Scallywag PTSD Awareness Day

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 28, 2015

Yesterday was PTSD Awareness Day. I didn't post on it simply because there was nothing new learned about PTSD from last year of the year before or even back to the generations coming before this one.

The only thing we learned is there are a bunch of scallywags popping up all over the country raising funds to raise awareness about something they don't even understand.

http://www.roadkilltshirts.com/

scallywag - a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel

Some of them are actually doing more harm than good. Some of them have huge social media followings because they spend most of their days gaining an audience instead of gaining real knowledge of what they are supposed to be an expert on.

Others repeat what they read online as fact because they don't bother to actually learn the history of this scourge plaguing humanity.

scourge- a cause of affliction or calamity:

The "22 a day" claim is false but has been repeated over and over again. A Google search for that topic yields "About 6,440,000 results" but when you Google search the truth of veteran suicides double civilian population you get only "About 372,000 results."

Veteran Suicides Twice as High as Civilian Rates - News21 backhome.news21.com/article/suicide/ Aug 24, 2013 - Veterans are killing themselves at more than double the rate of the civilian population with about 49,000 taking their own lives between 2005 ...

Suicide rate for veterans far exceeds that of civilian population www.publicintegrity.org/.../suicide-rate-vetera... Center for Public Integrity Aug 30, 2013 - Veterans are killing themselves at more than double the rate of the civilian population with about 49,000 taking their own lives between 2005 ... You've visited this page many times. Last visit: 3/9/15

Male Veterans Have Double the Suicide Rate of Civilians www.nimh.nih.gov/.../male-veterans-h... National Institute of Mental Health Jun 12, 2007 - Male veterans in the general U.S. population are twice as likely as their civilian peers to die by suicide, a large study shows. Results of the ...

Veteran Suicides Apocalypse Now - Wounded Times woundedtimes.blogspot.com/2015/.../veteran-suicides-apocalypse-now.h... Jan 14, 2015 - The rate of veterans committing suicide is double the civilian population with the majority of them being over 50. Then there is the other figure of ... You've visited this page many times. Last visit: 6/13/15

Detailed study confirms high suicide rate among recent ... www.latimes.com/.../la-na-veteran-suicide-20150115-... Los Angeles Times Jan 18, 2015 - Recent veterans have committed suicide at a much higher rate than ... the rate among other civilians with similar demographic characteristics. You visited this page on 6/13/15.

News21: Veteran suicides twice as high as civilian rates ... cronkitenewsonline.com/.../news21-veteran-suicides-twice-as-high-as-civ... Sep 20, 2013 - Veterans are killing themselves at more than double the rate of the civilian population with about 49,000 taking their own lives between 2005 ...

Is the 22-Veterans-Per-Day Suicide Rate Reliable? | Dustin ... www.huffingtonpost.com/.../veteran-suicide-rate_b_... The Huffington Post Jan 5, 2015 - There's no doubt that the rising veteran suicide rate is one of the most serious ... status as a veteran, it is likely their death will be reported as a civilian one. ... "Suicide rates within the veteran population often were double and ...

Did you see how far back that result went? It was 2007 long before the VA report showed limited data from 21 states and offered a disclaimer about the data they collected. Reporters jumped on that number. They failed to provide the truth about how many veterans they were talking about as well as failure to mention the fact even if they discovered all the death certificates tied to military service and suicide, they would still not know all of them.

There are too many variables. Drug overdoses-accident or on purpose? Car accidents-accident, or on purpose or driven by a flashback? Veterans facing off with police and SWAT teams-tragic outcome to a veteran in crisis or planned suicide by cop?

With all the nonsense flooding the internet and social media sites, there is also great work being done. Folks telling the truth about realities of PTSD as well as the facts needing the most attention.

PTSD is not a mental illness. You were not born with it even though the moment of your birth was traumatic. The only way you ended up with PTSD was by surviving traumatic events. In other words, the trauma did it to you.

PTSD is not even an anxiety disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder -- or PTSD -- was considered to be a type of anxiety disorder in earlier versions of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

But in 2013, PTSD was reclassified as its own condition.

It describes a range of emotional reactions caused by exposure to either death or near-death circumstances (such as fires, floods, earthquakes, shootings, assault, automobile accidents, or wars) or to events that threaten one's own or another person's physical well-being. The traumatic event is re-experienced with fear of feelings of helplessness or horror and may appear in thoughts and dreams. Common behaviors include the following:

Avoiding activities, places, or people associated with the triggering event
Difficulty concentrating
Difficulty sleeping
Being hypervigilant (you closely watch your surroundings)
Feeling a general sense of doom and gloom with diminished emotions (such as loving feelings or aspirations for the future)

Symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, dizziness, fainting, and weakness should not be automatically attributed to anxiety and require evaluation by a doctor.

Aside from the event itself, too many researchers waste valuable time and funds studying stupidity.

They research animals and rodents by causing trauma and then see what works. What they never seem to factor in is what makes humans different. They forget about survivor's guilt and the process we go through between rational and emotional thought.

The DOD and VA instest billions on PTSD "prevention" but have failed to use the most common practice of Crisis Intervention right after the event.

practical-mindful of the results, usefulness, advantages or disadvantages, etc., of action or procedure.

It is not practical to send in crisis teams right after an IED explodes. Yet during the Korean War, that is exactly what happened, or damn near close to it. The problem is, what they were doing did not prevent PTSD but just got them to stuff it instead of treat it.

Treatment After the Vietnam War

Before the Vietnam War, psychiatric consensus held that soldiers who recovered from an episode of mental breakdown during combat would suffer no adverse long-term consequences. Psychiatric disability commencing after the war was believed to be related to preexisting conditions. As a consequence, military psychiatrists devoted relatively little attention to postwar psychiatric syndromes. A major shift in psychiatric interest in war-related psychiatric disability took place after the Vietnam War. Fifteen years after the United States withdrew from Vietnam, an epidemiological survey concluded that 480 000 (15%) of the 3.15 million Americans who had served in Vietnam were suffering from service-related PTSD. In addition, between one quarter and one third (nearly 1 million ex-service personnel) displayed symptoms of PTSD at one time or another.

As we've read over the last few years some have reverted back to blaming the veteran instead of the combat. After all it has to be them since the DOD had done everything they could for them,,,at least that was their excuse. They seem oblivious to the fact each recruit goes through physical and mental health evaluations right from the start. Either their testing is flawed or their prevention programs are. All 900 of them!

There are over 16 million combat veterans in this country. We don't talk about the others because social media is dominated by the OEF and OIF generation. What was learned over decades of research has been buried and what failed has been repeated. We've seen the deadly outcome as more and more is being done but less and less of what works has been provided.

Medications used were designed to level the chemicals of brains but they have been used as the answer-all take a pill and call it a day treatment. Too many professionals taking care of troops and veterans did not take specialized training on trauma, so they don't have a clue what to do. Far too many mistreat it as if it was some type of defect instead of looking at the survivors changed by traumatic events.

PTSD treatment has to be provided by trauma experts.  It has to include mind-body and spirit or they will continue to mistreat veterans like animals.

The other thing is that there has been fabulous work done on brain scans showing what trauma does and how far it spreads.

Following a trauma, we see the world through different eyes.

While many people intuitively agree with this statement, a new MRI study offers some hard evidence in support of this belief.

Remembering a near-plane crash they had experienced, a group of participants showed greater responses in brain regions involved in emotional memory — the amygdala, hippocampus, and midline frontal and posterior regions.
Trauma Changes Your Brain’s Response To New Events, Increasing Activity In Emotional Memory Regions, Medical Daily Jun 23, 2015

We need to question who is doing what and if what they are doing is working or not. How many bills do members of congress need with their names on it before they take a look back at what has already failed? How many times do they get to repeat mistakes of the past before they are held accountable for the rise in tragedies families are left with? How many more graves have to have a name carved in stone before someone says "enough" of doing something and it is time to get that something right?

We've been flooded with far too many gaining awareness for themselves after looking up terms on the internet and too many politicians getting more terms in office for achieving notoriety then avoiding accountability.

It is time to give our veterans the ammunition they need to fight this battle after war and that has to start with facts, not popular headlines.