In Australia only 7 police officers out of 1,500 asked for help for PTSD. A survey showed that half of the officers have PTSD. “There’s more than likely a significant number more that are suffering and don’t have the courage at this point in time to put their hand up and say I need help.” according to the findings. Imagine that! They risk their lives everyday for someone else needing help. That takes courage. So why would it require more courage to ask for help because of it?
Northern Territory police officers struggle to discuss post traumatic stress disorder NT News Australia
KIERAN BANKS
August 21, 2016
“There’s more than likely a significant number more that are suffering and don’t have the courage at this point in time to put their hand up and say I need help.”
Northern Territory Police Association president Paul McCue
NEARLY every second police officer in the Northern Territory has been touched by post traumatic stress, according to a survey of frontline cops.
Despite the statistic gathered by the NT Police Association, only seven police officers out of the nearly 1500 in the Territory officially reported mental stress to their department in the past two years.
The survey found 41 per cent of police had experienced PTSD personally or with a colleague and 80 per cent said they had received no education or information about the illness. read more here
Chaplains begin treating veterans for newly designated ‘moral injury’ The Post and Courier
Natalie Caula Hauff
Aug 20 2016
Bernard Smith spent 22 days face-to-face with death. The stench surrounded him as bodies of men, both young and old, were carted into a mortuary for him to process in Saigon during the Vietnam War.
Smith, 77, of Myrtle Beach, survived the war that took the lives of more than 50,000 Americans, but he is still haunted by hundreds of those souls.
“In the middle of the night, I would scream sometimes,” he said about the nightmares that he still has to this day. “One night, the Grim Reaper appeared in my dream and looked right at me and turned and said, ‘You’re next.’”
With no warning or the proper training to prepare for it, Smith was called on periodically to assist in processing the dead military members over a four-month stretch. He was 23 at the time and serving in the Air Force on the flight line.
The shock of that experience, even 50 years later, has embedded a deep inner turmoil within Smith that officials at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center in Charleston have been working to treat.
“Military and VA chaplains have understood and worked with moral injury for many years. However, only recently did the broader medical and mental health communities designate a formal definition of the concept,” he said. read more here
When you think about all that has been known about PTSD, especially among those putting their lives on the line, you'd think that Florida would actually be proud to be among the best in the nation addressing it. But that would mean you were thinking when obviously, my state is not. Tracking reports from all over the country as well as internationally, it is reprehensible that Florida, the number three state in the US for veterans has this record. Why? Because law enforcement and firefighting are the top jobs veterans seek after risking their lives in the military. You'd think they would matter enough to be able to depend on us to stand up for them. UPDATE
BY NICO LANGAUGUST 23 2016 Officer Gerry Realin, one of the first responders on the scene following the Pulse nightclub shooting in June, is fighting the state of Florida to have his post-traumatic stress disorder recognized as workman’s compensation, as current policy doesn’t cover psychological trauma. After a lone gunman opened fire on the Orlando gay bar on June 12, killing 49 people, Realin helped remove bodies from the club. “When he got home, 2:30 the next morning, he came in very quiet… looked at both of our kids, then went in the shower and just lost it,” his wife, Jessica, told Orlando TV station, WFTV. “And he didn't stop crying. The next day, it was on and off. And it's just been really hard.”
Orlando Police Officer may lose everything after Pulse terror attack. He has PTSD from it. Is this how we treat those who risk their lives when the survivors are trying to heal from it too? Does the Police Department understand how vital it is to have an officer talk publicly about having PTSD? It comes with the job! It comes with the job of anyone risking their lives. Firefighters and EMTs get hit by it from their jobs. National Guardsmen and Reservists get it from their jobs. Military members get it from their jobs. It seems everyone is more accepting of civilians getting it from surviving the day the event happened to them than those who serve risk their lives responding to them all the time.
'I still see all the red,' officer who removed bodies from Pulse says Orlando Sentinel David Harris August 13, 2016
Clark estimated there are 100,000 officers nationwide with PTSD, but the law-enforcement industry has been slow to react to officers' needs. They also have a higher rate of suicide.
Sometimes the smell comes back to Officer Gerry Realin. He can't describe it, but he knows it when it hits him.
It's the smell of death.
For four hours, Realin and the seven other members of the Orlando Police Department's hazmat team were tasked with removing all the bodies from Pulse nightclub. As a result, he said he has been diagnosed with PTSD.
"There was just that smell that saturated my whole body," he said while holding his wife Jessica's hand. "My hair, my skin, my whole respiratory system."
Two months after the massacre that killed 49 people and injured more than 50 others, Realin said he still sees "all the red."
Now, Realin's attorney Geoffrey Bichler wants to use the case to challenge the constitutionality of the state's workers' compensation law, which will pay for physical injuries but not psychological ones.
"It is a travesty that there's no legal protection for a guy like Gerry," Bichler said. "The law needs to protect them. As a society, we owe it to them."
Only five states pay workers' comp because of psychological issues suffered on the job, said Ron Clark, who runs the Connecticut-based group Badge of Life, which studies post-traumatic stress disorder in law enforcement.
read more here
Reynolds helps PTSD veterans out of the dark, into the light MyWebTimes
Steve Stout
August 20, 2016
"This a not a social gathering. This group is designed for problem solving. We talk about things that many of us haven't even shared with our families. There is no pity or shame given here. There is only compassionate understanding and genuine support. Here, at these meetings, we provide each other with the tools, the courage, we vets need to live our everyday lives." Roger Reynolds
As a young U.S. Marine in the late 1960s, Roger Reynolds, of Ottawa, fought for his country in the jungles of Vietnam.
"The time I spent in Vietnam turned me into a crazed, heartless killer," admitted Reynolds.
"I caused a lot of death and destruction while I was over there and, on Valentine's Day, 1969, I shot and killed my best friend during a night fight in the jungle. That mission — my buddy's death — has become my eternal nightmare. I know it will never leave me."
With little memory of his last days in Vietnam, Reynolds came home to La Salle County — like many returning combat servicemen and women — suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Part of his personal salvation came years later, as he helped form a peer-led, community-based group at the Veterans Administration Clinic in Peru for local veterans affected by PTSD.
These days, as a steel-minded leader of that group, Reynolds, 68, fights for the proper mental and physical care of fellow former servicemen with the men themselves and the VA.
At weekly meetings, he is the organizer of discussions that range from personal family problems to medical issues, from recurring nightmares of combat trauma to dark depressions.
In the private gatherings, the veterans share their fears, pain, heartaches and, perhaps most importantly, fellowship.
"I have become my brother's keeper and that is just fine with me."
Do not choose to leave an empty seat at the table Wounded Times Kathie Costos August 20, 2016 We can count the number of those missing in action but we will never know the number of those missing from tables all over the country because of it.
There are obvious numbers and then there are numbers we will never know. When someone is dies serving this nation, their death is counted as a price of war. When someone dies because of combat, all too often, only those they left behind know about that other price of service. When someone is bodily wounded, they receive a Purple Heart and their wound is counted as yet another price paid by those willing to risk their lives for this nation. When someone is wounded within their bodies, they are the only ones knowing war never left them unless they stop suffering in silence. Some will seek healing. Some will seek an end to the suffering by ending their own lives. If you are one of them please reconsider leaving behind an empty chair. If you think you are making your family miserable, you are probably right. If you think leaving them behind because you do not want to burden them, you are definitely wrong. Leaving them will break their hearts and they will never find the answers as to what they could have done differently. The biggest question in their minds will be wondering why you decided to leave instead of healing. If you think that leaving them will make their lives better then you better start to think of how you can make their lives better with you in it. Think about it this way. In the military, there were those you counted on to make it from one day to another. They counted on you as well. Your family and friends are counting on you now for their tomorrows. Why don't you know how much they care about you and how hard they will fight for you if you let them? When you were in combat, you did whatever it took to stay alive and keep as many of those you were with to make it back home. Why should this be any different? We know that too many just like you gave up because they did not find the help they needed to heal. Maybe they did not even know they could. How many do you think you could help if you let them know that? There are weapons you trained to use in combat and there are weapons you can train to use in this battle to save their lives but you have to learn how to save your own first. Knowledge to live with it: PTSD is a wound caused by what you survived. You are not a victim. You survived it. Do not settle for what comes afterwards as being harder to get through that "it" was. You fought with everything you had in combat, so fight to get whatever you need now. You would not need help healing PTSD if you did not serve. If you survived multiple deployments then understand the risk of developing PTSD went up 50% each time you went into combat. The odds were stacked against you. This was known back in 2006 and a lot of you have figured that out but some have no clue. "I left the war zone but the war zone never left me." Nicholas Johnson
More than 730,000 went as members of the reserves or National Guard, forcing them to place their civilian lives on hold for as long as a year, sometimes more than once. It was the largest use of both forces since World War II, greater even than during the Vietnam and Korean wars.
Troops “don’t need to be classified as wounded in action to have been wounded. A lot of us got hurt. Some more serious than others, but a lot of us sacrificed part of our bodies out there.”Adam Schiele
The place where PTSD lives is in the part of your brain holding your emotions. It is not fully developed until the age of 25, yet by then you probably experienced more than most will in a lifetime. Go once, and yes, PTSD can hit you. It happened to about one out of three Vietnam veterans after just one deployment. Go over and over again and it becomes engrained in your mind so living back home afterwards is not easy. It is not impossible! The best way to "fit back in" is to fit back in with the right groups. Try to fit in with civilians your age more interested in hunting down Pokemon than what you had to do hunting down the enemy and you get blank faces. Service is a part of you, so you fit in with other veterans. Don't stay lonely when you can feel like family again. How do you expect people to understand you when you've had a hard time understanding yourself? They understand it all too well and they are still surviving because they found the support they needed to heal. A POW is captured by the enemy. You have been captured by PTSD. It is an enemy, so fight it. A POW is tortured by the enemy. You are being tortured by PTSD. Do not just endure it until it stops and lets you get some rest. Defeat it so you can live a better life. A POW is controlled by the enemy. You are being controlled by PTSD. Take back control over your own life and heal. Knowing what PTSD is and the simple fact that it can only strike after surviving something like you did, means you did not cause it. Your service did. You are not mentally weak like the military made you think you were. When they told you that you could train to be mentally tough, that made you think PTSD meant you were weak. The truth is, you have an emotionally strong core and that is why you felt it all more than others. It wasn't just about your own pain but the pain of others that you carry within you. If you grieve, you do because you loved. Evil people do not grieve and they are not willing to die to save someone else. You are not trapped the way you are today but can change again. That is what PTSD is. It changed you and you can change what it is doing to you. You can change what you are doing to others and start doing for others again.
After all, isn't that why you joined the military in the first place? That came from the love you have to give. Love them enough to live.
