The "Promise" the Silver Star and PTSD

The "Promise" the Silver Star and PTSD
by testvet6778
Mon Nov 19, 2007 at 09:20:01 AM PST
There are a lot of stories of PTSD out here and many of them affect me. This one touched me in a way none other has, and that speaks volumes to the writer Barbara Barrett of McClatchy News she is based in Washington DC it is a multi part story written over a week.

Her telling of the Sergeant at the heart of it, SFC Chad Stephens takes you from the deployment to the hell he is living with daily, today. Dealing with visits to parents of soldiers that were killed under his command, and the torment he has to deal with now. It is heart wrenching.

testvet6778's diary :: ::
I can NOT begin to do this story any justice you have to read it for yourselves. It will take a long time but you should read all the parts of it, it takes you thru the deployment, to Iraq, the battles in Iraq, the deaths of his men, his visits to their families, and how it effects his own family.

How the day he is awarded the Silver Star for heroism, the Armys second highest award, his own father dies a Korean war veteran.

It deals with how he drives more than 100 miles away to a Veterans center far from his home so no one will know he is seeking mental health help, how he ignores all the advice to go to AA meetings, fails to get prescriptions filled for anxiety drugs to help him deal with the nightmares, etc.

click post title for the rest

War death count not close or real

At Least 430 Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans Have Committed Suicide
by War Comes Home
Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 12:45:52 PM PDT
[Promoted from the Diaries by Meteor Blades.]

It's time to change of count of American war dead upward.

At least 430 American soldiers have committed suicide since returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that doesn't even include those who kill themselves before being discharged from the military or commit "suicide by cop."

Regardless, it's clear is that we need to change our count of casualties upward from 4,229 .U.S military deaths (3,842 in Iraq and 387 in Afghanistan) to closer to 5,000 -- possibly more when you consider those deaths that still haven't been counted.
go here for the rest
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/1/14399/0929

I love the Daily Kos but even they got this wrong. I understand it was a link to another site they picked up, but it does not even come close to the real numbers we are talking about.

Begin with the testimony from the VA

Confirming that figure is difficult, but the VA Inspector General, in a report last May, noted that Veterans Health Administration mental health officials estimate 1,000 suicides per year among veterans receiving care within VHA and as many as 5,000 per year among all living veterans.
http://www.townhall.com/news/us/2007/10/23/house_backs_plan_to_reduce_vet_suicides

There is a nice little game being played with the media. Since they cannot seem to understand that the DOD and the VA hold different records, tracking the deaths associated with Iraq and Afghanistan will not even come close unless they put the figures together.

Why do I say "not even close" when addressing the true death count? Because they will only put in the figures they have to. Some, as with the VA, do not list the numbers of Iraq or Afghanistan veterans linked to service if they have not approved the claim. They don't have to acknowledge the death if they have not approved the claim. As for the DOD who hold the records until they have been discharged, they do not report the suicides when they happen back home. Not that it is entirely their fault because some of the deaths are never linked to PTSD. Not that they would try to find out anyway.

There are hundreds of thousands of veterans who have committed suicide and no one knows their story or their number.

Several sites have tried to track these uncounted but it is nearly impossible to get a true figure. Reading the obituaries is a guessing game when you read "sudden death" or lengthy illness tied to a veteran.

When the deployed return home to bases across the country they are not reported as linked to Iraq or Afghanistan death counts except on the rare occasion pressure places them in a direct tie to deployment.

This is one of them

Soldier Who Killed Self Added to War Casualties
By Theola S. LabbeWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, May 30, 2005; Page A16
A U.S. soldier who committed suicide at Walter Reed Army Medical Center nearly two years ago has been added to the official Defense Department tally of Iraq war casualties.
The name of Army Master Sgt. James C. Coons, 35, was added last month to the more than 1,600 other "Fallen Warriors" of Operation Iraqi Freedom who are listed on a public Web site of the Defense Department, http://www.defendamerica.mil/ . A military casualty board ruled in December that Coons's suicide in July 2003, which came after he received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and was evacuated from Kuwait, should be considered a casualty of war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/29/AR2005052900918.html

Most are not counted. This is very rare. While we may read some of their stories in the Washington Post, Hartford Courant or other publications, putting all of them together is nearly impossible. I know because I tried for several months to do this. I thought it was important to have their stories told when I was putting together a suicide video Death Because They Served.
While we may hear names like Omvig, Barber, Shultz or Bowman, we hardly ever hear of the rest. It is almost as if by design.
3,845 Iraq
457 Afghanistan
4,302 with both as of today according to ICasualties. org

But these do not include those who have died after they returned home. They do not include the deaths of those who have died from their body wounds or by suicide because of their wounded minds.

Six years of Afghanistan and you would have to add in 1,000 by the VA counts for suicides alone. That adds in another 6,000. Then you would also have to add in those who fall outside of the VA system, which the VA estimates at 5,000 per year. That means we are talking about another 30,000. How many of them are connected to Iraq or Afghanistan, no one knows. The VA however could actually find out if their systems were up to date and they actually checked to see denied claims and the words, Iraq veteran or Afghanistan veteran.

Then there are the contractors. Oh, sure, they don't count because they only have equal numbers of troops in Iraq, but they are not military. There have been over a 1,000 of those. Again, those are just the ones we know about but how many of them died after they came home or after PTSD claimed their minds to the point where they committed suicide as well? Is anyone counting them?

It is even nearly impossible to find out how many veterans have PTSD because of how many claims the VA has tied up and not approved. Then add in the over 22,000 discharged from the DOD with the "personality disorder" label and you have an enormous shell game. Also worth noting at this point is that there are more out in the country with no clue what's wrong with them and they have yet to even apply for disability or seek treatment.

When you have only the families counting the life lost, it is easy to hide the true count of war casualties. We also have to remember what a "casualty" really means. It means that it is either a wound or a death. A price paid.

Main Entry: ca·su·al·ty
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'ka-zh&l-te, 'kazh-w&l-, 'ka-zh&-w&l-
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
1 archaic : CHANCE , FORTUNE
2 : serious or fatal accident : DISASTER
3 a : a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment, or capture or through being missing in action b : a person or thing injured, lost, or destroyed : VICTIM

When they die from depleted uranium, as with the case of Agent Orange, they are not counted in on the death count.

So as hard as most of us try, we cannot track or find all of them. We can only try. We do not trust the numbers the media comes up with because one week they will include figure putting together the DOD and the VA and other weeks they don't. One week they will report on information coming out from congressional testimony and another week, that testimony is forgotten. Even as bad as this is, we also never even try to count the number of family members dealing with the loss. I wonder what kind of numbers we would come up with then?

Kathie Costos

Namguardianangel@aol.com

http://www.namguardianangel.org/

http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/

http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington