War Veterans face ongoing battle with PTSD

Anthony Torres, 26, a Marine who served tours of duty in Iraq and in Africa, says coming home was more difficult than he expected.

Appearing weak or ill is an image Iraq veteran Rick Brannan combats every day. Brannan, 55, was deployed with a Navy customs team to Operation Iraqi Freedom in June of 2005. There he provided armed escorts to troops headed home. Brannan also was assigned the task of inspecting coffins for contraband, a memory that still grieves him.

SPECIAL REPORT: The front lines shift ... Military veterans face varying battles
Alysa Landry The Daily Times
Article Launched: 03/31/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT
Editor's note: Today's story is the second of a three-part series that began Sunday and ends Tuesday.

FARMINGTON — Anthony Torres was looking forward to life as a civilian. The 26-year-old Marine spent seven months atop a Humvee manning an anti-tank missile in wartorn Iraq, and he was anxious to be home.

When he returned, however, he found a life so chaotic it rivaled his experiences overseas. Torres served in a security convoy during the 2004 U.S. assault on Fallujah, and he relives some of that terror every day.

A smell, a sound or a simple argument can send Torres back to Iraq.

"During my third week of the assault, the engineers assigned to clean up all the dead people hadn't come through yet," he said. "I remember that smell. It's like barbecuing with diesel."

A similar odor permeates the local oil fields, Torres said, and a whiff of that rewinds the clock.

"It sets me off and brings back memories," he said. "I have to logically figure out what's causing the smell and bring myself back to reality.



Coming Tuesday: The search for solutions.
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PTSD: Symptoms are varied, complex
By Alysa Landry The Daily Times
Article Launched: 04/01/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT


Flashbacks, nightmares and exaggerated startle responses all are typical symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, but the condition is more complex.
Seventeen symptoms are used to diagnose the disorder, and a person must meet the minimum criteria for a positive diagnosis. The following are guidelines to understand the disorder. Only a trained psychologist can make a diagnosis.

Source: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The person must have been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:


Actual or threatened death, serious injury, or threat to physical integrity.

Response to the event involved intense fear, helplessness or horror.
The traumatic event is re-experienced persistently in at least one of the following ways:


Recurrent and intrusive thoughts about the event.

Recurrent distressing dreams of the event.

Flashbacks or hallucinations.

Intense distress at exposure to triggers that symbolize the event.


Physiological reactivity to triggers, such as pounding heart or sweaty palms.

The person must persistently avoid stimuli associated with trauma in at least three of the following ways:


Avoiding thoughts, feelings or conversations about the event.

Avoiding activities, people or places that remind a person about the event.

Inability to recall an important aspect of the event.

Diminished interest or participation in significant activities.

Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others.

Restricted range of emotions.

Sense of foreshortened future, such as loss of expectation of having a career, marriage, children or normal life span.

The person must experience persistent symptoms of arousal in at least two of the following ways:


Difficulty falling or staying asleep.

Irritability or outbursts of anger.

Difficulty concentrating.

Hyper-vigilance.

Exaggerated startle response.

Symptoms must last for at least one month.


Disturbance causes significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
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Chaplain gives vital support to returning veterans

For God and Country

Once soldiers and their families accept that the feelings, flashbacks and emotions are normal, healing and recovery can begin. "There are some soldiers that will need some extra help, and my advice is to get help early rather than later," Gibson said. It is so important, he said, to put the problem in perspective. "People forget that after World War II, we had 800,000 psychological casualties."

Chaplain gives vital support to returning veterans
By Sharon Kiley Mack
Saturday, March 15, 2008 - Bangor Daily News


PITTSFIELD, Maine - Andrew Gibson sits comfortably in his Army National Guard fatigues, every inch a soldier from the leather boots to the black beret and the short haircut.

But the patch on his desert-tan shirt gives away his special mission: chaplain.

In his role as the full-time support chaplain for the Maine Guard, Gibson has a unique perspective. Not only is he the father of an Iraq war veteran, he has served in Afghanistan and Bosnia himself. He has tended to young men killed or wounded by explosives, mourned soldiers who committed suicide, dealt with personal flashbacks, disorientation and the often difficult event of coming home. He has assisted with death notifications to Maine families.

Using those experiences as tools, Gibson is now responsible for reintegrating Maine’s soldiers and their families after service in Iraq. "I help them learn and accept the new normal," he said.

When asked what returning soldiers need the most, his answer is quick and precise: time.

"Time is the great and immediate need," he said. "Folks are anxious to get on with their life. We often throw parties [for returning soldiers], and this can be very disquieting to have a lot of people come up and hug and kiss you. You are so tired. It’s not uncommon for soldiers to come home and sleep for days."

Gibson recalled an incident about 10 days after he returned from service in Afghanistan when he awoke in his Pittsfield home, in his own bed, and struggled to remember where he was.

Soldiers can feel very detached and aloof and expend a lot of energy just trying to care, he said. They might have a heightened or inappropriate startle reflex. They can suffer from nightmares.

Gibson said the soldiers have spent a year carrying a weapon that saved them, wearing body armor that protected them and a uniform that allowed them to recognize comrade from foe.
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There are times when I do not want to call myself a Veteran's Chaplain. After 25 years of dedicating my life toward caring for them, nothing I have done or ever will do, will come close to being one of them. I will always be on the outside looking in. I never held a rifle or had to witness a friend die in combat. I have never had to question God's judgment after seeing what combat can do to other humans. I am here to help those who go and those they come home to. It's the best I can offer, and humbly do. Andrew Gibson is one of the reasons I do not feel as if I come close to deserving to call myself a Veteran's Chaplain. I am not a veteran. I am just a Chaplain taking care of veterans. My husband is the veteran I cared for first. It's because of him I do what I do and because of him, I love all of them.

Phil Donahue, Body Of War

Phil Donahue unveils documentary on wounded GI
Film follows path of a ‘warrior turned anti-warrior,’ says ex-talk show host
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 39 minutes ago
In 2004, Phil Donahue stopped to visit his old friend Ralph Nader on a visit to Washington, D.C. Nader asked the talk show legend to come along on a visit to a wounded soldier in Walter Reed Hospital. So moved was Donahue by his meeting with Tomas Young, he decided to film a documentary about the young man’s journey from warrior to paralyzed veteran to spokesman and activist against America’s presence in Iraq.

Four years later, the film, “Body of War,” is debuting to reviews that make liberal use of such adjectives as “powerful,” “riveting,” “unforgettable” and “wrenching.” Richard Corliss of Time magazine called it, “A superb documentary ... almost unbearably moving.”

“The first time I saw him will be with me forever — paralyzed from the chest down — he had that morphine look, droopy eyed, sallow, sunken, lifeless,” Donahue writes in the director’s notes to his movie. “Body of War is a film provoked by my own questions as I stood on my functional legs at his bedside.”
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The search for combat trauma solutions

SPECIAL REPORT: The search for combat trauma solutions
By Alysa Landry The Daily Times
Article Launched: 04/01/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT


Editor's note: Today's story is the final report in a three-part series.


FARMINGTON — The roar of machine guns echoing in the jungles of Vietnam was silent for more than 30 years before Dennis Vaughn stopped hearing it.

The Vietnam veteran was suffering from the symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, but he didn't know it.

"We just thought that's the way life was," he said. "For 30-plus years, that's just the way it was."

Vaughn, 60, joined the Army in 1968 and spent nine months in Vietnam behind an M-60 machine gun.

Thirty years and three marriages later, Vaughn came face to face with reality — in the form of a make-believe village. He was on his honeymoon in Disney World with his third wife, waiting in line for a safari ride.

The line went through a little bamboo forest and passed a miniature Montagnard village, just like the villages Vaughn had seen in Vietnam.

"Disney doesn't do anything halfway, so this was perfect," he said. "I was hyper-alert, looking for snipers, watching for ambush situations. My wife turned around and said, Are you all right?' She recognized right away that there was something wrong, and for the first time in over 30 years, I had to admit that I wasn't all right."

Vaughn was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in 2001, more than three decades after his military service ended.

"I can look back on the 30 years and pick up incidents almost on a daily basis," he said. "And that's a lot of days."

Vaughn's symptoms included nightmares, a sense of hyper-vigilance and difficulty with interpersonal relationships. He's one of about 25 million United States veterans to be diagnosed with combat PTSD. He's also one of a growing number of people to seek help for the condition that affects as many as 40 percent of combat veterans.

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When my husband's claim with the VA was finally approved, I called to book a vacation to Disney. We hadn't been on a family vacation since we got married and I hadn't been to Disney in about 20 years. Our daughter was 11. I thought it would be a perfect way to get us all to reconnect again. I was right and we had a fantastic time. Jack's medication had him calm and enjoying himself. We had taken our niece as a companion so that she could stay in the same room with our daughter because Jack didn't sleep all night and often, there were nightmares.

Because we didn't include Sea World and Universal Studios in on the trip, we promised them we would take them back the following year.

The next summer, Jack was very different. He was sad most of the time and very jumpy. We would go to the parks and want to go back on some of the rides he really liked, but he waited outside while we went on the ride. I couldn't figure it out. I didn't understand what was so different about that trip that he was acting as if he didn't want to be with us at all. We ended up arguing a lot. By the time we got back to Massachusetts, I called his doctor. There was something not right about him. We went to the see the triage nurse. It was then that I discovered what was wrong. He stopped taking one of his medications. While I had passed off his behavior before hand as nervousness about flying again, it was the fact he was not taking his medication.

I was furious! It was the last time he tried to pull a stunt like that. Medication is necessary along with talk therapy. When they are on medication, at least when the medication has them stable once they find the right combination, nerves are calmed. They help but they are not a miracle. He still has dark days when we will go to the parks and I can feel him jump while holding his hand. One of the agreements we had when we moved to Florida was that we would have one day a week just for us. Friday is our play day unless something special comes up during the week and we have to switch days. At least once a week we get out together to just enjoy life. Most of the time money is tight but we usually use our tax refund to buy the season passes. It is part of our therapy as a couple.

He needs it because of PTSD and I need it because he has PTSD. I also need it because spending at least 12 hours a day doing this, I need to be reminded that there is a another side of life and feel "normal" again. (Actually it's more like being a 12 year old again.) It is very important that the couple living with PTSD spend time together, even if it's just going for a walk or out to dinner. Movies are usually not a good thing for a PTSD veteran. They don't like being in the dark with a bunch of strangers for a couple of hours. The most they can tolerate is a few minute on a ride because it's moving and it's over fast. In restaurants they don't like to be seated in the middle of the room and they usually need to sit in a booth. When you walk in, you will see their eyes searching for a safe place to sit. Chivalry needs to be forgotten in this situation because we have to let them pick the safest seat for them and let them sit first. Otherwise we are talking to them and they are not paying attention at all because they are too busy being on guard. Plus when we are sitting in the wrong place, my husband usually will snap at the waiter instead of being nice.

You learn what to avoid and what works as time goes on. The key is to make sure they are getting the help they need and you have to be totally committed to paying attention and remembering, they have PTSD and you have to live with it. Adapt and understand. It will help your marriage survive and help them live a better life.

SAVE Program targets veteran suicides

Program targets veteran suicides
Fledgling prevention effort relies on shared experience
By Anna Badkhen
Globe Staff / March 31, 2008
He knew exactly what it was like, Kevin Lambert told the Iraq war veteran at a Dunkin' Donuts shop north of Boston: the insomnia, the bouts of depression, the hyper-vigilance that makes you imagine roadside bombs hidden in street garbage. Like the veteran, Lambert was 24, had served in Iraq, and had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I know how you feel," Lambert said. He listened attentively to the veteran's story before telling him where he could find counseling.

With suicide rates on the rise among military personnel, Massachusetts last month launched a one-of-a-kind program to prevent suicide among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The program's seven members -a woman whose husband has served in Afghanistan, five young combat veterans, including Lambert, and a mental health expert - say their personal experience helps them reach out to veterans who are considering suicide or who simply need help navigating the complicated and often confusing system of veterans' benefits and services.

"Being in combat and then trying to readjust to the civilian life - it's not easy. No one understands that because they haven't been there," said Lambert, who was deployed with the Army to Mosul and Baghdad in 2005 and 2006. "But we've been there. We can relate."

Members of the program, which is run by the Department of Veterans Services, funded by the Department of Public Health, and known by its acronym, SAVE, hope that their approach will help veterans overcome the sense of alienation and frustration that, combined with mental trauma incurred during combat, can lead to suicide. They meet with veterans, take them out for meals, refer them to counselors and job fairs, escort them to agencies that provide services and benefits to veterans, and explain to their relatives why veterans often appear depressed or restless.
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