Lawmakers Only Want to See Choice They Want Veterans To Take

No real need to wonder if these politicians noticed it is their job to make sure the VA takes care of our veterans. After all, they had the authority since 1946, ergo, if the VA has problems, it was their job to fix them.

So why didn't they? Why would they want to spend this kind of money on private healthcare providers instead of actually fixing the problems with the VA? Easy answer is, private healthcare providers will make a lot more money off "treating" our veterans. 

Veterans not only deserve the best care this nation can give, but should never have to settle for the least lawmakers are willing to do! None of these problems veterans face are new ones.

Lawmakers to take on veterans issues after weeklong recess
STARS AND STRIPES
By NIKKI WENTLING
Published: July 8, 2017

Shulkin is seeking emergency funding or authority from Congress to transfer money from a community care account that holds about $2 billion. Currently, he does not have the power to move money between the accounts.

Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the White House Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on May 8, 2017, as veterans from Colorado were in town participating in an Honor Flight event. A host of veterans issues are slated to be addressed as lawmakers return to Washington following the July 4th holiday break.
WHITE HOUSE PHOTO

WASHINGTON — As they return this week from a July Fourth break, lawmakers are set to discuss Department of Veterans Affairs health care, its 2018 budget, how veterans are affected by the opioid crisis and how the VA handles claims for Gulf War Illness – all while facing a short timeframe to do something about quickly diminishing funds in the VA Choice program.

Choice funding VA Secretary David Shulkin warned lawmakers June 16 that money was unexpectedly running out for the Choice program, which allows veterans to seek health care outside the VA. Despite projecting the VA would roll over $626 million for Choice funding into the next fiscal year, Shulkin said the fund would be depleted by Aug. 7.

He attributed the faster spending to the increased popularity of the program among veterans this year.

Now, there’s concern that without action from Congress, more veterans will have to receive care within the VA, creating longer wait times and adding stress to the system that the Choice program was meant to alleviate.

VA budget
A Senate Appropriations subcommittee will propose a fiscal 2018 VA budget at a Wednesday meeting, which will be followed by a full committee markup of the proposal Thursday morning.

Last month, House appropriators proposed a $182 billion budget for the VA, an increase from 2017 levels but still short of the $186.5 billion Trump is calling for.
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The Brains Behind Battle Mind

The Brains Behind Battle Mind
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 8, 2017

A friend sent me a link to someone that has not been written about lately and that link (seen below about Pulitzer Prize) took me on a 4 hour hunt. What you will read, hopefully, will open your eyes to some very important details. The first one is, just because someone get attention, it does not mean they deserve it. It just means they know how to get as much as possible for themselves.

The "brains" behind the lost battle for minds caused this landmine for our service members and first responders. There is another way to put it but I'd end up with an "adults only" rating if I used what I am thinking.

Valvincent Reyes and Dave Grossman are among the "brains" responsible for telling the most courageous among us that they must be weak minded if they end up with PTSD or think of suicide.

Demographic characteristics and their associations with suicide A total of 255 active duty soldiers committed suicide in 2007 and 2008 (115 in 2007 and 140 in 2008). Table 2 presents the distribution of demographic characteristics for this group of individuals. Suicides were predominantly male (95%), 18e24 years old (45%) and Caucasian (73%), married at the time of death (59%) and lower enlisted (54%). Almost 69% had been deployed at least once to combat theatre.

"Battlemind training before they deploy." 

"As soon as they are approved medically and psychologically, they are sent to war."

Published on Sep 9, 2010 Lt. Colonel Valvincent Reyes, Clinical Assistant Professor at the USC School of Social Work, delivers a lecture at the San Diego Academic Center on November 24th, 2009 about Battlemind, the army's current model for mental health care, with an emphasis on its application before deployment. Lt. Col Reyes illustrates the discussion with his recent experiences debriefing victims and family members of victims in the aftermath of the shooting at Fort Hood.

But this training does not work. The rise in the number of suicides within the military and veterans community prove that one.

While the number of reported veteran suicides is in dispute, the percentages are not. 65% of the veteran suicides are over the age of 50. That is a reflection of the Veteran demographics with the majority of US veterans are in fact, over the age of 50. 

What is even more troubling is that those older veterans did not receive "preventative" training before deployment, nor did they receive any of the "efforts" people like Grossman were pushing.

Every service member has been "trained" yet the results in the OEF and OIF veterans as well as those currently in the military have proven beyond a shadow of doubt, this is not only not working, it has had the opposite result.

The rate of OEF and OIF veterans are triple their peer rate. For female veterans, suicides are six times higher than other females. Training, like Battlemind, followed by the stupidity of Comprehensive Solider Fitness, actually prevents them from seeking help as soon as they acknowledge they need it. How? Because they were all told they were training their brain to be tough enough to take whatever they face. In other words, if they need help, they were weak minded or did not train right. Thus, prevented from opening up to the others they served with so that no one would see them as weak.

In 2009, I had a prediction of this disastrous outcome.

Then again, Grossman does not seem to even get the functioning of the human body. While no human can take a bathroom break during combat, but the body does what it has to even though it is not convenient, Grossman took the opportunity to disparage even that aspect of combat.

Warrior Mindset: Mental Toughness, Skills for a Nation's Peacekeepers."If we look only at the individuals at the tip of the spear and factor out those who didn't experience intense combat, we can estimate that approximately 50 percent of those who did experience it admitted they had wet their pants and nearly 25 percent admitted they had mess themselves."

Ok, sure he must expect them to be able to say "hold your fire I need to take a leak" and then walk away from the action. So why point out something like than unless you figure it matches what you already assume they are? 

Back to the video, Reyes called them "maladaptive" and that is defined as this,

adjective1. of, relating to, or characterized by maladaptation or incomplete, inadequate, or faulty adaptation:

Back to the facts, these are the numbers after they pushed this training. As you look at the numbers remember the size of the military had gone down year after year. Less enlisted equals higher suicide rates.

As you have just seen, the "training" did not work and when the DOD points out that the "majority have never deployed" proves it even more. Think about this training not preventing the "non deployed" from killing themselves, then wonder how they expected it to work on those with multiple deployments. Any reasonable "expert" would have understood this calamity and ended it, but they turned around and planned on just pushing it harder.  

It also seems that Grossman did more than push this training. It seems he has also tried to sell himself as a "Pulitzer Prize Nominee" and was pointed out clearly on thetruthaboutsocnetlies

I’ll leave it to the reader to determine the whys of someone that sells books and training for a living to likely fudge the difference between paying $50 and filling out a form to being an actual Pulitzer Prize nominee. My opinion is if, like John Giduck, Mr. Grossman is knowing lying about his background to sell you books and seminars, what else is he lying about?  See the links below to learn more about the circle around that mutually promote and defend each other.
I still laugh about how cops pay a guy that never killed anyone for advice about killing.  How dumb is that? You may as well be sitting in a Grossman lecture about menstrual cramps. 

That article is from 2014 but his claim goes back even further.

Pulitzer-Nominated Author to Keynote TREXPO West 2007 January 29, 2007  CS StaffLOS ANGELES – Campus Safety Magazine and the organizers of TREXPO announce that Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, one of law enforcement’s most in-demand speakers and trainers, will be one of the charismatic keynote speakers at TREXPO West 2007, March 19-22, in Long Beach, Calif.Grossman has been featured on TV and radio talk shows, in documentaries and in newspaper stories across the United States, Australia and Canada. Wherever Col. Grossman speaks, he draws enormous crowds and standing ovations. The way he energizes and captivates his audience is legendary!Grossman will deliver the opening keynote address on Tuesday, March 20, discussing a sensitive topic he has studied extensively: violent behavior and the ways law enforcement and communities can prevent fatalities. He is the founder of Killology Research Group, a police and military consultancy, and the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated On Combat and On Killing, which is required reading at the FBI Academy and some of the nation’s top military schools.This talented speaker and trainer combined his experiences as a West Point psychology professor, a professor of military science and an Army Ranger to become the founder of a new field of scientific endeavor, which has been termed “killology.” In this new field the impressive Grossman has made revolutionary new contributions to our understanding of war and violence in our society. 

And yet these "brains" do not seem to be able to explain how the bravest of the brave have not only proven their courage in combat, they have received the Medal of Honor. Many of them talk about their own battles with PTSD as well as how heroes like Dakota Meyer have attempted suicide.

"But triumphant times led to terrible times, with Meyer attempting to kill himself:  "So, I pulled over to the side of the road and I just pulled one of my guns out and I just put it to my head and squeezed the trigger.  And...there wasn't a round in it.  I don't know.  I have no idea, but, obviously somebody had taken it out...and it sobered me up. And it was like, at that point in time, I told myself, I have to figure this out. I have to figure this out because if I would have killed myself, that was the most, you know, selfish thing that I could ever do.""

Maybe folks should stop listening to the "brains" that have contributed to the stigma of PTSD and start listening to the folks actually trying to do something to change the outcome?

Danger of Dead End Road of Awareness

Suicide Awareness Equals Dead End

It is hard to read the sign in the distance. As you come closer, 

the words come into focus and you are more aware of the danger.

Most of the time, it feels like I am driving down the road I've been on for 35 years. I know the road well enough to remember where the potholes are. I know what it is like when the road is slippery and how to control where I am going. I even know how to avoid boulders blocking the road. What I don't know how to do is get bad drivers out of the way!

PTSD Patrol is about taking back control over the road you're on. You have no control over where you have been, any more than you have control over what shape the road you are on is in. No control over traffic or bad drivers getting in your way but you decide how to get to where you want to go. 

You can decide if you just pull over to the side of the road for the rest of your life, or find your way out of the valley. You decide what you are willing to settle for and what you finally understand is a possibility of having a much better life.

See, the thing is, while it is painful to live the way you are now, it is familiar. Being in harms way was familiar. Right now you may be too afraid to change direction again, but that is exactly what you've been missing. You can change right now!

If your online with anyone pushing the "awareness" crap, close it because it is nothing more than another closed door in your face. If you want to heal, you have to learn that it won't be easy. A safe bet is that it isn't easy right now.

Here are a couple of videos that may help. Some are about 10 years old, so the numbers have changed since then, but the message is still the same. You can heal!

Badly Discharged PTSD Veterans Shouldn't Have to Wait for Crisis For Help

One Veteran Fights For Others To Keep Their VA Health Care
CBS Boston
July 6, 2017

“It doesn’t make any sense to wait for a veteran to reach a state of emergency to start providing care.” Kristopher Goldsmith

ASHBURNHAM (CBS) — One American veteran says he remembers the emotional trauma of seeing the Trade Towers fall on 9/11.

“I was close enough to the towers when they fell on September 11th to see the smoke from my hometown,” said Kristofer Goldsmith.

Now set against the backdrop of a peaceful lake in Ashburnham, Goldsmith told us about one of the most tumultuous times in his life. He was deployed to Iraq at the age of 19 where he photographed atrocities.

“Sometimes it meant that I would be taking pictures of bodies, victims of torture. Iraqi on Iraqi violence,” Goldsmith said.

He had to battle post traumatic stress disorder and even a suicide attempt.

“I took a fist full of Percocet and a bottle of vodka,” he said.

He said he woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed and unable to make it to the flight for his second deployment. He received a general discharge from the army.

“I went from being one of the top soldiers in my battalion to being treated like a criminal,” he said.
read more here

Vermont First Responders Mental Health Bill Leads in PTSD Help

First Responders Celebrate Passing of Mental Health Bill 
My Champlain Valley.com 
By: Rebecca Reese 
Posted: Jul 06, 2017

Burlington, Vt. - Firefighters and lawmakers came together to recognize the passing of a bill that will cover mental health under worker's compensation for first responders Thursday morning.

International Association of Fire Firefighters Vice President John 'Jay' Colbert explained that from witnessing horrific emergencies and enduing extreme stress, first responders are two times more likely to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He said those with PTSD are six times more likely to commit suicide.

"This truly is a historic day," Colbert said. "On behalf of the 304,000 firefighters across the United States and Canada I want to commend the people, the legislators and the emergency responders in the state of Vermont for leading the way."

Vermont is the first state in the country to pass legislation to treat mental health injuries as any other injury for first responders.

go here to watch video and let them know you support this!