Military mental health crisis exposed with Camp Liberty killings

Military mental health crisis exposed with Camp Liberty killings
By ELLIOT BLAIR SMITH
Bloomberg News
Published: August 2, 2012

Sergeant John Russell lay awake, wondering what his wife would do if he killed himself.

He was so messed up that his first lieutenant removed the firing pin from his M16 assault rifle. Six weeks from the end of his fifth combat-zone tour, and five years from retiring on a 20-year Army pension, he suspected he wouldn’t see any of it.

Before dawn, shaking and stuttering, Russell walked through the still desert outside Baghdad to the quarters of Captain Peter Keough, the 54th Engineer Battalion’s chaplain. Keough listened, and hastily made the sergeant’s fourth appointment in four days at an Army mental-health clinic.

“I believe he is deteriorating,” Keough e-mailed an Army psychiatrist. “He doesn’t trust anyone.” Russell, the chaplain wrote, “believes he is better off dead.”

It was 10:07 a.m. on May 11, 2009. The battalion, military police and combat stress specialists had three hours and 34 minutes to avert tragedy. Instead, after lost opportunities and miscalculations, the blue-eyed sergeant from Texas used a stolen gun to kill three enlisted men and two officers in the deadliest case of soldier-on-soldier violence in the war zone. His victims’ bodies are buried across the U.S., from Arlington National Cemetery to the Texas panhandle.

Russell slipped through the safety net constructed to catch troubled soldiers. More and more are falling. The armed services’ mental-health epidemic has deepened since the Camp Liberty killings. In June, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered a Pentagon review of every diagnosis from 2001 on. read more here

5 US soldiers shot at Camp Liberty in Iraq

Defense contractors rally against budget cuts

Defense contractors rally against budget cuts
By Kevin Wang
Medill News Service
Posted : Wednesday Aug 1, 2012

With automatic, across-the-board federal budget cuts slated to begin next January, defense industry leaders warned of deep wounds to America’s backbone if Congress fails to act to avoid the roughly $1 trillion in reductions.

At a rally Monday in Crystal City, Va., some Northern Virginia-based defense contractors said the mandatory cuts, which will take effect if Congress doesn’t craft an alternative budget-cutting package, would cost millions of American jobs and ripple across the entire economy.

More than 200 people, many employed by the contractors, attended the 1½-hour event.

Wes Bush, CEO of the leading unmanned aircraft manufacturer Northrop Grumman Corp., said sequestration could hurt both the nation’s defense and non-defense sectors by causing massive layoffs, including in such fields as air traffic controllers and government inspectors.

According to a recent study by the Aerospace Industries Association, which represents major U.S. aerospace and defense companies, sequestration could cost more than 2.1 million jobs nationwide and increase the unemployment rate by up to 1.5 percent.
read more here

1 gold, several defeats for military Olympians

1 gold, several defeats for military Olympians
Staff report
Army Times
Posted : Tuesday Jul 31, 2012

A fast-fingered 23-year-old Sgt. Vincent Hancock shattered multiple Olympic records while staking his claim for gold at the London Games on Tuesday even as other military athletes suffered through the agony of defeat.

The Fort Benning, Ga.-based Army Marksmanship Unit skeet shooter drilled 123 out of 125 targets in his record-setting qualifier and then a perfect 25 in the finals for another record and his spot at the top of the podium.

His score of 148 broke the Olympic skeet record of 145 he set en route to his first Olympic gold at the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Hancock’s win also marks the first time an Olympic skeet shooter has nailed back-to-back gold medals.
read more here

Military Suicides:More money won't fix what does not work

More money won't fix what does not work
by Chaplain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
August 2, 2012

Sgt. Maj. Bryan Battaglia said, "The numbers, I'm not proud to say, continue to climb. We haven't cracked the code. We as military leaders get paid to solve the problems, and this is one we can't seem to solve. We've got to reduce it; we just have to. No service is immune to it. The Army is the largest and has the most. One of my main efforts is to reduce suicides in the military."

"We haven't cracked the code." Gee maybe they should call Dan Brown since he cracked Da Vinci's. This is beyond belief! How could this still be excusable in the same country that has managed to have changed the world in one form or another with brilliant people finding ways to do it? This same country with an ever increasing number of defense contractor billionaires, rock star scientists and researchers, veterans charities pulling in millions in donations every year topped off with the "best military in the world" able to "bring it on" can't manage to come up with a better way of saving the lives of the men and women serving in the military? They've had 40 years!

Soldier Suicides, An Epidemic We Must Defeat
By CONGRESSMAN JIM MCDERMOTT
August 1, 2012

Every day an active-duty member of our Armed Forces commits suicide.

To emphasize the silent, tragic epidemic that is sweeping across the U.S. military, consider this one statistic, which was brought to light in a recent TIME magazine article: “More U.S. military personnel have died by suicide since the war in Afghanistan began than have died fighting there.”

Let me rephrase that, just to make sure you understood the above statistic: Since the start of the Afghanistan war in 2001, there have been more soldier suicides than soldier combat deaths.

It’s not as though the Pentagon has been doing nothing on this issue. They have been working to address the epidemic of soldier suicides through research, by setting up hotlines, expanding outreach programs, and increasing access to mental health services.

Yet, we are still seeing a suicide per day.

Clearly, these efforts aren’t hitting their mark. Suicide is an extremely complex problem and we do not have all the answers, but one thing we do know is that the Pentagon must do better.

On July 19, with bipartisan support, I helped to increase the Pentagon’s suicide prevention budget by $10 million in the defense annual budget that passed the U.S. House. It is my hope that in moving forward, the Pentagon will consider two important changes when spending this part of their budget to ensure that the most effective suicide prevention strategies are carried out.

First, address stigma. We must ensure that like all medical care, seeking and receiving psychological health care never jeopardizes a soldier’s security clearance or her or his prospects for promotion. There cannot be, and cannot be perceived by service members to be, a double standard around seeking medical care for the visible versus invisible wounds of war.
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Yes, they have to address the stigma but we've heard that before. When General Lloyd Austin said "suicide is the toughest enemy I ever faced" a few months after Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard said “I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act,” that says a lot about how they've been doing a lot of talking about this but not accomplishing very much at all. They said they were addressing the stigma of seeking help every year since the suicide reports came out and law suits pushed to have the information made public.

The Army created suicide prevention board in 2008 to address suicides committed by recruiters! They spent $50 million on Army, National Institute of Mental Health Suicide Study the same year. This was a five year study at $10 million a year!

A year later Marine Master Sgt. James Dinwoodie said

"We as Marines always try to do the hard thing," Master Sgt. James Dinwoodie says in a training video aimed at promoting sensitivity to emotional problems Marines may be suffering. "Well, sometimes you need to do the soft thing."

In five years, this is the 600th post on Wounded Times with the label military suicides.

Families need to come after they get rid of the stigma because they are on the front lines after combat. To this day, families want to know why no one told them about Combat PTSD so they would have had a chance to save the lives of the lives of people they loved.

Congress holds hearings with families after the suicide made headlines. They write bills without one single clue if it will work or not and then they hold more hearings on another suicide that made headlines across the country, hear another tragic story from a suffering family, then repeat if all again the next time another military suicide takes the top of the fold in the Washington Post or the New York Times.

40 years of research with billions of dollars in funding has produced more suffering and excuses than the grave yards can keep up with.

VA chief asked to stop reprisals against doctor working on PTSD

VA chief asked to stop reprisals against doctor
12:32 AM, Aug 2, 2012
Written by
William H. McMichael
The News Journal

U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki needs to take “immediate action” to end what a union claims are continued reprisals against a Wilmington VA Medical Center psychologist who testified before Congress last fall about understaffing and questionable accounting.

The charges, levied by the American Federation of Government Employees, are this: Michelle Washington had her job performance appraisal lowered, job duties altered and job title changed as a result of her Nov. 30 appearance at a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing in Washington.

The Wilmington facility declines to publicly discuss Washington’s situation, citing employee privacy rights.

The union’s national secretary-treasurer wants a face-to-face discussion with Shinseki.
read more here