Yesterday I had several conversations with people working with incarcerated veterans. Some of them do not belong behind bars because clearly they were reacting to what PTSD was doing to them. There are some that we just automatically pass off because of what they "did" and not being "good guys" that got into trouble.
There are so many things we just don't talk about normally and reporters all too often don't understand enough to know what questions to ask.
One of the things is PTSD can leave some feeling as if they have become evil but instead of attempting suicide, they believe it so deeply that they act as if they have in fact become evil. There are many veterans with no history of doing anything to hurt someone then suddenly commit serious crimes. They just don't know how to see themselves behind what they have become. If they don't understand how combat changes them, then how can they ever find peace even within the walls of a cell?
For those who do God's work for these forgotten souls, I admire you. It takes a special person to do what you do!
Army vet struggles with PTSD behind bars
Apr. 13, 2013
By Rebecca S. Green
The Journal Gazette via AP
DECATUR, Ind. — The tattoo on the inside of Justin York's left arm is hard to discern. Glancing at it one way, you can see the word "Life." If you look at it another way, it reads "Death."
If you look at it without knowing how to read it, it looks like an ornate, inky blue blur.
Life and death blurred together for the 25-year-old U.S. Army veteran to such a degree that he left his beloved Army with an extreme rating for post-traumatic stress disorder, making him unable to continue wearing the uniform.
Now he finds himself trapped inside an Adams County Jail cell, in an unwanted uniform of a different color.
Arrested in late December on a felony charge of resisting law enforcement with a weapon, York is desperate to get out, to get the charge reduced to the misdemeanor he feels is more appropriate and to get back to treatment for his PTSD. read more here
Former Marine wins fight with VA over cancer
By Donna Koehn
Published: Saturday, April 13, 2013
SARASOTA - An exuberant Tom Gervasi, 76, put his arms in the air, his fingers forming a “V for Victory.”
The former Marine learned Saturday — to his utter surprise — that his long, often bitter fight with his own government is done.
A letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed it: The cancer invading his bones was caused by his exposure to contaminated water as a young Marine at Camp Lejeune.
Tom is dying of breast cancer, so rare in men that only one in 1,000 will develop it in his lifetime.
The tale of his struggle, chockablock with emotional highs and lows, began when Elaine, his wife of 57 years, first spotted an unusual dimpling in Tom's left breast as he stood shirtless back in 2003. read more here
Vancouver Sun Online seems to have been very busy lately on PTSD. It is good way to take a look at what Canada is dealing with as well as the US. They are doing the same things we are including making a huge mistake on this first video.
They have up a video on Virtual Reality. In other words a computer game not unlike what most of these young men and women have been playing with for years. It is designed to simulate combat, which would be fine for mission training, but lousy at "preventing" PTSD and "defeating the enemy from within."
These are among the claims you will hear in this video.
Helps them "get over it" is not a good thing to say. This also claims "the program is also intended to prevent trauma" which is another big mistake. Topped off with "virtual taste of the terrors that await them and learn the ways to cope." It gives them a "sense of purpose and pride in the mission." said Dr. Buckwalter. It "tempers the body chemistry as they head into the mission."
Pure BS! If I had a PhD after my name I could say that if they dropped and did twenty pushups after they saw a buddy blown up it wouldn't bother them so much because exercise releases more endorphins!
Living with PTSD -- nine tours of duty
VancouverSunOnline
Apr 13, 2013
Jamie and Cyndi Teather -- both veterans of numerous tours of duty. Jamie served in five tours -- everywhere from Croatia and Bosnia to Afghanistan. He suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, but fears sounding like a whiner. Soldiers just don't do that. However, he is "broken," says Cyndi. She says they can live together happily as long as one of them is medicated.
Living with PTSD -- a wife misses her husband
VancouverSunOnline
Apr 13, 2013
Nicola Thom misses her husband. He isn't the same man she married. A soldier who served 22 years in the military and saw seven tours of duty, he came home changed after the last two tours. However, "I tell him we'll find a new normal," she says.
K9 Bravo
VancouverSunOnline
Apr 13, 2013
Richard Yuill, with his dog Halo, was diagnosed with PTSD after serving in Bosnia in 2000. He's part of the K9 Bravo program started by Hope Heels, a non-profit group established to help people with mental health issues. Video by Rick MacWilliam, edmontonjournal.com
Pte. Ted Patrick
VancouverSunOnline
Apr 13, 2013
Now 91, Ottawa-born and raised Pte. Ted Patrick was a signalman (radio operator) in the Irish Regiment of Canada. He served in Italy, Belgium and Holland during the war. Like many who served in the slow advance through Italy, he has terrible memories of being shelled by German mortars. In fact, he has lived with PTSD for much of his life.
In this video she apologizes for the photo but not for what she said afterwards. She is a good actress like I said earlier, but watching this video, it is like she is reading a script instead of actually speaking from the heart. Again, reminder about what she called the POWs
Fonda called the returning POWs "hypocrites and liars"
First, Fonda is a good actress but she does her acting getting paid to play a role in a movie and does it splendidly even when she is not getting paid. Does she regret what she did during the Vietnam War? Probably but since she is so good at acting, we'll never know if she regrets it because she now sees what she did was wrong or is it just because she is hated so many years after she did it.
The fact she said "get a life" shows that she still doesn't see while she did what she wanted to do going to Vietnam, the troops were there doing what they had to do because this nation decided to help support South Vietnam. They were doing it for someone else. Fonda, well, she claimed she was doing it "to end the killing and stop the war, but that came only after she was attacked for not saying anything about the students killed at Kenn State. After that she suddenly seemed to have been more about joining the crowd blaming the troops and screaming at veterans.
She did a lot wrong starting with going to Vietnam by choice in the first place. Made it worse by this.
During her trip, Fonda made ten radio broadcasts in which she denounced American political and military leaders as "war criminals". Fonda has defended her decision to travel to North Vietnam and her radio broadcasts. Also during the course of her visit, Fonda visited American prisoners of war (POWs), and brought back messages from them to their families. When cases of torture began to emerge among POWs returning to the United States, Fonda called the returning POWs "hypocrites and liars".
That was in 1972 and she finally said she regretted it in 1988, again when there was an uproar over another movie and she said "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft gun, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes." Followed by some lame ass apology for everything else but she seemed to have regretted the picture the most. Amazing!
That is the biggest problem with free speech. We can all say what we want but it does not require everyone else to listen politely. It does not mean there are no consequences to what is said. She made the choice to go there. She made the choice to say what she said and believe what she did. She made the choice to attack the men and women risking their lives. That is something she will have to live with the rest of her life because the men and women who served during all those years have to live with being a veteran the rest of their lives and the way they were treated by people like Fonda. That is something she will never understand because I doubt she has ever done anything that was not for her own glory including what she did in the name of the causes she got involved with.
In a 60 Minutes interview on March 31, 2005, Fonda reiterated that she had no regrets about her trip to North Vietnam in 1972, with the exception of the anti-aircraft-gun photo. She stated that the incident was a "betrayal" of American forces and of the "country that gave me privilege."
If you want to know more Wikipedia has a pretty good section on it. Click above and read it. For me, I think she is just too selfish to ever understand how what she did so long ago is something she will be held accountable for no matter if she likes it or not. Her trip there was a year after my husband came home.
Jane Fonda to veterans boycotting movie: 'Get a life'
APRIL 12, 2013
BY: JOE NEWBY
Jane Fonda, the actress known as "Hanoi Jane" for her actions during the Vietnam War, has a simple message to veterans and others who are boycotting "The Butler,” a movie in which she plays Nancy Reagan, Fox News reported Thursday.
"Get a life," she told the Hollywood Reporter.
Larry Reyes, a Navy veteran who founded the "Boycott Hanoi Jane Playing Nancy Reagan" Facebook page, said the choice of Fonda for the role was the moviemakers way of "giving people like me the middle finger."
“Growing up in a military family I heard my father and uncles talk about what Jane did, so from an early age I knew about her history with the war and how upset veterans were about it. Yet it amazed me that people just turned their backs and kept supporting her exercise videos and movies. I made a commitment early on not to support her projects,” he told FOX411.
“Then when I heard she was going to play such a well-liked and highly respected president’s wife, it got to me. They (the filmmakers) knew by picking Jane for the part they were going to stir up some stuff. I’m not a conservative or a liberal, I’m an American. And that was a slap in the face,” he added. read more here
