour resources into mental health care
By KEVIN MAURER and JULIE WATSON
Associated Press Writers © 2010 The Associated Press
Aug. 25, 2010, 3:21PM

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — They have been in harm's way for years in two countries, in a branch of the military where toughness and self-reliance have been especially prized for generations. Now the Marines are struggling against an enemy that has entrenched itself over nearly a decade of war: mental illness.

Marines stressed from repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan are seeking help like never before, and their suicide rate is the highest in the military after doubling in just the past three years. Even with more mental-health professionals sent to bases to help, they have had trouble keeping up with demand.

There have been times when staff at Camp Lejeune's base hospital faced a choice of either staying with a Marine through lengthy treatment or leaving a case midstream to be able to keep up with the deluge of new patients.

"We couldn't see people as frequently as we wanted to and to see them as much as we wanted to would mean not getting another Marine an initial evaluation," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca Webster, the hospital's head of mental health.

More than 1,100 members of the armed forces killed themselves from 2005 to 2009, and suicides have been on the rise again this year. The sharpest increases have been in the Army and Marine Corps, the services most stretched by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One 23-year-old Marine recently treated for post traumatic stress disorder at Camp Lejeune said he felt processed by the system rather than properly treated. The Marine, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said that after his diagnosis he was relegated to short appointments during which mental health specialists did little more than check his dosages.

"They just threw a bunch of pills at me," he said.

Mike Sloan, a California veteran who counsels troubled Marines, said commanders should be doing more to reach out to Marines in trouble and get them help. He said the military still faces a huge challenge in changing a mindset that encourages troops to be tough and handle problems on their own.


"We people don't listen in the armed forces," said Sloan, who helped start a nonprofit veterans group in Oceanside, Calif., a community that borders Camp Pendleton. "I am positive combat stress and PTSD are caused by leadership failures."
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Marines pour resources into mental health care