History has proven need for accountability on military suicides

History has proven need for accountability on military suicides
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 15, 2013

The numbers released on military suicides from last year were not the shocking part.

The numbers are from Air Force Times

Army 351-296=55
Navy 59-46=7
Air Force 59-55=4
Marines 48-45=3

The shocking part is no one has been held accountable since 2008 and no one ever will be unless the public demands it.

The headlines are not impressive at all considering every branch has also had a reduction in enlisted personnel and the rate of younger veterans committing suicide has gone up. 517 revised from 2012?

This is from 2009 with military leaders. House Armed Service Subcommittee held the hearing.



As you can see, the numbers went up after this hearing even though they made it sound as if they were doing everything possible to reduce suicides.

This is from 2010 with General Carroll Air Force Vice Chief of Staff



This is a year after training was pushed across the military. The number of Air Force Suicides, Post Traumatic Stress and TBI were increasing. As you can see, they increased even more after "addressing" the problems.

One more thing to consider when any military brass talks about how non-deployed forces committed suicide is the simple fact, civilians do not receive mental health evaluations but enlisted personnel do. They were tested before they enlisted. Either the testing is inadequate and cannot discover underlying psychological problems or the problems are in fact caused by the military.

Nice speeches did not save lives. Good intentions did not save lives. When the military decided to do more to prevent suicides and encourage troops to seek help for PTSD but ended up with these terrible results, they should have changed but they didn't. They just pushed the same programs harder.

JULY 2, 2010
Veterans and Military Mental Health
National Institute on Mental Health 2010 Convention Officials from the Defense and Veterans Departments took part in a discussion looking at the range of mental health and counseling services available to returning war veterans. Among the topics they addressed were evaluation methods, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and congressional initiatives to address to assist veterans. Psychiatric service dogs in the audience were pointed out. Following Colonel Ritchie’s remarks, Vietnam War veteran Ron Morton unexpectedly stepped up to the podium and spoke about soldiers committing suicide and the increase of veterans with AIDS and HIV. He argued that the Veterans Administration is not doing enough for veterans with PTSD. After the panelists' prepared remarks, they responded to audience members' questions.

"We have solutions we're working on" but after listening to Richie, it is clear their solutions did not work. Just look at the numbers above as a reminder.

Richie praised Dr. Ira Katz. Dr. Katz was hiding data that at the time there were 12,000 attempted suicides each year within the VA system. Another good reminder is that the VA cares for only a fraction of the veterans in this country. Less than 4 million out of almost 23 million veterans.

John Bradly of NAMI reminded the audience they had given Katz an award in 2009. That is the same year I resigned from NAMI Veterans Council. Dr. Katz was the focus of a lawsuit by Veterans for Common Sense and documents were uncovered by a Freedom of Information Request.

Sens. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Patty Murray of Washington state said Tuesday that Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's mental health director, withheld crucial information on the true suicide risk among veterans. "Dr. Katz's irresponsible actions have been a disservice to our veterans, and it is time for him to go," said Murray, a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "The No. 1 priority of the VA should be caring for our veterans, not covering up the truth."

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That report was from 2008.

Katz said during his address in 2010 that the VA takes care of 24 million veterans but the VA records showed there was less than 4 million receiving VA compensation. Katz's chart showed 7.8 million enrolled in VA healthcare with 5.2 million seen each year and 1.6 million with mental health diagnosis.

That is an important factor in attempting to discover how many veterans attempt suicides and how many are not being counted.

Was it a serious problem in 2008? Yes, like the story of Josh Barber,

FORT LEWIS, Wash. — Josh Barber, former combat soldier, parked outside the Army hospital here one morning last August armed for war.

A cook at the dining facility, Barber sat in his truck wearing battle fatigues, earplugs and a camouflage hood on his head. He had an arsenal: seven loaded guns, nearly 1,000 rounds of ammunition, knives in his pockets. On the front seat, an AK-47had a bullet in the chamber.

The "smell of death" he experienced in Iraq continued to haunt him, his wife says. He was embittered about the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that crippled him, the Army's failure to treat it, and the strains the disorder put on his marriage.

Despite the firepower he brought with him, Barber, 31, took only one life that day. He killed himself with a shot to the head.

"He went to Fort Lewis to kill himself to prove a point," Kelly Barber says. " 'Here I am. I was a soldier. You guys didn't help me.' "

Barber's suicide is part of a larger story — the record number of soldiers and combat veterans who have killed themselves in recent years, at a time when the Pentagon has stretched deployments for combat troops to meet President Bush's security plans in Iraq. In 2007, the Army counted 115 suicides, the most since tracking began in 1980. By October 2008, that record had been surpassed with 117 soldier suicides. Final numbers for 2008 have not been released.

This post would never end if I kept going but after tracking news reports from across the country since 2007, there is enough proof on Wounded Times that what the DOD has been doing has not helped keep them alive. It has caused too many to not want to live anymore.

Impact of VCS-VUFT Lawsuit against the VA

This was part of the reason I resigned from the NAMI Veterans Council. They gave Dr. Katz an award for what he was forced to do when it came to the suicides of our veterans.

This is from an online report about the NAMI Convention

Veterans Affairs Mental Health Program

by
Cole Buxbaum
There has been an increase in homelessness, criminalization, and suicide among veterans. 14% of service members are now suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) During the last few years 1.6 million veterans have had a psychiatric diagnosis. The Veterans Affairs Department has called for post-deployment periodic evaluations for all combat veterans.

Since 2006 the VA has hired over 4,000 new mental health practitioners to deal with the growing demands, and more new hires are planned. In late 2008, the VA issued a directive to all VA health care facilities to significantly restructure their mental health programs, establishing scores of new approaches to help veterans transition, reintegrate and recover.

The key speaker at this workshop was Ira Katz, M.D., director, Office of VA Mental Health, Washington, D. C.

This is from the convention

NAMI VETERANS COUNCIL DEDICATION TO VETERANS MENATL HEALTH CARE AWARD

Ira Katz, MD

Dr, Ira Katz left a comfortable position at the University of Pennsylvania and the VA Medical Center to join the Department of Veterans Affairs. Within two years of his arrival, members of Congress and the press were calling for his resignation or termination over the issues of rising suicides among veterans-especially veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In spite of blistering criticism, Dr. Katz worked tirelessly behind the scenes to launch the VA's first ever suicide prevention initiative, including a nationwide crisis call line in conjunction with SAMHSA that has intervened in thousands of potential suicides by veterans. While managing this delicate task and fending off critics, Dr. Katz spearheaded VA-wide approval of a dramatic reform of its mental health programs to embrace recovery principles. All veterans receiving mental health care in the VA are better served today because of the work of Dr. Ira Katz. We are proud to honor him for his dedication to improving the mental health and the mental health care of veterans.

"Proud" is what they were but the fact is, none of what happened with the VA and steps taking would have happened without these law suits and Congress getting invovled. If the NAMI Veteran's Council is so uninformed on what the facts were behind all of this they awarded one of the people responsible for the harm done, then we have to ask what else they have gotten wrong. What excuse can they have for not knowing? What can they say to the families of our veterans when they were so hopeless they committed suicide at the same time Katz was denying it was happening on national TV? These are not average citizens unable to know what's going on. They are supposed to be experts on what they are talking about. So how is it they didn't know what was behind all of this? How is it that they gave an award to Katz after all of this?

I cannot tell you how truly disgusted I am with this. I had such high hopes for the Veterans Council believing they were putting veterans first and knew as much about what was going on as I did. After all, they are the "experts" and were supposed to know. Yet given the fact I would receive emails with links to reports days after I had read them and posted them, as if it was big news and they never seemed to manage to send out links to the really big stories, that should have given me a clue they didn't really know much of what they should have know and been informing others on.

Again, I still believe in NAMI but after this award to Katz, I don't believe the Veteran's Council is about doing what is best for the veterans. If they were really interested in the truth then they would have given an award to Veterans for Common Sense or Veterans United for truth instead because their efforts were behind all of it.

Impact of VCS-VUFT Lawsuit
Two years ago Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth made history with our lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs.
We are tired of the endless delays caused by VA, including the fact that VA medical centers turned away suicidal veterans seeking mental healthcare - a dire moral outrage during a time our Nation fights two wars.While some at VA called our suit a nuisance, and VA tried in vain to have the suit dismissed, our lawsuit provided several victories for veterans.
The court ruled VA was harming our veterans with unreasonable delays in healthcare and benefits.

The court forced VA to release internal documents showing VA concealed a terrible and tragic suicide epidemic and even sought to block access to healthcare and disability benefits for veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.Your contributions makes a difference!

Please set up a monthly gift to VCS today so we can keep the heat on VA to improve access to timely services for our veterans.

Be a Part of History - Watch Hearing and Support VCS
This Wednesday at 9:30 AM, our attorneys in our case, Gordon Erspamer and Morrison & Foerster and Sid Wolinsky at Disability Rights Advocates, appear before the Ninth District Court of Appeals in San Francisco. C-SPAN will carry the case live.

Read our appeal brief here. How important is this lawsuit? Two widely respected veterans organizations, the Vietnam Veterans of America and Swords to Plowshares, wrote the Appeals Court and agreed that VCS and VUFT were right and that the current crisis demands court intervention to overhaul and reform VA.

How historic is this case?

Last week, Gordon Erspamer was presented with the prestigious pro bono attorney of the year award by the American Bar Association.

You can view a video about Gordon here.

After VCS and VUFT filed our lawsuit, VA set up a toll-free suicide prevention hotline at 800-273-TALK. So far, 150,000 distraught veterans have called, and VA performed more than 3,200 rescues, including a soldier on active duty in Iraq.

Your support keeps the needs of veterans front and center in the news.

Please donate to VCS today so we can improve how VA takes care of our veterans. Sincerely,

Paul Sullivan

Executive Director

Veterans for Common Sense

Dr. Ira Katz award slaps veterans

I still believe in NAMI but I no longer believe in the NAMI Veterans Council. The decision to award Dr. Ira Katz for suicide prevention is akin to awarding a vampire for testing blood. Katz, as reported here countless times, was refusing to admit there was a problem with veterans committing suicide. Everything he did, what they are awarding him for, he was forced to do. The Veterans Council is giving him an award for what it took an act of Congress to do!

This is one of the stories about a soldier that committed suicide.

The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce
text and photos by Ashley Gilbertson, from the Virginia Quarterly Review

Noah Pierce’s headstone gives his date of death as July 26, 2007, though his family feels certain he died the night before, when, at age 23, he took a handgun and shot himself in the head. No one is sure what pushed him to it. He said in his suicide note it was impotence—one possible side effect of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was “the snowflake that toppled the iceberg,” he wrote. But it could have been the memory of the Iraqi child he crushed under his Bradley. It could have been the unarmed man he shot point-blank in the forehead during a house-to-house raid, or the friend he tried madly to gather into a plastic bag after he had been blown to bits by a roadside bomb, or it could have been the doctor he killed at a checkpoint.



Noah grew up in Sparta, Minnesota, a town of fewer than 1,000 on the outskirts of the Quad Cities—Mountain Iron, Virginia, Eveleth, and Gilbert—on the Mesabi Iron Range. Discovered on the heels of the Civil War, the range’s ore deposit is the largest in the United States. Around the clock, deep metallic groans come out of the ground and freight trains barrel through, horns screeching. Locals are proud of their hardworking, hard-drinking heritage. There are more than 20 bars on Eveleth’s half-mile-long main street. On a typical night last May, loudspeakers affixed to lampposts blared John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and Harleys thundered through town. One bar closed early, when a drunk got thrown through the front window.

Noah was a quiet, sensitive kid. He kept a tight circle of friends and passed time with them building tree forts and playing army in the woods. Noah’s biological father separated from Noah’s mother shortly after she became pregnant, but Tom Softich, Noah’s stepfather, treated the thin-skinned boy as his own. When Noah turned 6, Tom took him hunting, and by 13 Noah had his own high-powered rifle. For practice, they went rabbit shooting together at a small clearing a mile from their house. It became such a regular place to find Noah that his family and friends began referring to the clearing simply as “the spot.”

When Noah went missing in July 2007, after a harrowing year adjusting to home following two tours in Iraq, police ordered a countywide search. His friend Ryan Nelson thought he might know where to look. When he pulled up to the spot, he immediately recognized Noah’s truck. Inside, Ryan found his friend slumped over the bench seat, his head blown apart, the gun in his right hand. Half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Special Blend lay on the passenger seat, and beer cans were strewn about. On the dash lay Noah’s photo IDs; he had stabbed each photo through the face. And on the floorboard was the scrawled, rambling suicide note. It was his final attempt to explain the horrors he had seen—and committed.



In April 2008, Ira R. Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, became embroiled in scandal when a memo surfaced in which he instructed members of his staff to suppress the results of an internal investigation into the number of veterans attempting suicide. Based on their surveys, along with tabulations from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control, Katz estimated that between 550 and 650 veterans were committing suicide each month. It pains Noah’s family and friends that the Pentagon will never add him—nor the thousands like him—to the official tally of 4,000-plus war dead.

Likewise, PTSD and minor traumatic brain injuries (MTBI) are excluded from the count of 50,000 severe combat wounds—even though PTSD and MTBI often have far greater long-term health effects than bullet wounds or even lost limbs. A study by the RAND Corporation found that approximately 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans—one in five—suffer from depression or stress disorders and another 320,000 suffer from MTBIs that place them at a higher risk for depression and stress disorders.

Noah’s mother, Cheryl Softich, believes her son’s death could have been avoided had he received counseling. Statistically, veterans outside the VA system are four times more likely to attempt suicide than those within the system. Now Cheryl’s mission is to have a clause inserted into every standard military contract that would require veterans to visit a therapist every two weeks of the first year after a combat deployment. “Soldiers are taught to follow orders,” she says. “It needs to be mandatory. Noah was an excellent soldier, and if it was mandatory, he would have gone faithfully to every appointment.”
http://www.utne.com/print-article.aspx?id=25408

Yet this is what the Veterans Council released for the award to Katz

NAMI Veterans Council Dedication To Veterans Mental Health Care Award

Ira Katz, MD

Dr. Ira Katz left a comfortable position at the University of Pennsylvania and the VA Medical Center in Philadelphia to join the Department of Veterans Affairs. Within two years of his arrival, members of Congress and the press were calling for his resignation or termination over the issue of rising suicides among veterans, especially veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In spite of blistering criticism, Dr. Katz worked tirelessly behind the scenes to launch the VA's first ever suicide prevention initiative, including a nation wide crisis call line in conjunction with SAMHSA that has intervened in thousands of potential suicides by veterans. While managing this delicate task and fending off critics, Dr. Katz spearheaded VA-wide approval of a dramatic reform of its mental health programs to embrace recovery principles. All veterans receiving mental healthcare in the VA are better served today because of the work of Dr. Ira Katz. We are proud to honor him for his dedication to improving the mental health and the mental health care of veterans.
NAMI Convention

I am so furious over this that yesterday I resigned from the Veterans Council. I can no longer participate or support any group so oblivious to the facts, they saw fit to award Katz for this. NAMI giving award to Dr. Katz for being forced to change?

When you read the stories about other people in NAMI and how much they are doing for the veterans, this is an appalling decision. Matt Kuntz is a member of NAMI. He has done more for the troops and the National Guard, in turn, for the veterans as well. We tend to forget that when the members of the National Guard come back they are once again citizens and fall into the veteran role. This is what Matt Kuntz did.

Thursday, April 9, 2009
Support the The Post Deployment Health Assessment Act of 2009
Matt Kuntz, the keynote speaker at our upcoming Annual Education Conference, has asked us to take a few minutes to contact our Congressional Representatives and Senators to ask them to support comprehensive mental health screenings for our returning soldiers.Two years ago, Matt, the Executive Director of NAMI Montana and one of President Obama's "18 Ordinary Americans Making an Extraordinary Difference," lost his step-brother Chris Dana to a post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) induced suicide sixteen months after he returned from Iraq.

The events around Chris’s death led Governor Brian Schweitzer and the Montana National Guard to develop the premier program in the country for caring for National Guard members suffering from PTSD. Matt says, "The foundation of this successful system is a series of five face-to-face mental health screenings that every returning service member must complete upon their return home from combat."This broad screening program overcomes the traditional barriers that have kept service members from receiving treatment for PTSD. Over forty percent of the individuals that have completed the screening asked for help in dealing with their combat stress injuries.

Senator Max Baucus introduced “The Post Deployment Health Assessment Act of 2009” to implement this common sense screening program throughout our fighting force. The Act would require face-to-face screening before deployment, upon return home, and then every six months for two years. This basic and effective program will help safeguard the mental health of our entire fighting force for approximately the same price tag as a single F-22 Fighter. The Act is supported by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the National Guard Association, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

Please take a few minutes out of your day to contact your Congressional Representatives and Senators to ask them to support this critical legislation. Our military suicide rates are at record levels and climbing. We can’t afford to wait any longer to help our heroes get the care they deserve. You can follow this link to find your Representatives’ and Senators’ contact information: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/.

President Obama met with Matt while he was still a senator.

Barack Talks to Vets in BillingsBy Zach in Helena - Aug 28th, 2008 at 1:52 pm EDT

Senator Obama spoke to a group of veterans and military families yesterday at Riverfront Park in Billings. He spoke at length on the failures of the current administration to take care of the nation’s veterans, before taking questions from the audience on a variety of issues. You can watch his remarks about veterans, energy, and the VA system here.What's going on right now, the simple fact is we're not doing right by our veterans. Not here in Montana, and not anywhere in the United States, and I want you to know that one of the reasons I'm running for president of the United States is because I want to make sure that today's veterans are treated like my grandfather was, when he came home, he got the GI Bill and was able to go to college and got FHA loans to go to school and was treated with honor. As President I'm going to make sure that the VA system in Montana gets the oversight, direction, and resources it needs to do the job. [Watch the video]

Then Senator Obama laid blame where it belonged

In Billings, Obama blames GOP for veteran troubles
In Billings, Obama blames GOP for veteran troubles
By TOM LUTEY
Billings Gazette
BILLINGS - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, speaking Wednesday in Billings, faulted Republican leaders for chronically underfunding veteran services for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.“I have some significant differences with McCain and George Bush about the war in Iraq,” Obama said. “But one thing I thought we'd agree to is when the troops came home, we'd treat them with the honor and respect they deserve.”Several trends indicate veterans are not getting the health care and other benefits they need to succeed at home, Obama told a group of around 200 people during an invitation-only morning listening session in Riverfront Park.

Armed services veterans are seven times more likely to be homeless than Americans who don't serve. In Montana, roughly half the veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder go untreated for the psychological condition, Obama said.

Before speaking, the candidate met for several minutes with the family of Spec. Chris Dana, a Montana National Guard veteran suffering from PTSD who committed suicide in March 2007, several months after returning from Iraq. Dana's stepbrother, Matt Kuntz, became a vocal advocate for better treatment of PTSD after Dana's death.

Jess Bahr, a Vietnam veteran, drove more than 200 miles from Great Falls to hear Obama. Before being bused to the event with a veteran-heavy crowd, Bahr said the number of homeless U.S. veterans was inexcusable and that the needs of retired warriors across the country were being ignored by communities.“In Great Falls, they're building a $6.5 million animal shelter and we don't have a shelter for veterans. What does that tell you about priorities?” asked Bahr, a 1967 Army draftee who survived the Tet Offensive, a nine-month series of battles that resulted in more than 6,000 deaths and 24,000 injuries among American and allied troops during the Vietnam War.
click post title for more

If you ever listened to the hearings on CSPAN, you would know what kind of a crisis the veterans were in. Joshua Omvig was one more of many committing suicide because the help they needed was not there. The suicide prevention Katz is being award for took and act of Congress to begin.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Bush Signs Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Bill into Law
With the stroke of a pen President George W. Bush signed the Joshua Omvig bill into law, ending a drawn-out political chapter that overcame a procedural hold in the Senate. The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, who named the bill after one of his constituents, Joshua Omvig of Grundy Center. Omvig committed suicide in Dec. 2005 after returning from an 11-month deployment in Iraq.

“By directing the Veterans Administration (VA) to develop a comprehensive program to reduce the rate of suicide among veterans the law will help thousands of young men and women who bravely served our country,” Boswell said in a press release following Bush’s Monday signing. “The Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act not only honors Joshua’s service to his country but ensures that all veterans receive the proper mental health care they need.”

The Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act (H.R. 327) is designed to help address Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among veterans by requiring mental health training for Veterans Affairs staff; a suicide prevention counselor at each VA medical facility; and mental-health screening and treatment for veterans who receive VA care. It also supports outreach and education for veterans and their families, peer support counseling and research into suicide prevention. The VA had been implementing a number of these programs, but not in a timely manner, whereas the Joshua Omvig bill mandates these programs and subsequent deadlines as a means of expediting the process for returning veterans.

Bush Signs Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Bill into Law

It took law suits from groups to do, like Veterans for Common Sense, to call attention to the pain and suffering the veterans were going through.


With all of this, awarding Katz for what he was forced to do ignores what he did not do when he had the chance. Did he answer reporters questions honestly without trying to cover up the facts? No. He had the chance right there to fight for the veterans he was supposed to be working for instead of the administration causing the problems. All it would have taken was honesty. Imagine what that would have done for the veterans! If Katz put the veterans first instead of his job, he would have been a hero and truly deserving of such an honor. His courage would have caused such and uproar in this nation that there would be no way possible for him to be fired for doing the right thing for our veterans. He decided instead to fight for the administration and the veterans paid the price.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Tim Bowman

Mitchell takes on the stigma of vets' mental-health issues
The message reads: "It takes the courage and strength of a warrior to ask for help."It goes on to list the VA's suicide prevention hotline number: 800-273-TALK (8255).Mitchell takes on the stigma of vets' mental-health issuesby E.J. Montini - Jul. 22, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona RepublicLate last year at a congressional hearing in Washington, Rep. Harry Mitchell listened to a couple named Mike and Kim Bowman tell the story of their 23-year-old son, Tim, a soldier who had returned safely from his yearlong deployment in Iraq only to commit suicide at home."We already were hearing that suicide among veterans who were between 20 and 24 years old was 2½ times higher than non-veterans," Mitchell told me. "And I remember thinking to myself: 'We can't do this again.' "

Lucas Senescall

VA Refused Medical Care to Suicidal Veterans

July 20, 2008, Spokane, Washington - A distraught 26-year-old Navy veteran who had a history of mental illness hanged himself within three hours of seeking help at Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The July 7 death of Lucas Senescall was the sixth suicide this year of a veteran who had contact with the Spokane VA, a marked increase in such deaths.

Last year, there were two suicides among veterans treated at the local VA.

Last year I went to the NAMI convention and then interviewed Paul Sullivan over the law suit filed against the VA.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Paul Sullivan clears up rumors on VA law suit

What caused Veterans for Common Sense to file the law suit against the VA?

Jonathan Schulze and Jeffrey Lucey, two Gulf War combat veterans with PTSD, were refused VA medical care even though they physically came to VA medical facilities with their families and told VA staff they were suicidal. Congress may legislate and perform oversight, yet the Court can force immediate action: one of our top priorities was to force VA from turning away suicidal veterans.

VCS initially filed Freedom of Information Act requests earlier in 2007 about suicides, and VA responded that they had no information. VCS also filed suit because the number of disability claims waiting for review has doubled in the past few years, and the length of time has increased from five months to more than six months.

However, VA executives paid themselves nearly $4 million in bonuses for their dismal performance. Furthermore, VA’s IG reported three times that 25 percent of veterans waited more than one month to see a doctor. VA testified under oath twice that the figure was less than 5 percent. Clearly, VA has a capacity crisis – too many veterans and not enough doctors or claims processors. Furthermore, the 23-page claim form and several healthcare enrollment forms are overly complex, especially for our veterans with PTSD or TBI. For more detailed information, please go to http://www.veteransptsdclassaction.org/.




What caused Veterans for Common Sense to join forces with Veterans United for Truth?

VUFT is another non-profit veteran advocacy group, and they are based in California.



How were the emails from Dr. Katz discovered?


After more than 8 months of delays, the Federal Court ORDERED VA to turn over the e-mails to our attorneys in our lawsuit as part of the discovery process.



What did Dr. Katz say to explain these emails?


He admitted they were true and that he wrote them. You can read his testimony at the SVAC web site where he offers evasive explanations.



What were the facts discovered as a result of these emails being found?


1. VA says they are monitoring completed and attempted suicides to see if there is a difference in suicide rates between veterans, war veterans, and non-veterans.


2. VA essentially confirmed the CBS study that found veterans are more likely to complete a suicide, and for younger veterans aged 18 – 24, they were three to four times more likely to complete a suicide..


3. VA completes “suicide incident reports” and “root cause analysis” reports for each completed suicide, yet then declares them confidential “quality assurance” and places them off limits to Congress, veterans’ families, and attorneys. It is very important for Congress and the Courts and the public to see these reports (with privacy protections of course) so that we can better understand why the veterans killed themselves, and how VA can be improved to prevent and reduce suicides.



How many suicides does the VA know about since the beginning of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq?


There is no national “veteran completed suicide” reporting system now, yet VA is under considerable pressure to begin working to identify all of them. VCS provided a methodology to Congress to identify as many as possible by starting with the list of 1.7 million deployed and then checking all federal, state, and local death certificates.


Currently, VA looks at death certificates where the document reports the person as a veteran. This is incomplete because many families do not know if a person was a veteran or the funeral home / coroner don’t ask. DoD only reports active duty suicides and excludes Reserve and National Guard suicides because they are not on Active Duty.. Our VCS methodology would identify all completed suicides among all 1.7 million, not just the incomplete pieces of the puzzle the DoD and VA currently look at.



How many attempted suicides does the VA know about during the same period?


See above. VA knows about attempted suicides only among those veterans receiving VA care, and that is about 1,000 per month, or 12,000 per year, based on Katz’ e-mail.



How did the emails end up with Senator Akaka and his committee?


The Katz e-mails were produced at trial in April 2008, and then journalists reported them to the public. I not exactly sure, yet I believe Sen. Akaka’s staff saw them in the widely reported press accounts of our trial.



Do you know about the Freedom of Information request to the VA by CREW and VoteVets?


Yes. It is too bad that VA still plays games with FOIA. VA should be forced to turn over the information. Embarrassing information is never a reason to deny a FOIA, as VA frequently does.



How did the email from Norma Perez end up in the hands of congress?


The Perez e-mail discouraging diagnoses for PTSD among veterans was sent by Perez to several VA staff, who in turn sent it to other VA staff, who in tern sent it to a veteran advocate in Texas. That person turned it over to VoteVets and CREW. VCS did not play a role in uncovering the e-mail, yet VCS did play a role in publicizing the e-mail.



What did the entire email suggest?


I would suggest reading the e-mail, as it speaks for itself.



How did that email end up with the congress and then incorporated into the law suit filed by Veterans For Common Sense?


The Perez e-mail and news articles were forwarded from me to our attorneys with a request that they investigate it. They did investigate it by sending a letter to the Dept. of Justice, who then authenticated it and confirmed that VA Secretary James Peake’s office knew about the Perez e-mail on April 7, 2008 – a full two weeks before our trial began, yet VA failed to provide it to our attorneys under discovery. Our attorneys then asked the judge to add the Perez e-mail to the body of evidence we introduced at trial. At a hearing earlier this month, the judge agreed with our attorneys, and the judge also admitted the entire Senate hearing transcript about the Perez e-mail into evidence – a victory for veterans. Sen. Akaka would know for sure, yet I believe he and his staff learned of the Perez e-mail from the press.



What is your view of these findings regarding the treatment of our veterans by the VA after these emails were discovered?


Nearly all VA employees are well-intended and want to assist veterans. I know this because I worked at VA and still know many VA employees. However, the system is overly complex, the system is overloaded, and the system is mired in a deep financial, leadership, and capacity crisis.

Compounding the problem is the disappointing fact that the current political appointees in Washington are incompetent at best, and malicious toward veterans at worst. This combination causes very serious adverse problems for VA, veterans, and families. The solution remains the obvious. VA needs an massive overhaul immediately.


VA needs new leaders, full mandatory funding, and significantly streamlined procedures so veterans can get fast and high-quality medical care and benefits. The situation is bad now, with 325,000 new and unplanned casualties from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars flooding into VA hospitals and clinics, plus 288,000 unanticipated disability claims from recent war veterans. If the crisis is not addressed immediately with aggressive action, the current administration will be held responsible for crashing VA on the rocks.


Although VA had systemic problems in the 1990s and early 2000s, the situation spiraled out of control when Jim Nicholson became Secretary in early 2005. Nicholson, who had no experience with VA, healthcare, or disability claims, served as Karl Rove’s and Grover Norquist’s personal partisan wrecking ball to tear apart VA, bust up the unions, and privatize it. In the end, our only recourse was to file suit because veterans were literally completing suicide, yet VA leaders appeared oblivious to this life-or-death crisis.


In my view, we can learn the lessons from the Vietnam and Gulf wars, where many veterans with psychological trauma were neglected, and improve the situation. Or, we can take the current approach by VA: pinch pennies, bury your head in the sand, and leave the disaster to the next administration. The decision to fix VA was straightforward, yet the battle to fix VA is very hard.


Paul Sullivan
Executive Director
Veterans for Common Sense
Post Office Box 15514
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 558-4553
Paul@VeteransForCommonSense.org
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/




I want to thank Paul for his time and for all he has done for the veterans in this country. Think about the numbers of veterans his actions will make a difference for. He doesn't want more families to have to bury another son or daughter because the VA just didn't have room for them when they needed their wounds to be treated. We've all read too many stories like Jonathan's and Jeffrey's, or Tim Bowman, or Joshua Omvig, along with the hundreds of others we found in the media. Far too much suffering that did not need to happen.

Saving lives because it was the right thing to do came from other people and not Katz. By the interviews he had done, it's obvious that had he not been forced to act, he would have been happy denying the problem and "staying the course" as Bush often loved to say.

So what exactly is behind this award? Why award it to Katz of all people? Can the NAMI Veterans Council be so oblivious to the facts and what was behind what Katz was forced to do, they think he's the one to glorify? Can they be that ignorant? I doubt it. I met a lot of the people on the council and they are bright as well as deeply committed to our veterans. There are heroes all over this country doing great work for our veterans and they are on the council. So what is behind all of this? Are they sucking up to the VA? If this was the case then I'm sure they could have found someone else more worthy of this award in the VA. Whatever the reason behind this, whatever excuse for it, they have just done more damage to our veterans and slapped suffering families in the face. They have just decided that families like the ones you just read about are insignificant. If they really wanted to give an award to a hero they could have picked Matt or Paul Sullivan or any of the families with the courage to stand up and talk about their heartbreak.

NAMI giving award to Dr. Katz for being forced to change?

I am on the NAMI Veteran's Council, or should I say, I have been. After the decision of NAMI to give an award to Dr. Katz, I am struggling finding a reason to participate at all.

When news of Dr. Katz came out during a conference call a few months ago, I was shocked. I respected the other members on the call and managed to keep my mouth shut. I did fire off an angry email, that was never responded to.


This is part of the email

I finally had some time to call in and listen. I am now thoroughly disappointed. The award the council is giving to Dr. Katz is wrong beyond belief. If NAMI wants to award someone for lying about PTSD suicides and attempted suicides then clearly NAMI does not know the facts. I'm involved with a lot of groups, several of which ended up filing law suits because of Dr. Katz and his abysmal record while the troops and veterans were killing themselves. The members that made the choice of Dr. Katz would have known what he's done if they read one tenth of the reports I do. How could you award him anything when he denied the enormous problem with the VA and suicides for the suicide prevention line he was forced to do? Do you know what this will do to NAMI's reputation? The stories have been all over the news for a couple of years and the organizations I'm involved with have massive lists of memberships they will notify of NAMI's award to Dr. Katz. Plan on a massive backlash against NAMI by these organizations because the fury this will cause.

Later in another conference call, someone said that Dr. Katz was vilified by the media. Seems he did a good enough job doing that himself. He was denying the suicides and attempted suicides were as high as they were trying to paint a picture of everything humanly possible being done to address the devastation our troops and veterans were going thru. A lawsuit filed by Veterans for Common Sense followed by another lawsuit on the delay in processing claims.

Arguments in the lawsuit, which pushes for better care for veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, started April 21 in U.S. District Court. Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, say unless the U.S. institutes systemic and drastic measures to care for injured veterans, the numbers of broken families, unemployed and homeless veterans, cases of drug abuse and alcoholism, and the burdens on health care and social services systems will be incalculable. That includes the impact of poor care for Black soldiers with PTSD, they add.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs denied charges that discrimination and racism exacerbate the stress of wartime service and contributes to PTSD, in a written response to Veterans for Common Sense et al vs. Peake. When psychiatrists treat Blacks for PTSD, they are “much less likely to attribute the PTSD to combat than when they treat Whites, leading to a denial of services at the VA,” the lawsuit charges.

Veterans also say that over the last six years, the Bush administration has systematically denied veterans the health care they were promised and that they went to court as a last resort.

Suicide rates alarming
“We are here because veterans are committing suicide at an alarming rate,” Atty. Arturo Gonzalez told U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, citing government documents showing that 18 U.S. war veterans kill themselves every day. “More of these veterans are dying in the United States than in combat—that’s wrong.”

“There is only one person on Earth who can do anything to help these men and women,” he told the judge, “Your honor, these veterans need help. The VA has demonstrated that they won’t do it on their own.”

The veterans’ groups are asking the judge to order the Department of Veterans Affairs to fully implement its own mental health strategic plan, which they argue has been left to wither on the vine; to comply with an internal VA memo setting out “specific programs intended to stop the suicides;” and to shorten claim times.

In his early May closing argument, Justice Department attorney Daniel Bensing countered that “the VA is providing world-class health care across the board” and dismissed as “immaterial” the fact that 18 veterans commit suicide every day.

“We don’t dispute that suicide is a major issue among veterans,” he said, but “there is no evidence that suicidal veterans have been turned away.”

“Extensive care is being provided,” he said.

But internal VA documents made public at the trial appeared to paint a different picture.

Hiding serious problems?

In one e-mail made public during the trial, the head of the VA’s Mental Health division, Dr. Ira Katz, advised a media representative not to tell reporters that 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill themselves every month.

“Shh!” the e-mail begins.

“Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?” the e-mail concludes. Leading Democrats on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee have since called for Dr. Katz’s resignation.

Another set of documents showed that in the six months leading up to March 31, 2008, 1,467 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claims would be approved by the government. A third set of documents showed that veterans who appeal a VA decision to deny their disability claim have to wait an average of 1,608 days, or nearly four and a half years, for their answer.

These documents, which contained information that journalists and veterans’ groups had been trying to obtain for months, only came to light because of the discovery process of the trial, which required high-ranking government officials to give depositions under oath.

“No matter how this trial turns out, it has given us a wealth of information,” said Amy Fairweather of the nonprofit group Swords to Plowshares, which provides counseling, employment and housing to returning veterans. “We can use the information that’s been discovered to show how to do things better.”

Ms. Fairweather said she hopes Judge Samuel Conti will grant the veterans’ groups request for a Special Master to monitor the Department of Veterans Affairs’ compliance with its mental health strategic plan.

“When someone’s watching over you it’s an incentive to do your job,” she said. “Right now, there’s no accountability.”

As the trial wrapped up, Judge Conti appeared to be friendly to the arguments of the veterans groups, but the judge, an 86-year-old World War II veteran who was originally appointed to the bench by Richard Nixon, expressed a concern that he not overreach his authority.

“This court is restricted by statutes and case law,” he said, asking both sides to file legal arguments on his jurisdiction.

“Whatever I do, one side or the other is going to appeal,” he noted, expressing a desire that his decision not be overturned by a higher court.

Speaking with reporters afterwards, representatives for the veterans and the government both agreed that the losing side will likely appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_4730.shtml

Yet NAMI seems to think that it was the media's fault that Dr. Katz was attacked while our veterans were dying. How many posts are on this blog about the suicides? How many do you think it would have taken NAMI to understand that this was not some kind of political game or media witch hunt going on?

We were reading their stories! We knew what was going on at the same time Dr. Katz among others were denying it was going on.

From VA Watchdog

Yesterday we learned that Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's mental health chief, covered up statistics about veteran suicides. That story here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfAPR08/nf042208-6.htm
Video of that story is here... http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfAPR08/nf042208-7.htm
Now, Sen. Patty Murray wants his head on a platter...and, it couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow. Katz should be fired and ostracized from the medical community for his actions.
Murray press release is here... http://murray.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=296526
For more about CBS News reports on veterans and suicide, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here... http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=cbs+suicide&op=and
Today's story here... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/22/cbsnews_investigates/main4035255.shtml
stories/2008/04/22/cbsnews_investigates/main4035255.shtml

Advocacy Groups File Lawsuit Against VA Over Disability Claims Delays
Main Category: Veterans / Ex-Servicemen
Also Included In: Litigation / Medical Malpractice
Article Date: 12 Nov 2008 - 11:00 PST

Two veterans' advocacy groups on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs alleging that its failure to process disability claims in a timely manner has resulted in economic and other problems for hundreds of thousands of military personnel, the Cox/Memphis Commercial Appeal reports. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Vietnam Veterans for America and Veterans of Modern Warfare, which represent about 60,000 veterans.

According to the lawsuit, "The VA's failure to provide timely benefits decisions often leads to financial crises, homelessness, addiction and suicide." The suit calls on VA to provide waiting veterans with interim benefits for claims that take at least 90 days to process or more than six months to appeal.

Robert Cattanach, a Minneapolis-based attorney for the veterans, said there currently are about 600,000 service members who are awaiting the outcomes of their disability claims, which can take six months to one year to be processed. Appeals can take up to four years to be processed. Cattanach said that as more veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan return to the U.S., VA likely will see an increase of hundreds of thousands of additional disability claims. Phil Budahn, a VA spokesperson, declined to comment on the lawsuit (Deans, Cox /Memphis Commercial Appeal, 11/11).

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/129023.php

During the Bush Administration, with two military campaigns producing more wounded everyday, the VA was in denial mode at the same time the people on the lower tiers were struggling to help the veterans, process mountains of claims and get them diagnosed properly. What the top of the food chain was doing was quite different. There were less doctors and nurses working for the VA than there were after the Gulf War. IT workers were cut back at the same time people like Sally Satel were being allowed to dismiss the suffering of our veterans with PTSD as if they were just looking for a free ride. Still wonder why nothing was done to the help these veterans during the Bush Administration? Dr. Katz, very well could have been a fall guy for the administration but he was given a chance do decide if he cared more about his job and protecting the administration or cared about the veterans more. He decided to cover up what was going on.

Subject: Dr. Katz to receive top award from National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)



Dr. Ira Katz, Deputy Chief PCS Officer for Mental Health, has been named recipient of NAMI’s Veterans Council Dedication to Veterans Mental Health Care Award. Dr. Katz will receive his award at NAMI’s national conference in San Francisco, July 6-9.

NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots organizations for people with mental illness and their families whose mission is to be an advocate to ensure that all persons affected by mental illness receive the services they need and deserve, in a timely fashion. In announcing the prestigious award, NAMI noted that despite criticism in the media following reports of increased suicides among veterans, Dr. Katz worked tirelessly behind the scenes to launch the VA’s first-ever suicide presentation initiative, including a nationwide crisis call line that has intervened in thousands of potential suicides by veterans. NAMI noted that Dr. Katz spearheaded VA-wide approval of dramatic reform of its mental health programs to embrace recovery principles. “All Veterans receiving mental health care in the VA are better served today because of the work of Dr. Ira Katz,” NAMI said in its statement about the award.

That's the most appalling part in all of this. If Katz believed the crap the administration was putting out, then he was not paying attention enough to know better. If he didn't believe what he was saying then he was provided with enough opportunities to tell the truth. Either way, the veterans kept dying for attention and the truth to come out.

Another conversation during the conference call it was said that Dr. Katz had come a long way and deserved to be recognized for his work on suicide prevention. This stunning statement came after the law suits were filed, after congress and the senate Veterans Affairs Committees decided to figure out what was going on and do something about it. After Nicholson was finally replaced. After families of veterans that committed suicide told their stories to congress and after the needless military burials had already happened. Today, we still see the rise in suicides and attempted suicides but NAMI, well, NAMI decided that Katz deserves this award because he was forced to do something!

There is a lot of great work NAMI has been doing to address PTSD, from Peer To Peer and Family to Family, to other groups forming partnership with the VA and the DOD. All their work should be applauded but when they are wrong, they are wrong and I refuse to dismiss it.

I got into all of this because the veterans came first, not the people with the power. The veterans were and still are suffering, but the people with the power will not do what it takes, whatever it takes or how much money it will take to really take care of them. If I remain silent on this, I will be betraying the veterans I've fought so hard for since 1982. If I leave NAMI over this, it's no great loss to them because they never listen to me anyway. I am no one in their organization. In giving this award to Dr. Katz after his history it is a slap in the face to all the other groups around the country that tried so hard to bring accountability for the sake of the veterans, make the changes necessary to save their lives and provide them with a better quality of life.

I am torn up over this. If I did not believe in NAMI, know what good they are doing, I would not hesitate to stop supporting them. Thinking about what they are preparing to do makes me wonder how much they have really been paying attention to what has been happening to our veterans. It makes me sick thinking they could possibly be so unaware of any of this they reward someone responsible for it.

I think I just made up my mind. All the years and all the experience I have has meant nothing to NAMI Veterans Council in the past year so I'm done wasting my time. I'm done trying to get them to pay attention. I'm done reading emails sent with the "latest news" days after I've already posted it on the blog. This is the last straw on this overburdened back of mine. If they want to do something like this, after all the harm done, I can no longer support them.

An Interview with John Mikelson

I am on the NAMI Veteran's Council, (among other things) and received an email that puzzled me. There was a quote in it about getting veterans into in-patient treatment and that it had a 60% rate. I've heard of all kinds of treatments the DOD and the VA are doing as well as not doing, and I wondered what else this man had to say.

I asked him if he'd be willing to answer a few questions. He responded right away. Behind all the problems posted on this blog, what I fail to do as often as I should, is to show a part we don't see too often. Men and women working with our veterans and our troops, trying to make a difference and hear what they have to say.

Thank you John for taking the time to answer these questions for my readers.



Please tell us about yourself.

Please see attached …I am 49. Have an MA in Higher Education. Spent 25 years in the Army (Active Guard & Active Reserve) My wife and I rescue Greyhounds and 8 of our sixteen dogs are Greyhounds. Small acreage south of Iowa City

This is part of what was attached.

John Mikelson

Army medic became an undergrad at 45, and now helps veterans of all ages make the college transition.

Be Remarkable

During his 26 years in the military, John Mikelson served as a medic for more than 800 soldiers, was cited for recruiting 450 people into the U.S. Army Reserve, and managed supplies, arms, food, fuel, and personnel on a highly regimented schedule.

Regional Director for Distance Education Student Veterans of America Washington, DC
University of Iowa Veterans Center

(Now that you know more about him, read the rest of what he had to say)

How long have you been doing what you do?

The University of Iowa reorganized its Veterans Association in 2005 and we opened the door of the Veterans Center in December 2005

How did you get involved with PTSD veterans?

Many of my peers have had multiple deployments. Returning Veterans tend not to join the traditional Veteran Service Organizations like the American Legion or VFW but; they are going to school…the campus is the place we came reach out to the 526,000 Student Veterans. This led to the founding of the Student Veterans of America in 2008. PTSD is not just a combat related problem…. Any life changing event can trigger this in anybody

There have been many reports over the years about soldier suicides and the claim the DOD is taking all of this seriously. With the report coming out yesterday about the increase in soldier suicides, what is your impression of what the Army has been doing wrong?

Not enough attention is being given to basic NCO Business….Taking care of the troops. Squad leaders should be able to tell when something isn’t right with a squad member. Platoon Sergeants should have visibility on all members of a platoon….no Soldier (Sailor, Marine or Airmen) should have to deal with their problems alone….whatever happened to battle-buddies?

While they have been trying, what do you think they have gotten right and should it be replicated throughout the military?

The Military has recognized the problem….always a good start. Steps are being taken to de-stigmafy Mental Health related treatments…..people are finally allowed to ask for help without jeopardizing their careers. They are also stepping up awareness and prevention of Military Sexual Trauma(MST).

The Montana National Guard came out with a program to address suicides and encourage Guardsmen to seek mental health help. A member of NAMI, Matt Kuntz has been on the forefront of this program. His step-brother, Spc. Chris Dana, committed suicide. Do you know about this program and what is your impression of it?

While I am not aware of the specifics of the Montana program I have seen the evolution of “Enduring Families” and the “Yellow Ribbon” program in Iowa and am pleased with the direction the state has taken with mental health overall

You stated in a recent communication with NAMI Veteran's Council members that;

Now saying that, this gets me to the heart of the reason why I communicated with you originally via phone. We are trying to save the Knoxville VA and there is more than enough capacity to develop programs for female veterans. This is very true when it comes to mental health programs. Female veterans are suffering from PTSD at a substantially higher rate than their male counterparts. Best practices show that for PTSD treatment to be successful the patient must be treated inpatient using a combination of psychotherapy and medication and then the chances of going into full remission rise to around the 60% rate.

Alas, this was not my quote. It was forwarded in a message from Des Moines to friends with NAMI in Iowa City. The Hospital in Knoxville is being closed because it represents excess capitcy in Internal Medicine….but the VA report fails to show the number of Mental Health beds that would be lost and Des Moines, Iowa City and Omaha would have to make up the shortage and do not have the current bed space to do so

What do you think has kept this out of reporting on treating PTSD veterans?

No idea

Why do you think the DOD and the VA has been simply providing medication and very little therapy instead of putting them in for treatment as you stated works best?

My limited experience with the VAMC in Iowa City is that they are doing everything they can and are also reaching into the community for a holistic inpatient/outpatient balance

I do presentations to veterans groups to help them understand what PTSD is and make them more aware of the tragedy we are facing the newer veterans. After the presentation, I hold a question and answer series. The number one question I've been getting has been about this Act and the concern of PTSD veterans regarding gun ownership. Some of the veterans are rated with mild PTSD and are in law enforcement. They are worried about their jobs. Other veterans fear their right to have a gun will be jeopardized. This is keeping them from seeking help.

Are their fears well founded? If so, what can be done to correct this?

Taking away firearms on the grounds of having PTSD would eventually disarm the entire military and law enforcement community. (in my opinion… giving PTSD a stigma) i.e. if I were told that seeking treatment for PTSD would remove me from employment I would refuse to seek treatment or even acknowledge a problem. As stated before…anyone can have a degree of Post Traumatic Stress from any major traumatic event. It only becomes a disorder when we cannot overcome the effects on our own… and it can be treated successfully.

Vietnam veterans were the first veterans to demand PTSD be treated. Their wives have been involved with learning about PTSD and living with them. Many of us have successful marriages and long histories with our husbands. We've made all the mistakes already and found what works along the way. I believe we have a lot to offer the spouses of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families. Many of us have offered our thoughts and living expert testimonies to congress but they will not listen to us. Why do you think congress has not been interested in hearing from any of us when we've already been where they are and can get them to where we are a lot easier than we did with trial and errors?

I do not understand why Congress listens to Celebrities but not the people with boot on the ground.

I participated in many groups for the newer veterans wives. Troubling I discovered they were not interested in learning about PTSD. They said they had enough to worry about with their husbands being deployed and having to be a single parent. Since we know that early intervention is best and the families are usually the first to notice drastic changes, how can we get them to want to learn about it so that vital time is not wasted?

By reducing the Stigma of Mental illness in general and PTSD in particular

Veterans Courts are being set up across the nation due to the efforts of NAMI. Considering the unique issues combat veterans face, why do you think so many counties are not setting up Veteran's Courts to get them treated instead of incarcerated?

It varies from financial constraints to ignorance of military or mental health awareness. Not everybody gets it. Not every county can afford it.

Domestic violence can often be avoided if a wife is aware of PTSD. Something as simple as waking up a husband in the middle of a nightmare can produce a fist, black eyes and bloody noses. If a wife is aware of what the nightmare is all about and removes herself from arms reach, domestic violence can be prevented just as when they are having a flashback. What can be done when police respond following something like this if the wife is not aware?

Awareness training in the Family Readiness groups, Awareness training for the peace officers. Again local concern and monetary levels with drive some of this training or prevent it from occurring

When Vietnam veterans began to be treated for PTSD, especially in the 90's, the VA provided support groups for the spouse. Why hasn't this been repeated across the nation?

We have a spouse Support group at the VA’s Cedar Rapids Veteran Center

How do you think we can get communities involved in helping the National Guardsmen and Reservist's when they are presenting at higher rates for PTSD but do not have the same support as regular military?

The Community VetCens are presenting the programs to those who chose to utilize them. The National Guard is standardizing their Yellow Ribbon Program and sharing with the reserves through Military OneSorce (at least here in Iowa where we have no active military installation)

The backlog of VA claims has reached over 900,000. Within those numbers are many PTSD veterans that can no longer work. Is the stress of this financial burden increasing their PTSD?

Lots of different stressors can aggravate PTSD or Depression . Financial stress has always been a key factor.

Would fast tracking PTSD claims, the way congress has been discussing, renew their faith in the country and the credo "grateful nation" ease PTSD symptoms?

It would help but the VA is simply overworked and underfunded to do everything it is taxed with. Mental Health in general is underfunded nationally

What do you think is the reason behind not doing it?

Increased incidents of fraud waste and abuse

In a perfect world, if you could wave a hand and get it done, what would you do get our troops and veterans the best care possible?

In a perfect world we would not have to place the troops in harm’s way.. but since that is unlikely to happen I think we could do a better job of recognizing that mental illness and brain injuries are part and parcel with all the other types of combat injuries and the stigma of treatment would cease to exist

In a perfect world to me, the men and women working with our veterans everyday would be fully involved with coming up with programs for them. Finding what is best for them would come a lot faster if they actually know them and understand them. If the developers of programs are just using some case studies or reading about PTSD in research papers, they will never really understand them.

It's also the most important reason for Congress listening to the families who have been there and done that. Older veterans and their families have been through the fire, made their mistakes and learned from them. So why are they making the same mistakes over and over again? It's one more answer that has eluded me for years. I don't think I'd ever be able to understand how Congress can avoid us. I've written to Senators and Congressmen for years. Either I get back a form letter or no response at all. Why? I'm not alone with this type of response.

The wives of Vietnam veterans live with them everyday and most of us have been married to them for over 20 years. Considering that too many "normal" marriages don't make it that long, you'd think they'd be more than willing to give us the opportunity to discuss how we did it. They don't. PTSD in marriages is complicated, but not impossible to find what works and how to make them successful. As I wrote in my book, For the Love of Jack, His War/My Battle, you can find your own kind of normal with all of this. The point is, too many families can't because they don't understand what PTSD is, what it's doing to their veteran spouse or what they can do to help them. It took me years of research, trial and error to learn what I know and I share it because I remember what it was like when no one was talking about PTSD and feeling totally alone.

Families are falling apart, veterans are committing suicide, soldiers and Marines are committing suicide and young widows wonder what could have prevented all this heartache. Knowledge could have but they just didn't know where to find it. It's also one of the reasons why I started these blogs so they could find the most information in one area instead of all over the place. It's the reason I created videos so they could learn easier than I did. It is also what's behind the videos for the veterans so they can learn just how normal they are. This all began because of Vietnam veterans and now it includes our newer generation of veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are where my heart is tugged to. They are where you heart is calling you as well or you wouldn't be reading a blog like this. You'd be looking for different information. You also take the words "grateful nation" a lot further than most Americans do. I don't say it often enough but thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read the posts here. We may be living with the problem but because we're fully involved with them, we're going to end up being part of the solution to getting them able to enjoy life again.

NAMI Conference for Returning Veterans

NAMI-OC to Hold FRONT LINE Conference for Returning Veterans, Their Families and Community
IRVINE, Calif., April 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Saturday, April 25 from 9 a.m. until noon, the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Orange County (NAMI-OC) will bring together speakers, agencies and service providers who serve returning veterans and their families.


Front Line conferences provide important information on PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), traumatic brain injury (TBI), depression and suicide prevention. The conference is designed not only for those veterans and family members who are seeking assistance, but also includes information and resources for those who serve veterans, such as pastors, counselors, social workers and police officers.


The conference will be held on April 25 at Kaiser Permanente in Irvine (6650 Alton Pkwy). It will include presentations by Dr. Clayton Chau (of The OC Health Care Agency) on issues facing Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, representatives from Orange County Veterans' Court and a detailed discussion on accessing Veteran's Benefits.


Representatives from the newly developed Orange County Veterans Court will be presenting on how their collaboration with local agencies is working to establish viable options for a select group of offenders whose needs are better met through treatment interventions rather than incarceration.


Community Resource tables will be available and include: Project Return to Work, Long Beach VAMC, Veterans Service Organization, St. Jude's Brain Injury Network and NAMI-OC.
NAMI Conference for Returning Veterans

Support the The Post Deployment Health Assessment Act of 2009

This is the moment it happened. Most of the media was not around but that was not what was important to then, Senator Obama. What he wanted to know, was what was working to help the warriors wounded by PTSD to heal and get the help they needed. After all, he was serving on the Veterans Affairs Committee, one more thing the media didn't seem too interested in. But you dear reader are smarter than the media and you care a lot more than far too many of them do. No, I'm not slamming everyone in the media because some have been doing some fantastic reports because they care. Right now though I feel I should point out something about this day in Montana when Obama promised to take the guard's program national if he ended up being elected.

I've tracked all of this since 1982. Over the last few years, spare time has turned into a 70 hour or more work week for free. I've read some of the most horrible stories you could imagine and lost too many people in my life. I take all of this very personally because of my own husband and too many of his friends, but above all, his nephew, another Vietnam veteran out of hope, so deeply in pain that he took his own life. The Montana National Guards program is one that I had been very hopeful with and you can read most of the posts I've done on this since they first began it. I am also a member of NAMI, on the Veterans' Council. There were programs all over the country when they came up with this, so Obama had plenty of programs to support if he only wanted to appear to care. When he decided that this program was so vital he wanted to focus on it and take it national, he did it because he not only cared, but the man paid attention. PTSD was no passing thought in his mind. He made sure he knew what he was talking about. He did not try to support programs that were not working. Had he done so, that would have shown us that he really didn't think it was important enough to pay attention.

With all the horrible posts I've done, even with them, I have more hope than ever that we will someday soon get to where the troops and veterans need us to be.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Support the The Post Deployment Health Assessment Act of 2009
Matt Kuntz, the keynote speaker at our upcoming Annual Education Conference, has asked us to take a few minutes to contact our Congressional Representatives and Senators to ask them to support comprehensive mental health screenings for our returning soldiers.
Two years ago, Matt, the Executive Director of NAMI Montana and one of President Obama's "18 Ordinary Americans Making an Extraordinary Difference," lost his step-brother Chris Dana to a post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) induced suicide sixteen months after he returned from Iraq.
The events around Chris’s death led Governor Brian Schweitzer and the Montana National Guard to develop the premier program in the country for caring for National Guard members suffering from PTSD. Matt says, "The foundation of this successful system is a series of five face-to-face mental health screenings that every returning service member must complete upon their return home from combat."
This broad screening program overcomes the traditional barriers that have kept service members from receiving treatment for PTSD. Over forty percent of the individuals that have completed the screening asked for help in dealing with their combat stress injuries.
Senator Max Baucus introduced “The Post Deployment Health Assessment Act of 2009” to implement this common sense screening program throughout our fighting force. The Act would require face-to-face screening before deployment, upon return home, and then every six months for two years. This basic and effective program will help safeguard the mental health of our entire fighting force for approximately the same price tag as a single F-22 Fighter. The Act is supported by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the National Guard Association, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).
Please take a few minutes out of your day to contact your Congressional Representatives and Senators to ask them to support this critical legislation. Our military suicide rates are at record levels and climbing. We can’t afford to wait any longer to help our heroes get the care they deserve. You can follow this link to find your Representatives’ and Senators’ contact information: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/.

Female veterans need to be voice for other women after military sexual abuse

Many Women Veterans have difficulty receiving service-connected disability for PTSD due to MST (Military Sexual Trauma).

“We need more specific information about the incidents. We need to know, within a 2 month period, the date(s) the incidents occurred. We need to know the name(s) of your attackers, and we also need to know if any police reports, or other reports, were filed regarding the incidents described in your statement. If police reports were filed, we need to know the name of the agency they were filed with, and the approximate date they were filed.”

"Your service treatment records do not show treatment for PTSD or any other mental health disorders while in service. Service personnel records do not provide any evidence that a personal assault occurred in service. There is no evidence of changes in performance or performance evaluations or unexplained behavioral changes which could be expected from a person who had undergone such an assault.

In the National Center for PTSD Fact Sheet on Military Sexual Trauma,
Page 2,under What Happens?: "There is no set reaction to MST......You may have a response right away, or it may delayed for month or years."
Page 3 first paragraph states: "After a sexual assault, many women veterans keep quit. They worry what others will think of them, and that talking about the assault will hurt their military careers."

As you can see from the National Center for PTSD already shows, that many times, that MST are not reported, and that reactions vary, including the onset of symptoms.
And again other documents and reports basically say the same thing.
What does it take for the VA to believe the Veterans, who are seeking service-connected disability for PTSD due to MST? Especially for the older Veterans.
Changes need to be made now.


In the Military Sexual Trauma: Violence and Sexual Abuse Document:
Page 3, 2nd Paragraph: "......However, three fourth of the women who were raped did not report the incident to a ranking officer."
Page 4, 2nd Paragraph: "Reasons why both men and women avoid reporting sexual abuse include fears no one will believe them, that their careers will disruupted, that they will be harassed or face retribution from their attacker, or that they will be told to suck it up."
Sexual Assault Permates theU.S. Armed Forces, CBS Evening News: Shocking Report On Frequent Attacks, Low Rate Of Investigation, Prosecution, March, 17, 2009
Page 3, 1st Paragraph: "The Pentagon acknowledges that some 80 percent of rapes are never reported - making it the most under-documented crime in the military."
Page 3, 3rd Paragraph: "They didn't report because they didn't report because they didn't think they'd believed."
The Women's War Document
Page 8, 3rd Paragraph: "Given that PTSD sometimes takes years to surface in a veteran..."
Page 16, 3rd Paragraph: "There is the story of Tina Priest, a 21-year-old soldier who, according to Army investigation records, shot herself with an M-6 rifle in Iraq last March, two weeks after filing a rape charge against a fellow soldier and days after being given a diagnosis of ^acute stress disorder consistent with rape trauma^"
Page 22.last Paragraph: "Some of the women served in previous decades and were only now dealing with their PTSD" Sadly to say, this is many of us "Older" Veterans fall in this category. Assaults occurred decades ago, and we supposed to remember the exact dates, names and such? We forget to survive only to find ourselves wondering why the symptoms of PTSD come to surface.

NAMI VETERANS COUNCIL
Cornelia Huebscher
Veteran/ U.S. Army
NAMI Alaska Liaison to NVC
Chair/Women Veterans Subcommittee to NVC
Chair/NAMI Vets Alaska
huebscher@acsalaska.net
www.nami.org

Battle Buddies and NAMI, it's a good thing

I have to tell you that I am very proud of the work being done by NAMI and the Veteran's Council. They should be all over the news for all the work they are doing for the sake of veterans.

October 22, 2008

Battle Buddies to aid veterans

Motorcycles and the military have become good buddies over the years.

When the National Alliance of Mental Illness wanted to raise awareness about issues veterans confront daily when returning home, Bumpus Harley-Davidson in Jackson jumped on board.

Before noon Oct. 11, supporters gathered for a road trip to Lakeside Behavioral Health on Brunswick Road in Bartlett for a walk-a-thon. They included Bonita Molbert, Will Norrid, Lloyd Smith and Carol Roy, who all work in the mental health field.

Richard Webb of Milan is an Army and Air Force veteran and avid rider who learned about the group's efforts during a visit to the Jackson motorcycle dealership. "I was drafted in 1966," he said. For about three years, Webb has been back in West Tennessee from the West Coast to care for his parents.

A Jackson Sun article the morning of the Rev Up! event focused attention on 28-year-old mother Aimee Sherrod, who served two tours of duty in Iraq in the Air Force and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Carol Roy, who is veterans liaison for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said about 20 percent of service people returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression.

NAMI is working to establish Battle Buddies, which will partner veterans with servicemen and women returning from overseas; and several other groups to address mental illness issues.

"There's the peer thing," Roy said. "They aren't going to tell peers, 'I'm having these nightmares.' It's all right to seek help. There's recovery support. There's help. There's hope."



http://www.marshalltribune.com/story/1471613.html

Tim Nelson's battle after war has ended

I belong to a lot of groups. NAMI Veteran's Council,is one of the most active. This came in an email.

Veterans of Modern Warfare, Inc.
August 4, 2008

It is with a very heavy heart that I share with you our loss of Tim Nelson, VMW Chapter 3 President in Bellingham, Washington.

Tim was a proud Marine who served in Iraq and participated in the Battle of Fallujah. He was married to Elisha last summer, attended Western Washington University and worked at the Bellingham Vet Center.

Tim Nelson took his life with his own hands on July 26.

Suicide Prevention

Veterans at risk for suicide may be suffering from a combination of emotional, physical and environmental factors and view suicide as the easiest way to end their pain.

If you think someone may be suicidal, no not leave him or her alone. Try to seek immediate help from the VA National Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-TALK (8255), from his or her physician, nearest hospital emergency room, or call 911.

If possible, eliminate access to firearms or other potential tools for suicide, including unsupervised access to alcohol and medications. A person who appears suicidal needs immediate mental health assistance and treatment.
Membership Personal Mission Request

I am asking each of you who receives this note to call a fellow veteran. Call the names on your roster that haven't yet made it to a meeting, someone you served with, someone at church or work. Check in with them -- see if they are struggling. This is work that the VA simply cannot do.

Help your chapter leadership create a strong support system in your community.
Chapter 3

Tim Nelson's thoughtful questions and meaningful insight helped to mold this organization's development. His dynamic personality brought his community's Modern Veteran's together and he will be forever missed.

In closing, I ask that you please take a moment to send your regards and encouragement to our VMW Chapter 3. vmwbellingham@yahoo.com

Warmest regards,

Julie Mock, PresidentVeterans of Modern Warfare, Inc.