Soldiers Hospitalized For Mental Illness More Than Any Other Reason

If you think what I do is depressing, you have the right idea. Day after day I sit hit reading reports on more and more suffering instead of healing, families falling apart instead of getting past their darkest days so they can live happier lives. We did. We did during a time when nothing was available on combat related PTSD and even less was done for the families. We are not that unique. While we've been married 29 years this month, some of our friends have been married 40 years and more. We did it because we understood that while it didn't matter if they were risking their lives for just a year or so, they would be a "veteran" for the rest of their lives.

I grew up with veterans. My Dad was a Korean War veteran and my uncles were WWII veterans. My husband served in Vietnam. His Dad and Uncles all served in WWII. His Dad's advice was "get over it" and move on with his life, much like the way he did. My Dad's advice was to go to the VA because he thought my husband showed signs of what he understood as "shell shock."

It keeps seeming as if we have taken one step forward and three backwards with some of the crap coming out on PTSD over the last 6 years. The truth is while too many want to dismiss all the research done in the last 40 years, what works has been avoided like the plague. It is all basic common sense and based on love. It is what Point Man International Ministries has done since 1984.

We do it without money but with plenty of time. We do it with knowledge that you can't learn in a text book. You have to live it. We do it privately however they want us to, via email, phone calls or in person when possible. We do it with the kind of love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness Christ talked about and we do move mountains with a lot more than a mustard seed of faith. We have an abundance and all too willing to share it. So why are we still reading about all of this going on?

Any clue what stuff like this does to us when we read more suffering and not enough healing?

"Of those diagnosed with adjustment disorder, for example, 35,000 had served in or near combat. By contrast, 9,800 soldiers hospitalized for the same diagnosis had been deployed one or more times. Similarly, more than half of those hospitalized for bipolar disorder, depression or substance or alcohol abuse had never deployed. PTSD-related hospitalizations were the only striking difference: only 22 percent had never been deployed while the remaining three-quarters had one to three deployments."

Soldiers Hospitalized For Mental Illness More Than Any Other Reason
Forbes
Rebecca Ruiz, Contributor
September 16, 2013

Here’s a shocker: Mental illness is the only illness or injury for which hospitalizations have increased significantly in the past decade, and those diagnoses account for more hospitalizations of service members than any other major ailment, according to a recent report (p.4).

The hospitalizations have increased swiftly since 2000; the figure rose by 87 percent from the start of the decade until 2011 before declining slightly in 2012. Overall, 159,000 active-duty service members were hospitalized during that time as they battled post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, adjustment disorder and alcohol and substance abuse. Some soldiers were hospitalized multiple times.
read more here

Any idea what it like for us to read all that while we know that in 2006 the Army study showed the redeployments increase the risk of PTSD by 50% and know they did nothing to limit the number of times the troops were sent back?

Any idea what it is like for us to read that half of the veterans needing help get it and 57% of the suicides happened after they got help?

Dillion Nashlund got "treatment and was on medications but months and months of darkness turned into a moment of finality for Dillion. He shot himself in the chest in his car on December 10th, 2012."

A veteran shot himself inside a public restroom at the Department of Veterans Affairs Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Medical Center in Temple on Monday (Sept 9, 2013 report) morning and was taken to Scott and White Hospital’s trauma unit, VA officials said.

Mike Little, Navy Reservists calls the veterans crisis line weekly after losing 9 friends to suicide.

Zachary L. Crawford, 26, was on his way home from an appointment at a Veterans Administration clinic with his parents when he jumped from the vehicle and died.

These reports aren't old. They just came out in the last week.

People can pretend all they want that all these reports are new, then maybe they'll be able to sleep better at night but more and more veterans won't be able to sleep. They won't be able to make peace with a part of their lives where much was asked of them.