Front-line stress and trauma: are Island first responders prepared?
Oak Bay News
KATHERINE ENGQVIST
Apr. 28, 2018

“The one thing we’re not prepared for is how this job will effect you,” Savoia said, emphasizing a need for more pre-incident training. “PTSD strikes when you least expect it.”

Emergency responders carry a man to an awaiting ambulance after being extricated from his pickup truck, one of two vehicles involved in a collision along Highway 97B in Salmon Arm (Lachlan Labere/Salmon Arm Observer file)

Big Read: Industry leaders call for more pre-incident training

They’re first on scene and there when you need them.

But for public service members who dedicate themselves to helping others, sometimes the biggest challenge is taking care of themselves.

It’s a lesson Michael Swainson learned the hard way.

“A lot of people suffer in silence … First responders put everybody else first – that’s the nature of the beast – we’re really shitty at taking care of ourselves.”

Swainson worked in the Yukon for 25 years as a paramedic, emergency medical services supervisor and dispatch supervisor, firefighter, professional ski patroller, and a disaster trainer and evaluator. As a paramedic alone, he went on roughly 6,000 calls in Whitehorse. For that area it was normal. If he had been working somewhere like Vancouver, he said that number could have easily been double.

“For first responders it’s a conveyor belt of trauma, eventually you run out of coping strategies,” Swainson said.
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Vietnam Veteran Rudolph Muck III Laid to Rest With Honor

Community holds funeral for 'unclaimed' Vietnam veteran
WROC/CNN
Saturday, April 28th 2018

ROMULUS, NY (WROC/CNN) – The hospital called him "an unclaimed individual." But to many, he was a Vietnam veteran who deserved full military honors at his funeral.

Maria Ramos and her mother Norma had known Rudolph Muck III, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, for three years.

"Me and my mother were his caretakers and we just did favors - groceries; he was very fragile," Ramos said.

Earlier in April, Muck was hospitalized and later died. With no known family, the hospital turned to Ramos.

"They asked me if I wanted to be held responsible and I saw no other answer; I had to do it as a military sister and a human being," Ramos said.
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What the hell were you thinking?

Advocates freaked out about "awareness" stunts
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 28, 2018

What is the harm in talking about veterans committing suicide? That is such an easy answer and the proof of the harm being done has been right under our noses for almost two decades. These are the numbers of veterans the VA knows committed suicide. There are many more.

The numbers from the VA, the real ones, not the ones made up from a headline, prove it.

Last report from the VA is, 20 a day! 

The numbers from the Department of Defense prove it.

In 1999, reporters did not want to hear about any of this. It was at a time when there were 26.4 million more veterans living in the US. That is over 5 million more veterans living here now.

If you cannot see these numbers prove beyond a doubt these stunts and slogans do more harm than good, then you must be running one of those groups.

What the hell were you thinking? Did you think no one was doing anything before you became aware veterans were killing themselves? 

Did you think that you only needed to figure out how to get publicity because you knew a number you read from a headline? On that subject, did you think it may have been more helpful to take it all seriously enough to have bothered to read the damn report first? Invested time in discovering what had worked over the last 4 decades to avoid repeats of what failed?

The problem is not that you do not care. The problem is you did not care enough. Not enough to know the report you quote was from limited data from just 21 states. Did not care enough to notice that that 65% of the veterans who were counted, were over the age of 50. 

The press loves a stunt and a feel good story, so they cover you but the rest of us are covering our mouths out of the bitter taste you left us to swallow.

Our veterans do not need to know you cared so little about them their lives did not merit real effort from you. You reduced them down to slogan and then collected money while they were left to suffer and die by their own hands.

Last weekend I was at the Veterans Reunion in Melbourne. This is what we talked about most of the time. You have stolen hope away from veterans looking for a way to survive one more day.

You have used the generosity of the American people hoping to do some good, because they did not know who was actually doing something to change the outcome.

What makes all of this worse is, it was brought up that if veterans started to heal instead of suffer, you'd be out of business.

Ok, so how about you make it your business to actually help them? Redemption is waiting for you to actually invest the time and your resources, as well as your exposure, into something that will give them a reason to live! That is a hell of a lot better than making them aware of how many you think killed themselves this day.

PTSD program move, "sly attempt to leave the Waco VA"

VA plans to move popular Waco PTSD program despite loud opposition
American Statesman
Jeremy Schwartz
April 27, 2018

One veteran, who recently went through an inpatient treatment program at the domiciliary, called the proposed move a bad idea. “There are a ton of different people in the dom for a ton of different reasons,” said the veteran, who requested anonymity because he is still enrolled in the Waco PTSD program. “That type of environment is not conducive to what the Waco program is doing. The environment here is quiet. You’ve got all these different options to ground yourself.”

Nurse Reginia Salisbery, right, checks on a resident at the Women’s Trauma Recovery Center at the domiciliary at the Central Texas Veterans Health Care Center in Temple on Monday. JAY JANNER / AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Highlights
VA plans to move PTSD program from Waco to its domiciliary in Temple, which has a checkered history.

The relocation would allow the VA to move a women’s military sexual trauma program out of the domiciliary.

In 2012, VA reviewed allegations of drug use, prostitution, gang activity and gambling at the Temple facility.

Despite outcry from lawmakers and veterans groups, the Department of Veterans Affairs is pushing forward on a controversial plan to move a highly regarded residential post-traumatic stress disorder program from its Waco campus to the VA’s Temple campus.

A similar plan was shut down two years ago in the face of congressional opposition, and U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, a Republican who represents the Waco area, has vowed to stop the change this time too, potentially by blocking funding for the move.

Local VA leaders say the move will save taxpayers $1.5 million per year by enrolling patients into inpatient substance abuse treatment alongside their PTSD therapy, reducing relapses and the need for future treatment.

But the proposed new location for the residential program has set off alarm bells among advocates. VA leaders are seeking to fold the PTSD program into the VA’s domiciliary on its Temple campus, a facility with a difficult history. The domiciliary, part of a network of similar facilities established across the country over a century ago, is home to a mix of at-risk populations, including chronically homeless veterans, veterans trying to quit drugs and veterans undergoing court-ordered therapy.

In a recent editorial in the Waco Tribune-Herald, Hernandez called the planned move part of “the federal bureaucracy’s sly attempt to leave the Waco VA campus vulnerable to closure if discussions of underperforming VA campus closures begin again, just as we witnessed some 15 years ago.”
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SWAT standoff with veteran in crisis

Friends say man shot in Beaverton officer-involved shooting is a veteran
KPTV News
By Bonnie Silkman
Updated: Apr 26, 2018

BEAVERTON, OR (KPTV)
Beaverton police said they received multiple 911 calls at 11:00 Wednesday morning about a disturbance involving a gun. After they arrived, they found a man in crisis inside a truck near 148th and Farmington Road.

Officers said they communicated with the man, who was making suicidal statements through text message. After two and a half hours of negotiating, police said the man fired at officers.

Officers said police returned shots back resulting in the man being rushed to the hospital by ambulance. They did not have an update on his condition.

“They moved the SWAT trucks in, and that’s when all of a sudden it was quick fire,” said Erica, who watched the standoff unfold.

She captured the standoff on her cell phone and the video shows her ducking for cover when gunfire erupts. A baby’s cries and panic can be heard from her video.

Officers told FOX 12, before gunfire erupted, the man in crisis sat in a silver truck for hours.

“Boom, boom, boom. That’s what happened, pretty sad,” another witness said.

The standoff took place steps away from a Salvation Army Veterans and Family Center on Farmington Road, which offers veterans transitional housing.

Friends of the man who was shot said he’s a veteran who needs help.
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