A report out of Michigan on Veterans Courts covers the issue of redeployments and the increased burden veterans carry on their shoulders.
Bringing the war home
Suicide has killed more American veterans than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Veterans often return from combat tours accustomed to violence and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, Eling said. A soldier serving multiple combat tours has become more common than it was in previous generations, increasing the risk of mental illness.
Reminder on this part. The Army did a study back in 2006 on redeployments and found they increased the risk of PTSD by 50%. They did it anyway.
U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health.
The findings reflect the fact that some soldiers -- many of whom are now spending only about a year at home between deployments -- are returning to battle while still suffering from the psychological scars of earlier combat tours, the report said.
How a high-risk combat veteran is overcoming suicide attempts via special court
MLIVE
By Malachi Barrett
July 28, 2016
MUSKEGON, MI — When Dana Harvey talks about his experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, his warm tone becomes heavy and listless.
His voice drops deeper and sometimes trails off toward the end of a sentence. There is more weight to his words; each is carefully chosen and seems to sit next to him in the room.
Harvey joined the U.S. Navy at 19 because he wanted to do something that would let him hold his head up high. After he got out, the disabled veteran's experiences in war led to the lowest point of his life.
"I had become real depressed and was drinking a lot and kept having nightmares, like war dreams and night shakes," he said. "I had a little bit of survivor's guilt, they tell me. I guess that's true. I ended up attempting suicide. Actually I attempted it a few times. Six times."
The Battle Creek Veterans Affairs Medical Center taught Harvey techniques to deal with his depression, but he didn't stop medicating with alcohol. For the majority of his adult life, he drank to sleep, to stop thinking and cope with trauma.
In the summer of 2014, it caught up with him. Harvey blacked out and became unresponsive while taking care of his daughter Gwendalynn. He was charged with fourth degree child abuse, a misdemeanor charge that could mean up to one year in jail.
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1 San Diego Police Officer Shot, Killed in Line of Duty, Second Seriously Wounded
NBC 7 News
By Jaspreet Kaur and Samantha Tatro
July 29, 2016
One San Diego police officer has died and one remains in surgery after a late-night shooting just south of Downtown San Diego. One suspect is in custody and authorities continue to search for other possible suspects, police said.
At a press conference early Friday morning, San Diego Police Department Chief Shelley Zimmerman said the officers were conducting a traffic stop shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday in San Diego's Southcrest neighborhood when the shooting happened.
Shortly after stopping their car, the officers called for emergency cover.
When additional officers arrived on scene, they found both officers, who have not yet been identified, with gunshot wounds. One officer, who suffered multiple gunshot wounds, was taken in a patrol car to Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest.
Doctors were unable to save his life.
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Died as a result of their service and our neglect
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 29, 2016
Stop "doing something" while pretending it is better than nothing. The results are now worse than ever.
The latest suicide report from the VA proves that. In 1999 their research showed 20 suicides a day but we had about 7 million more veterans in this country. Too few had heard the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder even though they were living with it.
Now the report says there are 20 a day with less veterans alive to worry about.
"Honor and remember their sacrifice" sounds good and for many, that is the truth. "Later died as a result of their service" is the part that shows far too few actually do it. Had they cared enough then my generation would not be seeing the same thing we went through for the younger veterans and families just like ours.
It is bad enough being forgotten in all the reporting done across the country as they attempt to tell the stories of veterans committing suicide and charities lining up to "do something" about all this, only to discover no one is talking about, or doing anything for the majority of the veterans losing the last battle after war. It is even worse to discover that absolutely nothing has been changed by any of it.
When our veterans came home, we suffered in silence. It wasn't that we didn't want to talk. It was because no one cared enough to listen. We didn't give up on the American public and many veterans took the fight to Washington, pushing for and obtaining all the funding for research into the wound all other generations came home with. PTSD is not new and things have hardly improved.
'He went to fight a war over there, then he came back and had to fight another war.'
San Antonio Express News
Martin Kuz
Garza shared little with Mata about the causes of the war within him before his death Sept. 18, when he jumped from a freeway overpass on the city’s northern edge. He clutched two yellow blankets that belonged to his young daughter as he fell to earth.
Mata knew only that he had received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder linked to his two combat tours in Iraq. The second ended in 2005, a full decade before his suicide at age 33, and six years before they began dating.
LAREDO — Sara Mata has followed a morning ritual since marrying Manuel Garza five years ago. She pours two mugs of coffee and sits down beside him to talk about what’s on her mind, musing out loud about their children and families, about happy memories and dreams for the future.
Until last fall, the conversations took place at the kitchen table in their modest apartment on Laredo’s south side, the couple surrounded by the clutter of family life.
Now Mata sits at the foot of her husband’s grave in a city cemetery, shadowed by the anguish of loss. She talks to the white marble headstone that identifies him as an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War. She stays long enough that his coffee turns cold.
“There are so many unanswered questions, so many things I would like to know,” she said. “I ask him when I come here.”
“We veterans are very good at hiding things emotionally.That can be useful in a lot of situations. But the problem with suicide is, you can’t come back to life and see what you’ve done.” Gabriel Lopez
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As you can see, there are things that are in fact worse than nothing. It was easier to be suffering in silence thinking no one knew instead of they just don't care enough.
Nearly 15 Years After 9/11, Retired Colonel Meets the Man Whose Life He Helped Save
PEOPLE
BY CATHY FREE
07/25/2016
"When I realized that I was looking at the same gentleman, I started to cry and told him I was so grateful that he was still alive," Maness tells PEOPLE. "We hugged each other and neither of us could believe that we were talking again. What are the odds?"
Medical personnel load wounded Pentagon worker into an ambulance outside the Pentagon on September 11, 2001
JOURNALIST 1ST CLASS MARK D. FARAM / U.S. NAVY / GETTY IMAGES
Every day for almost 15 years, Col. Rob Maness wondered about the badly-burned man he'd tried to keep conscious on a gurney after terrorists flew a 757 airliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Did he make it? Was he still alive? Was he able to fully recover and live a happy and fulfilling life?
"It's something I've always thought about, but I never had an answer," Maness, 54, now living in Madisonville, Louisiana, and running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, tells PEOPLE. "It was always a mystery."
Until now.
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Americans injured fighting Islamic State group in Afghanistan
Stars and Stripes
By Corey Dickstein
Published: July 28, 2016
WASHINGTON – Five U.S. servicemembers were wounded in recent days fighting militants aligned with the Islamic State group in eastern Afghanistan, Army Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson said Thursday.
The American special operators were accompanying Afghan special forces this week in southern Nangarhar Province, where the Afghans began a major operation that aimed to route the militants from the country, said Nicholson, the top American commander in Afghanistan.
None of the injuries were life-threatening, he said. Two operators were quickly returned to their units and three were evacuated from Afghanistan for further medical treatment.
“They are in good spirits and have talked to their families,” Nicholson said. “We expect a full recovery.”
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