PTSD and the government who would not listen or learn

I post extensively on the fact people like me were screaming from the start of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq but no one would listen. Whenever I find more reports going back to before the first set of boots landed in either occupation, I post it and then scream. This is yet one more of those cases when reports come out about what was already known and available for the "planners" to use in assessing the needs of our wounded coming back. Researchers and specialists have been studying PTSD for over 30 years. Why wasn't any of the data used? Why didn't anyone take a serious look at what history had already proven? No one cared! No everyone is pretending to be oh so shocked at why there are so many with PTSD or why there have been so many suicides and veterans ending up homeless already. Give me a break! They either knew and didn't care or they didn't care to know. None of this should have surprised anyone. Worse is that none of it had to happen the way it did.

Predicting Post-traumatic Stress Disorders In Deployed Veterans
ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2007) — Canada’s peacekeepers suffer similar rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) as combat, war-zone soldiers, according to a London, Ont. research team.


Psychiatrist J. Donald Richardson and his co-investigators also found that PTSD rates and severity were associated with younger age, single marital status and deployment frequency.

Richardson is a consultant psychiatrist with the Operational Stress Injury Clinic at Parkwood Hospital, part of St. Joseph’s Health Care, London and a professor with the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario.

His team conducted a random, national survey of more than 1,000 Canadian peacekeeping veterans with service-related disabilities. The participants were below the age of 65 and had served with the Canadian Forces from 1990 to 1999.

The research, published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, found a third of veterans deployed more than once suffered probable clinical depression, and 30 per cent of those deployed one time were affected.

The rates of probable PTSD were 11 per cent for those deployed once and 15 per cent for those deployed more than once. The authors also found peacekeepers were more likely to have PTSD and more severe symptoms if they were young, single, or had multiple deployments.

“This study has important clinical implications because understanding such risk factors can help predict potential psychiatric problems in veterans who have been deployed,” says Richardson.

“The high rates of depression observed in deployed veterans can have a significant impact when they seek treatment for PTSD because depression must be aggressively treated to help patients respond more effectively to psychotherapy.”

“Many veterans are also living and working in the community as civilians, therefore it is important that primary care physicians and psychiatrists become more knowledgeable about the emotional impact of military deployment and screen for possible PTSD," says Richardson.

The Operational Stress Injury Clinic is funded by Veterans Affairs Canada and provides specialized services to help veterans and members of the Canadian Forces deal with PTSD, anxiety, depression or addiction resulting from military service.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Western Ontario.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213120937.htm


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Steroids in Sports Or Suicides In Soldiers?

I get alrerts all the time on a lot of subjects. This really got me! I received this one from the Washington Post, yet never got one on the hearing being done in Washington over the suicides of our soldiers and veterans. Imagine that! I never would have imagined that steroid use in sports players would be more important than our soldiers and veterans killing themselves needlessly. Just goes to show where our priorities in this country are.

The care and needs of our veterans as well as active deployed forces today are not even the number one issue facing voters according to recent polls. We have two occupations going on right now and the majority of the country seem to not even want to have the slightest clue what is going on in either of them. This make no sense to me at all because when the subject of Iraq comes up, everyone seems to have an opinion of it, but really has nothing to base that opinion on. This is evident when you read the poll data and the impression of events in Iraq as well as Afghanistan, never seem to match the news reports. Ambivalence is easy to twist when passion may be there but there is no knowledge to go with it.

I don't know if it is the case of the media not reporting on the importance of Iraq and Afghanistan and the lives of our veterans, or it's a case of the media just reporting on what the public is showing interest in. Whatever the reason, our troops and veterans are the ones suffering while sports players are the ones getting all the attention.

Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com


News Alert 3:47 p.m. ET Thursday, December 13, 2007

VIDEO: MLB Commissioner on Mitchell Report, 4:30 ET Commissioner Bud Selig will respond to report on use of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. To view live streaming video of this event on the Web (courtesy of Comcast), go to http://letters.washingtonpost.com/WBRH016F1841EE30A48E73787BC7D0.

Iraq through the eyes of a photographer

I don't give a damn if I upset someone's sensitivity with these pictures. I've seen worse but I don't post them. It's time we took the pretty little pictures out of our own brain of happy, smiling troops coming home to their families. It's time we all opened our eyes whenever we get a glimpse of what they see in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam even still today as it all comes back. More come home wounded than you will ever know because you can't see the wound unless you look very hard and they don't want to talk about it. It's damn near impossible to get them to even try to find help with the demons they hitching a ride back to the states. Worse is that most of them are sent right back into the arms of hell already wounded.

Specialist Lucas Yaminishi holds up the bloody shoe of the victim of a suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq. Nine people were killed and over twenty wounded in the bombing, one of the first of its kind in Mosul.

Specialist Jeff Reffner of Altoona, PA is turned on his side by doctors checking for lacerations on his back. Reffner was severely wounded when an IED impacted next to his humvee in Baghdad. Although in extreme pain, Reffner was more concerned about his friend Jeff Forshee who was also wounded in the blast. Reffner was evacuated back to the U.S. and is still recovering from his wounds, while Forshee suffered lighter wounds and was returned to his patrol base to see out the final six months of his deployment.

War Photographer Revealed
Peter van Agtmael talks about what drives him to the most dangerous assignments on earth: the hope that pictures can play a role in improving the future.
By Joerg Colberg
December 10, 2007
In our ongoing series recognizing today's top professional photographers, Joerg Colberg speaks with Peter van Agtmael, a 26-year-old graduate of Yale University who has spent the majority of his young career in hotspots like Iraq and Afghanistan. Van Agtmael was named one of "25 under 25 - Up and Coming American Photographers" by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in 2006 and won a World Press Photo award in 2007 for General News Stories.

Joerg Colberg: Over the past few years, you spent time both in Afghanistan and in Iraq as a photojournalist. The risk of getting killed in these countries seems awfully high. How did you decide to become a photojournalist covering war?

Peter van Agtmael: I was interested in war from a very young age. I loved the shapes of fighter planes and the confidence and strength projected by uniforms. For a time I wanted to be a soldier. But I was also a sensitive child, and had no real conception of what war meant. Several events changed me. The first Gulf War ended when I was ten. I had rigorously followed the buildup to war, spewing statistics to anyone who would listen and laminating pictures of U.S. troops I had cut from The New York Times, and which I carried in my pockets everywhere I went. Sometime after the war, I was in the local library and came across a photo retrospective of the conflict. Inside were the obvious jingoistic icons but there were also images of the road of death leading back to Iraq, the Kenneth Jarecke picture of a horrible burned Iraqi soldier, the David Turnley picture of a wounded soldier weeping next to a body bag containing his buddy. Those pictures shocked me. Until that point my conception of death was the exaggerated, bloodless, noble kind from old war movies.
click post title for the rest

Until we figure out what we are sending them into, what kind of wounds they come with, we will never come close to taking care of them. Wars will never end. Mankind is too unkind for that to happen. Violence will never end. Trauma will keep wounding them and there is nothing we can do to prevent it short of world wide peace, prosperity, an end to hunger, an end to corruption and greed, hatred and judgment. Until we end the causes of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, we better figure out how to deal with it. If we do not open our eyes, we will never understand it.

I don't know about you, but after 25 years of hearing their stories, reading the accounts of lives lost, families destroyed, suicides because of hopelessness, homeless veterans walking our streets and the willingness of so many of these magnificent characters still ready to serve despite all we put them through, I'm tired of them being discarded, dismissed and abused. We torture them when they come home wounded. You didn't think of it that way did you? What else would you call it when they get wounded doing what they were sent to do as part of their jobs and then finding out they cannot support themselves because of all of it. They cannot make a living while they are battling the ghosts of combat, unable to think straight or even get one nights sleep without nightmares, or spend a single peaceful day without a flashback or even hearing one fool after another telling them to "get over it" while they suffering.

You would think in this "brotherhood" of the armed forces, there would be a lot more brotherhood and no combat veteran would be left behind to suffer at the hands of this enemy, but it happens all the time. They come home and no one cares. They come home wounded and no one takes care of them when time is the enemy as well. For those who come home without a single scratch and a seemingly fine, they should be the first ones in line to fight for their wounded brothers. After all, the veterans with PTSD cannot fight for themselves anymore. They lost that ability a long time ago. They lost the brain functions that allowed them to think clearly and they lost whatever it was that made them courageous enough to serve by the side of the others. They didn't become cowards, as they were accused of being when they were shot for being mentally wounded, but they were no longer able to find the ability to live through the horrors their eyes had to see.

Take a good look at the pictures and then Google Iraq images if you really want to know what they see, what they have to go through and what they have to live with and then maybe, just maybe you can begin to understand what it is like when they come home wounded.

I've had complaints about my videos being "hard to watch" as if that should come close to what they have to go through. I avoid horrific images as much as possible and use the milder ones I've come across. It's not for the casual observer's sensitivity I'm trying to protect but for the sake of the wounded, so that they will be able to watch the videos with just enough to help them understand what the hell happened to them that made them the way they are.

It's time the rest of you understood it as well. If not, then we better get out of the business of waging any wars at all, locking up anyone who even thinks of committing a crime, take all the police, firemen and emergency responders off the streets, stop all storms and pray to God no one ever thinks of attacking us again. We can't take care of anyone we depend on when they need us. For the men and women we send into combat, they risk their lives to serve this country and it's about time we figured out they should not have to give up living just because they came home wounded by PTSD.

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

Canada sees rise in PTSD soldiers

Post-traumatic stress disorder
Last Updated July 2006
CBC News
MEDIA
Audio: The Best of the Current: Post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder has made headlines in recent years, but is not new. The disorder has been known to exist as far back as ancient Greece, but has had different names throughout history. In the American Civil War, it was called soldier's heart. In the First World War it was called shell shock and in the Second World War it was known as war neurosis. In the Vietnam War, the symptoms were described as combat stress reaction.

Now, more Canadian soldiers than ever are coming forward to make claims for psychiatric disabilities, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. More than 8,500 pensions have been awarded, a 2,100 jump since 2001. Veterans Affairs says 30 per cent of these go to veterans from World War II and the Korean War. But, Canada's mission in Afghanistan is also boosting the numbers. The rate of post-traumatic stress among Canada's peacekeepers is as high as 20 per cent, according to the military ombudsman's office in Canada.
go here for the rest
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/health/posttraumaticstress.html

PTSD: Wounds of the Soul

Many soldiers and Marines under report PTSD, for various reasons. Logan Merrill says he's embarrassed. There is a stigma attached to mental health issues and some believe that if they're labeled with PTSD, they'll hurt their military careers. But for most of the men and women, it's the guilt associated with potentially being sent home. They don't want to leave their buddies. Colonel Platoni says sometimes sending a soldier home can be the worst thing to do as they wrestle with leaving their friends in the combat zone.

PTSD: Wounds of the Soul
By: Mary-Ann Maloney

With as many as 40 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans expected to return home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the Veteran's Administration is scrambling to be able to meet the needs. At John J. Pershing Veterans Hospital in Poplar Bluff, they've increased their mental health staff by 200 percent over the last 18 months and they're still hiring.

Soldiers and Marines can suffer from PTSD after witnessing a traumatic event. Multiple deployments, in a war with no fixed front or rear, fighting an enemy that doesn't wear a uniform in almost an unbearable environment are some of the reasons more and more veterans are suffering from PTSD.

From September of 2005 to June of 2006, reported cases of PTSD involving Iraq veterans was up 87 percent. This is a trend that many medical experts expect to continue. Often the symptoms of PTSD don't suffer until months after a soldier or Marine returns home.
go here for the rest

http://www.kfvs12.com/Global/story.asp?S=7393804&nav=8H3x

Why overlook the obvious with PTSD rates?

Kevin Horrigan: Two wars, too many victims
By Kevin Horrigan -
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Last week, in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a panel of U.S. Army psychiatrists reported that one in every five active-duty soldiers has developed mental health problems after coming home from Iraq.
The problems range from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression to substance abuse to anger outbursts that create family conflict. The toll may be even higher than 20 percent, because 42 percent of returning National Guard and reserve troops reported similar problems. The authors speculate that Guard and reserve troops may be more open about their problems because they want to make sure that they continue to get health care coverage once their deployments have ended.
As it happens, I read about this study at the same time I was finishing Rick Atkinson's "The Day of Battle," his new history of the war in Sicily and Italy in 1943 and 1944. It's the second volume of his history of World War II in North Africa and Europe. Part 1, "An Army at Dawn," won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

go here for the rest

http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/506601.html

Don't get me wrong, this is a great piece and well worth the read. It's just that it consistently boggles my brain how so many can keep missing the obvious. It is not just that PTSD rates are high,but the death count is low. The wound to death ratio is 7-1. Most of the soldiers surviving would have died in all past wars, including Vietnam, Korea, WWI, WWII along with every other war. Go back and read the history of war. You need to begin when man first started to report the outcomes. What you will find is that while civilizations evolve, technology improves, humans are still in fact human. Our basic makeup has not changed much at all. We are all still just human.

The PTSD numbers were lower throughout history but so were the survival rates. This generation did not invent PTSD but because of medical procedures and advances, we inadvertently let the genie out of the bottle. It is not that wars have gotten more gruesome or horrific with the technology allowing combatants to strike from great distances instead of hand to hand combat only. As a matter of fact, they are tame to how they used to have to win battles. They would be face to face with the enemy and killing them an arms length away. Survivors would have to walk around and over bodies after. Today they have to come up on the bodies bombs and long range bullets killed. These same bombs also have a habit of blowing pieces of humans all over the place. It is less horrific to do the battle but it may just be more horrific to observe the aftermath.

It seems to be irrational to not notice the fact that as survivors of the conflict rise they will see even more suffering the wounds of war. We also have to consider that the redeployments raise the risk of developing PTSD by 50%. Knowing there are more to come because of the history of PTSD, it will take years for the symptoms to surface, it is surprising there are not more than reported thus far.

The War Comes Home

The War Comes Home: PTSD; Addiction; Homelessness and Suicide all Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!
Posted November 21, 2007 10:33 AM (EST)
There have been many stories about the vast majority of Americans being insulated from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that only a small percentage of Americans--the families of those fighting overseas--are shouldering the brunt of these wars. We predict that In the next couple of years this will all change as the war comes marching into US communities from coast to coast. How? If history is indeed the great predictor, then we will soon find that the nightmare of war will show up at our doorsteps, not in the form of Al Qaeda, but in us dealing with the demons of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who have spent multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

CBS News dropped a bombshell last week when they reported on a 5 month investigation that found more veterans have killed themselves after returning from Iraq than have been killed in battle in Iraq. 100 returning soldiers a week, 5,000 a year are committing suicide, that is more soldiers that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
Let that sink in.

go above for the rest

For the people living with this, this is not a bombshell. This is life. For the people working to try to help these veterans coming back, this is not a bombshell. We saw all of this coming. No one heard us. We've been reporting on all of this coming. We heard the sounds of "bombs" falling all across America, in Canada, in England, Scotland, Australia, and on bases around the globe. We sounded the warnings from cities and towns around the world but the people with the power to take action had better things to hear. The PTSD wounded were still suffering in silence. All our work managed to do was give them courage to speak out about the wounds no one could see. The leaders of all the nations failed to open their eyes by opening their hearts.

UK and Post Conflict Trauma

£12.5m to treat 1000 soldiers at the Priory for post-traumatic ...
Daily Mail - UK
Last updated at 01:28am on 19th November 2007
Comments (2) More than 1,000 British troops have been counselled at the private Priory clinics at a cost to the taxpayer of £12.5million over the last four years.
The soldiers have been admitted with 'post-conflict trauma' after experiencing horrors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bill works out at an average of £10,000 per serviceman.

Tory defence spokesman Liam Fox said: "This shows not only the enormous human cost of the conflicts but is a testament to the failure of the Government's duty to provide a Defence Medical Service that is able to deliver the standard of care our forces have the right to expect."

Shaun Rusling, of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association, said:
"It is the Government's responsibility to look after them, not the private sector."

The cost has been revealed in papers released by the Ministry of Defence under Freedom of Information laws.

The Priory won the contract to care for troops from the MoD's Duchess of Kent Psychiatric Hospital in Catterick, North Yorkshire, where costs ran to £10million in its final year of operation.
click above for the rest

It is not just the responsibility of the UK government to take care of their wounded,,,,,but the duty of every country before they send the first pair of boots to get onto a plane! If they don't plan for the wounded, they fail the wounded.