Sunday, October 7, 2007

Homeless Veterans don't choose it, they endure it.


Walking wounded: Duluth veteran's life shattered by PTSD

Brandon Stahl
Duluth News Tribune



A bowl of corn flakes and room-temperature milk sits in front of Kevan Boman, 52, at a table in the Duluth Union Gospel Mission. His eyes flip down for a second, his lips purse and twist into a slight frown; just another reminder of what his life has become.

"This is breakfast," he says as his eyes shift up to the acrid cafeteria, not wanting any of the other sad, tired faces of destitute and homeless people to get too close to him. As he eats, he reminisces about what his life once was. He was a military man for 27 years, a veteran of two wars who retired as a decorated officer. He was a nurse, a proud husband and father of three daughters, once so wealthy that he donated thousands of dollars to the very soup kitchens where he now eats.

Now, he lives in a car. Before that it was other cars, before those were stolen or repossessed. In between were unlocked garages, tool sheds and apartment building basements, gas station bathrooms, drug houses or the couches of his daughters' homes. Before all that, before he had to sneak into hospital and gas station bathrooms to bathe and groom himself, before the drugs and the suicide attempts, it was a three-bedroom, two-bath, two-car-garage home in a tree-lined Duluth neighborhood with his family.

That was his life three years ago, before his mind was overwhelmed by the guilt and shame from post-traumatic stress disorder, and he walked out on it all.

Since then, he has lived on the streets, but it doesn't have to be that way. He could take his military disability checks for a tax-free $4,400 a month, get an apartment and start his life over. But he won't. He says he would rather give his money away, to his kids, to friends, to just about anyone who asks for it. He says he would rather punish himself.

"I haven't made peace with myself," he says, pausing for a moment as his eyes drop again, disappointment stretching across his face. "This is my penance. I don't let God forgive me. I don't know why I do this. I have to."

go here for the rest

I hear it too often when people want to dismiss the ravages of PTSD. They say, "well they were cowards" but never seem to notice most of them, do their duties and it is not until they are home safe, with no threat of going back hanging over them, they collapse. How does someone go from serving in two war, three wars or any war at all, getting decorated for bravery in the face of death, not retain the same courage after when they are safe? Doesn't make sense does it? But in the minds of the dismissals, they cannot look deeply enough. Is it because we do in fact look to them for our own security and safety that we have such a hard time seeing them as humans just like the rest of us beneath their bravery? Why can't we really see them as ourselves?

Each one of us will be brave and afraid at the same time in our own lives but we don't face death on a daily basis. Each one of us will weep for one event and take another as just a part of life. So why is it we expect them to be so much different than us?

How can Kevan Boman serve this nation for 27 years and in two wars, suddenly be nothing more than a burden to avoid? The drinking and drugs some of them do when they come home are not as addicts, addicted to the chemical, but wounded seeking relief from feelings they do not want to feel. They call it self-medicating. Yet society will not look to the core or attempt to understand what it is they seek.

Over the years, I've come into contact with many of these men and women. They end up feeling worth-less than they did when they were serving. Imagine that? A few, simple honest, kind words of valuing them will produce tears. They cannot see how rare they are and how worthy of our attention they always have been while we ignore them, blame them or dismiss them.

Over 300 million people live in this country yet we have only about 17 million combat veterans remaining with us. Think of how rare they are. Think of the fact they are normal humans, exposed to the most traumatic events man can create. These are not abnormal people, but normal ones who have survived the abnormal events of combat. We decide they need to get over it. We decide they need to get back to work and put it all behind them. We are also the first to stand in their way, dismiss their wounds because we cannot see them and then blame them when they become homeless, have their careers end, families fall apart and loose everything they were taught mattered in polite society.

Yet we also have men like Kevan Boman who have enough income to survive without living in his car or shelters, but he decided he isn't worth it. He decided he does not deserve it. Who told him that? Who put that kind of an idea into his head that his wounded mind made him so much of lesser value to this nation than when this nation was sending him into combat for us? We did.

That is the message we gave hundreds of thousands of Vietnam Veterans when they were suffering the same thing thirty years ago. We had an excuse back then because when the veterans of WWII and Korea came home, no one talked about the ravages of PTSD on their minds. What was our excuse in the late 70's, or the 80's, 90's or since these two new combat actions began? The only excuse we have now is ignorance. Ignorance makes us intolerant. Ignorance makes us ambivalent. Ignorance causes us to blame them for getting wounded with wounds so deeply etched within the walls of their souls, it takes a tender soul to heal them. It requires us to fight the ignorance of others when we come up against them. It requires truth and education to remove the stigma and tendency to blame them. It takes caring, informed eyes, to stop looking at them as anything other than rare people with battled scars. Combat is not normal. Why do we insist they come back from it the same way they went into it?


Kathie Costos

Help for vets returning from combat

Help available for vets returning from combat

By Cameron Fullam

Staff Writer

Sunday, October 07, 2007

HAMILTON — More than 185,000 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are seeking help for physical and mental injuries sustained in combat.

The return to life as usual can be difficult and prolonged.
click post title for the rest

Friday, October 5, 2007

Pentagon turns veterans into the enemy they love to screw


10/5/07, 1:28 am EST
PFSD: Pentagon F*cks-over Soldiers Disorder
Two items today should make all of us call our congressmen.
First is this news from the St. Louis Dispatch, that the Pentagon has been discharging tens of thousands of combat troops on the pretense that the mental health problems they’ve developed after serving in Iraq aren’t PTSD — but rather pre-existing “personality disorders.”

The pre-existing part is the kicker — because it means that the Pentagon, acting like your least favorite HMO, won’t pick up the cost of the medical care of these troops after it discharges them.

“They’ve kicked out about 22,000 troops who they say have pre-existing personality disorders. I don’t believe that,” Missouri Sen. Kit Bond told the newspaper. “And when you kick them out, they don’t get the assistance they need, they aren’t entitled to DOD or Veterans Administration care for those problems.”

Bond and Obama have introduced a bill to attempt to remedy this outrage.

Number two is almost as aggravating:
Turns out the Army is nickel and diming National Guardsmen returning from 22 months in Iraq. More than 1,100 of these troops should be eligible for full educational benefits under the G.I. bill. But the clever bean counters at the Pentagon deployed them for only 729 days… exactly one day short of the 730 days needed to guarantee thousands of dollars a year for college.
click post title for the rest,,,,,,,yes it's true.

Medicine Man and ancient magic


‘Magic Medicine’Vets gather at VA’s National Veterans Creative Arts Festival
By STEVE BROOKS At 57, Michael Cruse looks somewhat like a mountain man. Seated in a wheelchair thanks to a broken ankle he suffered the previous summer, his broad frame hints that if he were to stand up, he’d be well over 6 feet tall. The top of his grayish mane is cropped tight, but his beard, maybe a week short of bushy, extends from ear to ear and down his neck.
Exchange his tie-dyed shirt and blue jeans for buffalo skins and longer hair, and he would be Grizzly Adams. Eight years ago, he was living such a life. Holed up in the mountains of Alma, Ark., Cruse rarely ventured out of his home. Appointments at the Fayetteville VA Medical Center were the only times he braved the outside world. He entered the Navy in 1965 and came out two years later with post-traumatic stress disorder, a seizure disorder, nerve deterioration related to Agent Orange exposure, and major leg, back and neck impairments that put him on the operating table. Day-to-day activities like talking to strangers became a battle for Cruse, who broke out in cold sweats, trembled and heard ringing in his ears at times of external stress. Avoiding the outside world seemed easier.
click post title for the rest

Police, PTSD and Survivor's Guilt

Why did I walk away? Coping with survivor's guilt
You and your partner respond to a domestic. When you enter the house, you’re flooded with a wave of high-volume complaints from an agitated wife and belligerent husband. You try to quiet them down so you can initially make sense of the situation but it’s not working.
The wife seems to be responding to you a little, so you decide to separate the couple, giving your partner responsibility for the husband. As you and the wife make your way to another room, you suddenly hear sounds of a struggle and your partner’s panicked voice saying, “No! Don’t do it!”
You react immediately and charge to the other room, but before you can get there, you hear rounds fired. Seconds later you’ve shot and killed the armed husband, but it’s too late. Your partner is lying on the floor with wounds to his chest and head. You radio for help and frantically try to stop the bleeding, but you can’t. It’s too much. The wounds are too big.
“Why did I leave the room? If I had been there, I would have seen him reaching for the gun. Why didn’t I pat the guy down? I knew he didn’t seem right. Why didn’t I react quicker when I heard the scuffle? How come I can’t stop this bleeding? Why was it him who got killed? He has young kids. This is MY fault. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME!”
click post title for the rest

When people put knowing put their lives on the line, they are called heroes. Emergency responders, law enforcement, Coast Guard, National Guard, Army, Marines, Navy, AirForce. When it comes to trauma, we seem to have more sympathy for "normal" people but have a harder time understanding when it is one of them. Even they have a harder time coming to terms with it.

Is it because we think they are supposed to be able to deal with anything without being touched by it? Is it because we know we need them and they should not be able to be wounded by trauma? Is it because they think they should be stronger, braver, than the rest of us? Someday they will all understand it has nothing to do with courage because they already had it in them when they wanted to do what they decided to do, and that is to take care of the rest of us.
Kathie Costos

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Scotland Military 26 percent increase in PTSD stirs 50 percent increase in grants

Scarred by battle
They don't have to kill you to take your life away. The words of an ex-serviceman, reported in The Herald last year, eloquently describe how engagement in combat zones can have psychological as well as physical consequences for the armed forces. The psychological impact can be devastating. The ex- serviceman was one of some 1000 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases helped by Combat Stress, the charity that provides residential care for eligible veterans suffering from severe psychological problems. According to the charity, there has been a 26% increase in such cases in the past four years. It warns that it could be swamped by the number of cases unless there are the necessary resources to keep pace with growing demand.

There was recognition, of sorts, of this yesterday when Derek Twigg, the Armed Forces Minister, announced a phased, near-50% increase in residential grants to Combat Stress. The announcement, while welcome, confirms what the charity and other organisations involved in caring for the pyschological casualties of combat have been saying for some time: that they were underfunded by government. Ministers have been accused of breaking the military covenant by not caring for those it puts in harm's way by its policies.

The willingness of Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, to intervene with force abroad, most notably and misguidedly in Iraq, brought with it its own responsibilities: to care for those whose bodies were broken and minds damaged by front-line duties. Mr Blair failed to live up to these responsibilities as they applied to PTSD, and it is only now that Gordon Brown's government is beginning to accept the scale of these duties. The dismantling of Britain's military medical network began under the Tories in government and continued under Mr Blair, despite the paradox of an aggressive foreign policy being pursued at the same time.
click post title for the rest

Deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan involve almost 25% of the British Army each year in rolling, six-month tours of duty, each involving 12,000 soldiers. In both theatres, the enemy are insurgents who can strike at any time and are virtually indistinguishable from local civilians.


Six month tours while our troops are expected to do 15!

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Stigma of PTSD number one road block to healing

An Assessment of Beliefs About Mental Health Care Among Veterans ...
Psychiatr Serv 58:1358-1361, October 2007
doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.58.10.1358
© 2007 American Psychiatric Association
Brief Report

An Assessment of Beliefs About Mental Health Care Among Veterans Who Served in Iraq
Tracy Stecker, Ph.D., John C. Fortney, Ph.D., Francis Hamilton, M.P.H. and Icek Ajzen, Ph.D.
OBJECTIVE: This study assessed beliefs about mental health treatment in a group of soldiers newly returning from the war in Iraq. METHODS: Participants were 20 National Guard soldiers who had served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Soldiers who in phone interviews screened positive for a mental disorder were asked about advantages and disadvantages of seeking treatment, who would or would not support treatment seeking, and facilitators and barriers to treatment seeking. RESULTS: Stigma was portrayed as a major disadvantage to treatment seeking. Yet most participants indicated that people would be supportive of treatment seeking. Reducing symptoms was a major advantage of care. Barriers, especially those viewed as "self-induced," such as pride, not being able to ask for help, and not being able to admit to having a problem, were considered major impediments. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that interventions developed to engage veterans in care must be directed toward cognitive factors that motivate treatment seeking.
go there to read the full report if you can.

You know a rant is coming from me on this.

When the hell will they get it? When will they understand there is nothing wrong with them other than they are normal humans exposed to abnormal conditions? If it has more to do with idiots standing in their way of healing then they should just walk right over the mud dwellers!

I've heard enough of their kind over the years to know there is no basis for what they believe other than Neanderthals must have had more sympathy than these people do. The effects of combat on a human have been documented all the way back in ancient history and if they have failed to learn anything from history, it is their problem.

Over 300 million people live in this country. We have about 25 million veterans and only 17 million combat veterans. Think of how rare they are. Then think about another fact. People exposed to natural disasters get PTSD. People who are victims of crimes get PTSD. People who work in law enforcement and the emergency departments get PTSD. It takes humans exposed to trauma and that is it. It also requires people who can feel. Maybe those who deny PTSD is real and love to belittle those with PTSD, lack the ability to feel? Maybe they are so selfish, so self-centered, they cannot see past themselves, see other people suffering or even care.

There is no reason to retain the tag of stigma when it comes to PTSD. The ancient Greek and Roman warriors suffered the same symptoms but the VA did not exist. There was no support system for them or psychologists but what they did have was the support of the people around them or no one would have talked about what they were going through and we would have never know how old PTSD is. It's been called by different titles but the results have been the same for generations.
Kathie Costos

Military Suicides: A Treatment Issue

Suicides: A Treatment Issue
By LISA CHEDEKEL Courant Staff Writer
October 3, 2007
In recent months, the military has scrambled to hire additional mental health workers to treat troubled troops, hoping to allay concerns raised by a Pentagon task force and soldiers' advocates about inadequate access to care.But a new Army report suggests that the quality of care, as much as the quantity of providers, may be a factor in the rising incidence of suicides among active-duty service members.A recently released, first-ever analysis of Army suicides shows that more than half the 948 soldiers who attempted suicide in 2006 had been seen by mental health providers before the attempt - 36 percent within just 30 days of the event. Of those who committed suicide in 2006, a third had an outpatient mental health visit within three months of killing themselves, and 42 percent had been seen at a military medical facility within three months.

Among soldiers who were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan when they attempted suicide in 2005 and 2006, a full 60 percent had been seen by outpatient mental health workers before the attempts. Forty-three percent of the deployed troops who attempted suicide had been prescribed psychotropic medications, the report shows.

The report offers no details on the type or duration of mental health care that troops received before they tried to kill themselves. But it is prompting calls from some soldiers' advocates for better training of medical and behavioral health specialists in recognizing and treating service members in distress."It's the patient care, the quality of care, that's the issue," said Andrew Pogany, an investigator for the advocacy group Veterans for America. "A lot of the soldiers I talk to, they say [the military] doesn't provide anything except for group therapy and meds. Some places, you can't even get near a psychiatrist.
click post title for the rest


Group threapy does not work for all. In some cases, it makes PTSD worse. It's a bad practice to force them into group before they are ready. Are they still using badaid?

Monday, October 1, 2007

When communities rely on each other Post Traumatic Stress is not as strong

During the years of trying to eliminate the stigma of PTSD, one of the suggestions I've been making, especially in the videos, was that veterans reach out to help each other heal. Most experts thought if anyone could understand, lend support, compassion and a listening non-judgmental ear, it would be a combat veteran. Isolation is a big problem with PTSD. They are afraid to talk about what's going on in their minds. They think it is all too "crazy" while they are dealing with it on their own terms in silence. This is one example of how a community can alleviate part of the problem.

It does not matter if the trauma came from combat, which is the number one cause of PTSD, from public service, from natural disasters or from crime, when it comes to the aftermath of trauma. All humans with PTSD will suffer the same, endure flashbacks and nightmares as their characters are attacked. The greatest strength comes from leaning on each other.


Vietnamese community relies on each other
Groups monitor mental health
By JOSHUA NORMAN
jdnorman@sunherald.com

BILOXI --Bien Bo lost track of his love, Tuat Nguyen, about 40 years ago when he joined the South Vietnamese army and war tore his country apart before expelling him from his homeland altogether.
Bo, 71, lost everything again in 2005 to Hurricane Katrina; his Biloxi home, two cars, his shrimp boat that was his livelihood, all of which were uninsured. He wandered in a daze around town following the storm after barely surviving the surge, depressed and mentally adrift, until he decided to visit an old friend.
He walked into the living room and there she was, Nguyen, his love lost so long ago.
Bo's friend was Nguyen's sister, and Nguyen, 63, was visiting from California after Katrina to help.
They cried, hugged, laughed and have been merrily side by side ever since, she a widow and he with a wife severely disabled by stroke.
Bo and Nguyen's story illustrates how South Mississippi's Vietnamese community has survived the sometimes debilitating mental strain of post-Katrina life. The Vietnamese community came together for support and healing. Despite the destruction in the center of their community, Point Cadet, they have shown remarkably few outer signs of strain or mental decay.
The Vietnamese community, already slightly separated from their neighbors by language and cultural barriers, sought refuge within themselves. The post-Vietnam war Vietnamese community service organization, Boat People SOS, set up offices in Biloxi for the first time ever post-Katrina, and many in the Vietnamese community received help and support from it.
go here for the rest
http://www.sunherald.com/living/health/story/154205.html

Saturday, September 29, 2007

10 discharges a day for "personality disorder"

Many soldiers get boot for 'pre-existing' mental illness
St. Louis Post-Dispatch September 29, 2007
By Philip Dine

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq - as many as 10 a day - are being discharged by the military for mental health reasons. But the Pentagon isn't blaming the war. It says the soldiers had "pre-existing" conditions that disqualify them for treatment by the government.

Many soldiers and Marines being discharged on this basis actually suffer from combat-related problems, experts say. But by classifying them as having a condition unrelated to the war, the Defense Department is able to quickly get rid of troops having trouble doing their work while also saving the expense of caring for them.

The result appears to be that many actually suffering from combat-relatedproblems such as post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries don't get the help they need.

Working behind the scenes, Sens. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., have written and inserted into the defense authorization bill a provision that would make it harder for the Pentagon to discharge thousands of troops. The Post-Dispatch has learned that the measure has been accepted into the Senate defense bill and will probably become part of the Senate-House bill to be voted on this week.

read more here