Patience Running Out for Spreaders of Misinformation on PTSD

Watchfires Only Work If You See the Light
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 24, 2015

When I was a kid and my parents tried to get me to understand something, when I finally got it, they said "Light dawns on Marblehead" not referring to the town in Massachusetts, but to my thick head.

There is a lot of talk about MILITARY TEENS AT HIGHER RISK FOR SUICIDE but while it may be new to the civilian world, it isn't' to us. None of this is. Vietnam veterans and their families set the watchfires decades ago. We didn't want this generation to go through what we did. So why hasn't the light dawned on everyone sitting at their keyboards feeling as if they just did something worthwhile?

As you can see in the following studies, there is nothing new other than congress increasing spending to "do something" without ever knowing if that something will make things better, or as we discovered, much worse.

Morbidity of Vietnam veterans
Suicide in Vietnam veterans’ children
Supplementary report no. 1
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2000

Total suicide rate

On average, between the years 1988 and 1997, children of Vietnam veterans committed suicide at a rate three times higher than children in the general population (Table 2). Pre 1988 rates have not been included because of the very small numbers of suicides (17 deaths between 1980 and 1987) and the corresponding small veterans’ children population at risk in these years. Substantial annual fluctuations have occurred in suicide rates for the veterans’ children population between 1988 and 1997, due to the relatively small numbers of deaths involved. However, no evidence of any change in pattern since 1988 is apparent.

There are several issues with the new reports attempting to usurp experiences of other veterans and their families. Especially when most of the research began because Vietnam veterans demanded it. They came home, pushed for someone to understand what combat did to them so they would not only take care of them and older veterans, but make damn sure it didn't happen to the next generation coming behind them. Can you understand what all these years of suffering, hearing promised made while the results proved no one really did much at all? Can you see what it puts them through when they see all their efforts leaving heartache and devastation instead of help ready and waiting for them?

They read about the arrests of younger veterans and remember when it happened to them and no one cared. As they sit in jail, they hear about some younger veterans, depending on where they live, being taken to veterans courts where they are given the opportunity and the resources to get help to heal instead of being locked behind bars.

As they read about younger veterans committing suicide, they remember how many of their own friends ended their battle the same way and far too many of the suicide survivors lament the fact it is still happening after decades of promises from Congress to save their lives.

Ok, so now it seems as if everyone is just repeating the same old story without adding in how long all of this has been going on. Here's some eye-openers for you because when it comes to all the "new" reports, they are all ghosts to them.

Australian veterans’ health: Vietnam
Researched and written by Maria Swyrydan
August 2012

60,000 Australian military personnel were sent to Vietnam to aid the United States between 1962 and 1972. The US had backed the South Vietnam Government against nationalists and communists who were fighting to re-unify Vietnam.

*National conscription was introduced specifically for this war and 15,381 of the serving soldiers were involuntary conscripts.

*A small number of Australian civilians also went, including 210 volunteer civilian nurses, medical staff and entertainers.

Other long-term studies have found that being the partner or child of a Vietnam veteran with PTSD predicts suffering from mental disorder, which can in turn affect grandchildren. The wives and partners of Vietnam veterans have been found to experience higher levels of PTSD themselves. Suicide levels among veterans’ children are up to three times higher than the rest of the Australian population.

A report from 2011 shows that not much has changed. While the report was published that year, notice the years the references come from.

TOGETHER WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL: CONNECTEDNESS, SUICIDE, AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE MILITARY
POLICY BRIEF ǀ JUNE 2011
ANTHONY FULGINITI
ERIC RICE

Mental health issues, particularly posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Major Depression, have been implicated in suicide in military populations. For instance, combat exposure has been identified as a risk factor for greater depression (Lapierre, Schwegler, and LaBauve, 2007), PTSD (Bullman and Kang, 1994; Elbogen, Beckham, Butterfield, Swartz, and Swanson, 2008), and substance abuse symptomatology (Hooper, Rona, Jones, Fear, Hull, and Wessely, 2008).

A recent RAND survey indicated that almost one-third of servicemembers returning from deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or satisfied the criteria for PTSD or Major Depression (Kuehn, 2009). PTSD has been found to be strongly associated with suicidal behavior (Kessler, 2000) and is a potent predictor of the trajectory from suicidal ideation to attempt (Nock, Hwang, Sampson, Kessler, Angermeyer, Beautrais, et. al., 2009).*

There are reports on incarcerated veterans committing suicide going back to 2009.
Suicide Among Incarcerated Veterans includes PTSD and TBI

Among those screening positive for PTSD, 70 percent reported witnessing death or injury, 56 percent reported being physically assaulted, 34 percent had experienced physical abuse as a child, 32 percent reported neglect as a child, 28 percent reported combat, and 16 percent reported being raped or sexually molested.

Little is also known about the frequency of TBI among incarcerated veterans; this may contribute to the unique qualities of this subpopulation of veterans as well, adding to disturbances in cognition, emotion, and behavior (impulsivity). Of note, forensic psychiatric populations feature relatively high rates of TBI,50 and survivors of TBI appear to face a heightened risk of suicide, which raises the disturbing possibility that there is a population of veterans incarcerated for crimes related to the cognitive and behavioral sequelae of TBIs sustained during military service and facing elevated suicide

Essays On The Vietnam Conflict The Three Walls Behind the Wall By Michael Kelley is also really good. That's the problem.

There are decades worth of reports but just like the database I work on all day, no database is any good if folks delete records already entered. The reports were done in the US but major research on children was done in Australia as one of the leaders.

So if you are among the hacks out there just spreading this kind of misinformation, without ever once considering what you're doing, remember that as much as you think you may know, your database has just been generated while ours is running out of storage and, frankly, patience.