Users Rate Their Drug and Non-Drug Treatments for PTSD

While I do post up reports on medications and new treatments for PTSD, I tend to stay out of giving advice on them except to say that people need to be informed, talk to their doctors and just because one medication is not working, that does not mean none of them will work on you. Our body chemistry is as different as we are. What works for your friend, may not work for you, or you may need a combination of medications instead of just one. Always be honest with your doctor and if you are not feeling better on a new medication in a couple of days, call him. If you are feeling worse, call him as soon as possible but do not play doctor yourself and take yourself off the medication. Most of us tend to finally feel better and then think we are cured without understanding it's the medication that did it.

My Mother was always very healthy. When she turned 75, her age caught up with her and suddenly everything was wrong. For a woman who didn't even want to take Tylenol,, it was hard for her to understand she had to take medication for her heart. Years later, more medication was added to take care of additional problems she had. When I took her to the doctor's appointments, the doctor would tell her that she was stable and the next thing out of her mouth was "Well then I can stop taking the pills." She just didn't want to understand the medication was making her stable. One lesson in facing that you are on medication for a reason and it's why you are feeling better.

I am on a low dose medication for my blood pressure and for allergies. If I go off the allergy medication, I end up with a sinus infection. While I hate taking anything, I know I need to. The doctors had a hard time finding the right medication for my allergy and sinus problems. They switched the well known ones, finding out that they were not working for me or making me too sleepy. They ended up putting me on medications no one else I know ever heard of. One lesson in keep trying.

My friend Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma did a great job on medication today. Go here and take a look at the links she's provided.

July 21, 2008
There's a Revolution Going On: Users Rate Their Drug and Non-Drug Treatments for PTSD
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/07/theres-a-revolu.html

Lily Casura, In the trenches of Army of love

Lily Casura, In the trenches of Army of love

Out of all the people I know doing this kind of work, covering PTSD and our troops, Lily gets into the trenches with them, figuratively, with the way she digs at stories. She has a reporters talent, that's for sure. I'm just trying to post as much as possible so that stories don't get missed. I think it's because of how little was reported after Vietnam, that I come with deep appreciation for all the reporting being done now. Sure, I put in my two cents as the "expert chaplain" but I'm an educator/essayists and not a reporter. I just don't have the talent to be one. Lily does. Read the kind of week she just had and then think of the kind of weeks she usually has. Also keep in mind that both of us do this out of love. It sure isn't for the money.

July 12, 2008
And What a Week It Was...
This isn't a confessional/journal type blog, so my even posting this recap of "veterans, PTSD and my week" might seem out of place on it, but this past week was full of nuggets of interest at least to me -- and perhaps also to you -- that I just have to do it, if only just this once. The items are all pretty miscellaneous as well, though linked around a common theme. So sit tight, and I'll try to make this as painless as possible :-) -- although it promises, as always, to be a veritable "linkfest," to follow up at your leisure.

Started the week by learning about the crisis humanitarian photographer Zoriah was in, recently embedded with the Marines in Iraq, who'd run afoul of the Marines for posting photos of dead American servicemen on his blog, even though he'd done so with great restraint, and in effort to show the grim realities of war -- realities we're increasingly prevented from seeing, except in the most sanitized of ways. It was a shame to see how discordant and rancorous the debate over what he'd done became, but it was great to see him hold his head up high and help keep the focus on his work.

(This photo is from Zoriah's excellent, true-to-life war coverage blog, linked here and used with permission. It appears to be of a solitary American servicemember enjoying a lonely Fourth of July lunch in the chow hall on his base in Iraq.)

That gave me the chance to write another post about censorship and the Marines -- which seems to be an ongoing problem -- and mention the case of Eric Acevedo again -- only to find out from the IAVA blog, later in the week, that censorship is alive and well -- restricting freedom of the press -- even in funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. Gina Gray seems to have been fired from her job as Public Affairs Director for the cemetery, by the Army, essentially for being a whistleblower, and trying to protect the public's right to know. Depressing. If seeing is believing, I guess we're now not supposed to see anything, either. Rats...

---

A friend of mine, code named the Beautiful Redhead, has a Marine husband (1/25 - "New England's Own") is just about to return from his umpteenth deployment. That reminded me that the wonderful Ray Scurfield, D.S.W., had sent me some of his writings and given me permission to post them on this blog, which gave me an opportunity to post "Home Sweet Home: After Deployment, What? Support for Returning Veterans and Their Families" in her honor. On the other side of the coin, another buddy of mine, Kathie Costos, (mentioned elsewhere in this post), in her most rabble-rousing blog post of the week, questions why she gets so much static from wives of deployed military, who seemingly want to push the truths of war and its coverage aside. She argues firmly that knowledge is power, and produces compassion and understanding, even (or especially) for wives and families, whose veterans sometimes need a listening ear on the homefront, about what they've experienced. Read that post, questioning whether it's really bliss to be oblivious, here.

click post title for more

When the Marine Corps Misses the Bigger Picture

From Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma

When the Marine Corps Misses the Bigger Picture -- Zoriah, Eric Acevedo, and Censorship
It's discouraging to even have to post about this, but there it is.
In a fight between the Marine Corps and freedom of the press, the Marine Corps seems like it wants the win. According to Google Playfights (see gimmicky graphic illustrating this post) it already has. (Learn more about Google Playfights elsewhere: it's not central to this post.)
Following the recently embedded independent photojournalist Zoriah's travails recently, on his blog, it seems he's being kicked out of Iraq, and risking being completely blacklisted, because of at least some higher up Marine Corps officers displeasure with images he posted. Images that centrally could help America to really get a better grip on the true cost of war for its participants. If you believe the experts (and the poets), no one comes back from war, unchanged. Whether it's what you've done/seen/participated in or not been able to do/see/participate in, it exacts a tremendous psychic cost. That doesn't mean we should stop fighting in them - just that we should be more aware of the actual costs. For every combatant killed, so many more are injured, and will come home with injuries that in many cases will profoundly transform their lives, and that of their families, for decades to come. It's a shame the Marine Corps doesn't really want to let us, Americans, wrap our brains around this concept more fully. It would help make us better empathizers with the true cost of war to its participants.
click above for more


also

July 03, 2008
Find the Cost of Freedom, Buried in the Ground
It's an old Crosby, Stills and Nash song, by Steven Stills. Many of us who were there in the 70s still remember the words. I know I can recite them from memory: "Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground. Mother Earth will swallow you; lay your burdens down."

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Not only my favorite holiday the whole year through -- sorry, I'm a New Englander, we're just born that way -- but also another opportunity - along with Memorial Day, and Veterans Day - to stop and honor the service of those who sacrificed their lives for freedom, or at least, responded to what they saw as the call of duty that they responded to, while others did not. Those whose blood was shed on American soil -- in Lexington, Massachusetts, in the Revolutionary War -- and also, more recently, in the jungles of Vietnam, in the mountains of Afghanistan and in the sands and urban jungles of Iraq.

I'm thinking today about censorship -- and the power of an image to convey, in a single instance, what those of us who labor over our words perhaps never can. The picture, they claim, is worth 1,000 words -- perhaps because it communicates, in an instant, across barriers of language, space and time -- what human beings instinctively understand, nonverbally. With war: that there is a price; that it is never really glorious; that those who give their lives often do so -- as the poet W.H. Auden wrote about the famous art masterpiece, the "Fall of Icarus," by the Dutch painter, Brueghel -- in a depressingly inglorious context:


"About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along...

go here for more of this
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/

About Zoriah

Zoriah (born January 27, 1976) is an award winning photojournalist whose work has been seen in some of the world’s most prestigious publications, museums and galleries. Initially trained in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Aid to Developing Countries, he worked for international aid organizations such as the Red Cross[citation needed] before returning to photography after a long absence. It was his extensive knowledge and training in survival and international aid which made him originally marketable to international photo agencies including World Picture News (WPN), Reporters Agency, The Image Works and EyePress Photo Agency in China.

His work first won critical acclaim in the early 1990's when his photo series on homeless life in America was selected to tour the country in the Songs of The People project [1]. He was also named Photojournalist of The Year in 2006 by Morepraxis as well as winning the VII Photo Agency Portfolio Contest. He was among the photographers in World Picture News Networks Most Powerful Imagery of 2006.

As an adult, his images of conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, The Gaza Strip and Lebanon have been widely published and have traveled to many countries around the world in museums and fine art galleries. His style of dark and moody imagery has become a trademark and he often releases feature stories containing graphic imagery of war, disease, social issues and strife which are considered both powerful and compassionate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoriah

Young Marine "I'm no Vietnam vet, but a vet of Operation Iraqi Freedom"

From Healing Combat Trauma

PTSD: (That's Some) Pretty Terrible Sh*t (to Have to) Deal (With), Don't You Think?

Editor's Note: We commemorate the otherwise momentous, historic signing of the GI bill into law today with this little snippet of what life was like for someone who served recently. For everyone who doesn't "get" what sacrifice is, and that those who've served have earned their accolades and rewards, here's a grunt's-eye view of the experience of combat trauma, and how that relates to PTSD and various other topics in the news. It's doubtful that any one of us would like to have changed places with him, at such a young age. Herewith, his story, emphasis mine:


I'm no Vietnam vet, but a vet of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I turned 18 while in boot camp because I graduated high school at 17. I was discharged early for having "personality disorder" after I went to Iraq.



I was in the Marines, and my MOS was a ground communications electronics technician. A couple months after graduating my training for the job and going to my first unit, I was "volunteered" to join and train with another unit that was leaving soon. The new task I was given was "Mortuary Affairs".

This group was put together with a couple dozen other Marines from other sections. Our job was to go to locations where troops had been killed and not able to be retrieved by the group they were out with due to the fact they were under too much danger or whatever the case. I had no clue the effects this would have on me. It was a horrible experience.



It was not like going and picking up a corpse and that's it. For one, you were in a hot zone, where people were just killed, not just by gunfire.
go here for more
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/ptsd-pretty-terrible-sht-to-discover.html

Update on the sham for SHAD vets

Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma sent me an update on SHAD. This is a sham and a shame our veterans are still being treated as if their lives just didn't matter.

June 24, 2008
Needless Trauma: What Vietnam Vets Still Don't Know about Their Service Could Hurt Them
Saw this recent press release from a California congressman, who himself is a decorated Vietnam vet, and wondered about the pain that comes from NOT knowing the full extent of what you've been exposed to, as you were serving your country. For the particulars, keep on reading:

– Today (June 12), Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) took another step toward helping veterans who were unknowingly tested with chemical and biological weapons in the 1960s and 70s.

The House Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs held a hearing on a Thompson-authored bill that would give these veterans health benefits and compensation for illnesses resulting from “Project 112” weapons tests. Thompson hopes this hearing will ultimately push his bill toward consideration by the House.

Project 112, which included ship-based Project SHAD, was conducted between 1963 and 1973 by the Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal agencies. The DoD now admits that during these projects, unknowing military personnel were involved a number of chemical weapon tests such as VX nerve gas and Sarin nerve gas and were exposed to biological weapons such as E. Coli, Tularemia (Rabbit Fever) and Q fever.

“First the government denied the tests existed. Then they said the tests happened but were harmless. Now they admit dangerous substances were used on our military personnel, yet they still refuse to give them care for their illnesses,” said Thompson. “We can’t change the past, but we can begin to right this wrong by giving these men the proper healthcare and compensation they earned.”

HR 5954, introduced by Thompson and Congressman Denny Rehberg (R-MT) in May, provides veterans of Project 112 a “Presumption of Service Connection.” This means the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) presumes the relationship between service and a health condition, making the veterans involved eligible for medical benefits and/or compensation for their conditions. For example, veterans exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War are already given a “Presumption of Service Connection.”
go here for more

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/what-vietnam
-vets-dont-know-could-still-hurt-them.html

PTSD Drugs: Better Living through Chemistry

My friend Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma just did a great piece on medications you really should read.

PTSD Drugs: Better Living through Chemistry, or Purely Popping Pills for PTSD's Psychological Ills?

There was a story in the news recently about four young combat veterans in West Virginia, all seemingly in decent physical condition beforehand, who nevertheless all died in their sleep recently. Besides combat PTSD, one thing the vets all had in common was the cocktail of drugs they were taking: Paxil, Klonopin and Seroquel. (The Charleston, West Virginia Gazette-Mail reported this story on May 24, 2008 - it's linked here.) An investigation is pending, but the story obviously raises the question: what are vets with PTSD being prescribed, and is it really working, or what's best? (Continue reading, and you'll learn more about those specific medications as well.)
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Where to go for information about PTSD medications? Here are a few, carefully-chosen selections, and their pros and cons - as appropriate:

go here for more

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/ptsd-drugs-better-living-through-chemistry.html

PTSD, Puppies and Misplaced Values - We're Having the Wrong Conversation

June 13, 2008
PTSD, Puppies and Misplaced Values - We're Having the Wrong Conversation, America
Now that media coverage of SSgt. Travis Twiggs -- the five times-deployed Marine and gen-u-ine American hero who killed himself recently after a protracted and unsuccessful fight with PTSD -- has safely faded from view, America can go back to talking about what really interests it like the Marine tossing the puppy off the cliff in Hawaii. Here's a great quotable quote from Kathie Costos, a senior chaplain with the International Federation of Chaplains and a longtime, tireless advocate for veterans with PTSD, both personally and professionally on her blog, WoundedTimes, linked here. After noting that a mention of the news update on "that jerk" with the puppy toss sent blog traffic sky-high, Costos said, most quotably -- "I hate the fact a puppy toss gets more attention than a Marine killing himself because the DOD and the VA won't do what they are supposed to do." Amen, sistah. (I don't believe that she's talking about the Twiggs case there, specifically, but just in general.)
go here for more

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/
misplaced-values---were-having-the-wrong-conversation.html

Healing Combat Trauma:Survivors Quilt

June 10, 2008
Survivors Quilt: Combat Veterans Patch Meaning Together in Quilts about PTSD, War and Loss



You've heard of survivors' guilt - here we've got survivors' QUILTS. (Bad pun, I know -- but true.)

We've been talking a bit lately about art therapy, and how combat veterans with PTSD use it successfully to tap into, and work through, some of the pain they feel inside. The photos here, by Mike Kane, at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, are from a story published on March 19 about how the inpatient PTSD program at the VA hospital in Seattle has a "wall" of quilt squares, made by combat veterans, and encouraged by a nurse, Betsy Shapiro (she's at right, above), now retired, who gave deeply hurting veterans 6x6" cotton squares, on which to draw something or paint something that related to their experience: something they could leave behind, to let others know about them and what they had gone through.

Initially, there was moaning and groaning, and reluctance to comply. But shortly thereafter, everyone produced something, and the results were really pretty impressive. The veterans also gave input into how they wanted the resultant squares displayed -- not set in pretty frames, like squares in a regular patchwork quilt might be, but together, side-by-side, touching. The article, by Mike Barber, is called "Veterans tell stories in patchwork of memories," and it's linked here.

In an earlier article, from the Honolulu Advertiser from October 2, 2007, linked here, Glenn Reys, an Air Force vet in Honolulu worked through his recovery from drugs and alcohol by immersing himself in making a Hawaiian quilt, symbolic of his homeland, but also incorporating patriotric U.S. symbols. He found himself devoted to the practice, and able to quilt for hours at a time. "This kept me busy," Reys said. "When I do sewing like this, I can sew for like six or eight hours, and it's no problem. That's what I do in my continuing recovery."
go here for more

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/veterans-
patch-meaning-together-in-quilts-about-ptsd-war-and-loss.html

Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, Marine, Hero and Loved

You want to know about PTSD or you would not be reading this blog. Do you really want to know about it? Do you want to know more of their stories? The families? Of their lives? I'm sure you do. While I try to post as much as possible about PTSD so that there is a place people can come to and get what they're looking for, I am not a reporter. I am more of an editor who puts in my two cents more than I should at times, but it's my life and they are my passion. It comes from investing my time and energy as if my life depends on it, simply because it does. It is personal to me because of my life with my husband and his life that I do this.

After they came home from Vietnam, men like Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs would never have their story told. It would have just been reduced to a few words in a crime section of your local paper. No one paid attention to their suffering. Because of the Internet, we have the ability to tell their stories and turn numbers into people. Names into faces. One life who touched many. This ability is part of the reason the stigma of PTSD is dying instead of many of them who have sought help finally understanding what it is. They are discovering that the only shame of PTSD belongs to the people who still want to deny the reality of this wound, uneducated, ignorant fools who would rather return to the dark ages when patients were bled to death than they would to understand the advancement of science. We know a lot more about the human mind, body and soul than we ever did before. Now those who serve this county will not simply pass from this life to the next in obscurity. Their stories are being told and people like Lily Casura at Healing Combat Trauma, are making their stories real. She's done a fantastic job covering the story of Travis Twiggs, going above and beyond where people like Tom Ricks would probably even bother to read. I am happy to call her friend and humbled by her dedication and talent.

June 07, 2008
SSgt. Travis Twiggs - Well-Loved U.S. Marine and PTSD-Struggling Hero - the Update
[In progress...check back later for more.] It's nice to know that the exceptionally tragic story of PSTD sufferer and well-loved Marine SSgt. Travis N. Twiggs hasn't completely faded from view -- a story we broke here, days before the national media even picked it up. This weekend it looks like the Times-Picayune has a two-part series about Twiggs on the NOLA.com website, linked here, and the story is both well-written, and contains - gasp - actual reporting, including conversations with the dad and stepmom, both Louisiana residents. (The Twiggs brothers spent their formative years in Alma, Louisiana.) It's a shock to me that CNN never covered the Twiggs story -- although they did cover the story of the Marine on leave who was murdered over $8 in his pocket. I guess the fear-mongering, anxiety-producing shock value of that "news," while terrifically sad in itself, beats the prospect of actually covering a story with some complexity and depth, in which we as Americans could stand to learn more about the life and background of an American hero whose death we mourn. Weird values, CNN (or maybe complete lack of them...)

One nice development since our original reporting on this story, back in mid-May when it happened. The Marine Corps Gazette, which originally published Travis Twiggs' story about his battle with PTSD, put the article back in print. It's available on their website now, linked here. And they added a nice little blurb about mourning his passing and extending their condolences to his family, which is appropriate. It also sounds like there was a Memorial Service for the extremely well-loved Staff Sergeant at Quantico a week ago, which allowed his fellow Marines and those he'd come in contact with over the years, to pay their respects. Also a very nice, and well-deserved touch. (So much better than just sweeping the whole situation under the rug, because it had such a tragic ending.)

go here for more

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/ssgt-travis-
twiggs---us-marine-and-ptsd-hero---an-update.html

1st Sgt. Travis Twiggs wife hears of death on the news

Lily Casura is doing what a good reporter should do if they really care about the suffering of veterans more than getting the story in print and then dropping it as if the person really didn't matter at all. Well they did matter. They matter to their family, friends, neighbors and everyone else they came into contact with. Those who served with them have had tributes to him. Those who tried to help him in the VA have paid tribute to him. Yet we would know none of this if not for the tireless efforts of Lily. Now we know his wife did not even know he died or how he died until she saw the report on the news. How very sad it is that a hero falls due to wounds and the media finds nothing wrong with not giving us the rest of the story.

May 19, 2008
The Tragic Last Days of Travis "T-Bo" Twiggs:
Well, the national reporting on this story that we broke on Tuesday of last week has finally dribbled in – some of it good, most of it painfully mediocre – and none of it frankly enlightening, if you’ve been following his story here. (And btw, CNN hasn't covered it yet, though logically at some point they will have to, if only to keep up with the Joneses. It's pretty embarrassing to see what they deem worth covering instead, versus treating this American hero's death with any coverage at all.
Here is a slate of what CNN deemed more worthy of coverage just today (the breathless exclamation points are mine, but they seem in keeping with the "Mad magazine meets Entertainment Tonight!" reportage topics -- or is it becoming, "News of the World," with a little political commentary thrown in? More worth covering than Travis Triggs, four tours of duty and PTSD sufferer, we have: "Cancer survivor pitches no-hitter!" "Photographer snaps own javelin-spearing!" "Autistic boy, 13, banned from church!" "Wealthy Town Wants Its Own Currency!" and best/worst of all: "Yearbook [staff] switches kids' heads, bodies [in yearbook]!" I'm firmly convinced CNN is now staffed by 13 year old boys, who consider anything they'd talk about on at a sleepover camp, and how they'd talk about, to be the rule of thumb for how they choose the news.

A hard shock in the recent, actual news coverage about Travis Triggs was learning that his wife, Kellee, though she knew her husband was deeply troubled by PTSD, didn’t realize he was in Arizona, and didn’t learn that he killed himself, until she saw it on a news report. That has to just add to the horror of the whole situation. (At the end of this entry, we'll share some nice things people have been saying in Travis Twiggs' memory, about the man and the Marine.)
go here for more
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/05/t-bo-twiggs-tra.html

Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs suffering ends and so did his life today

My friend Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma has been tracking the story of Marine Sgt. Travis Twiggs. Today she found that he and his brother, ended their lives while on the run from police.

May 14, 2008
RIP Travis N. Twiggs, USMC PTSD Sufferer

Very sad just breaking news in the USMC Staff Sergeant Travis N. Twiggs story we blogged about yesterday. See link for details. It sounds like authorities searching for Twiggs and his brother, wanted in an armed carjacking in the Grand Canyon on Monday, just killed themselves as they were being surrounded by police in Arizona today.
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/

I know there are people out there who wonder why I care when they are involved in crimes. It's because I always wonder how many of their lives could have been saved as well as their victims if things were different. If they received the help they needed and if all of them were taken care of. I wonder if they would be like my Jack. If they would find that life is worth living again, that there are still joys yet to feel beneath the torment of PTSD. I wonder if Jack would have committed crimes if I had been able to just leave him so long ago instead of fighting for him when he could not find reason to fight for himself to have his claim approved or obtain the help he needed because he went to Vietnam. There are so many things I wonder in all of this and every time I read any story about any of them dealing with PTSD, I see Jack, what our lives were and what they have become.

Twiggs served the country and did what few ever have to do and he didn't come out of it well. By the looks of it, he committed crimes but were they worthy of his death? Would he have been able to do what he seemed to have been able to do as a member of the armed forces if he had been given the help he needed? Would his victim have suffered if he was not left feeling abandoned? Did he feel abandoned? Did he lash out because of this? So many questions we will never know.

I'm grateful there are people out there like Lily who care. It's wonderful to know that if I were not here to care about Jack, Lily would. It's just a shame there are not more people like her in this country who care enough to do what she does.

The Doppelganger of PTSD

May 04, 2008
The Doppelganger of PTSD: the Unwelcome Stranger Who Follows You Home from War

Over time, more and more grassroots efforts spring up as veterans try to help one another deal with the effects of combat trauma and PTSD. Some of these are simply conversations, where those who went share what the experience was like, and how they've suffered since -- and ideally, also what they've been able to do about it that helps. The Peoria Journal Star in today's paper has an article about just such a conversation, held by local central Illinois veterans in conjunction with a traveling exhibit of the Vietnam Wall. The article is short but poignant in the reminiscences shared by predominantly Vietnam veterans about how combat trauma and resultant PTSD has changed their lives, and not for the better. Click here for the link to that story.

There's nothing particularly "extraordinary" or "dramatic" about these men's PTSD or their comments about it -- but that's the thing. They've very representative of what actual people go through who weren't expecting the experience to scar them for years after combat. Just one example: a combat photographer with a Ph.D. talks about his own experience. "Divorce, alcohol, drugs, jail, attempted suicide ... I've done them all," he said. If combat trauma is the stone thrown into the pond, just think of the ripple effects of every item he just mentioned. Sadly, combat trauma affects not only the participants, but also many of the people in their lives.
go here for more
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/05/ptsd-the-unwelc.html

Behind the Bloodshed, Some Backstory of Lance Cpl. Acevedo

You read the story of Marine Lance Cpl. Eric Acevedo, the other day. With much admiration for Lily of Healing Combat Trauma, I am posting the follow up she did on the story. Lily is a friend and very talented. I just wish reporters would take the same interest in the stories they write to do such a fantastic job of telling the stories behind the stories.

Lily Casura
Published writer and editor; Journalist & blogger; Harvard grad; compassionate human being; Friend of Veterans

March 27, 2008
Behind the Bloodshed, Some Backstory
Another day, another lurid headline. A Marine Lance Corporal in Texas, recently returned from three back-to-back tours of duty in Iraq, and allegedly suffering from PTSD, breaks into his former girlfriend's home, stabs her to death and then waits, "covered with blood and looking dazed," in the parking lot for police to arrive and arrest him. On the surface, another brutal domestic violence story, with a very tragic ending. Behind the headlines, though, more questions than answers about troops' after-care, and whether ethnicity (the Marine in question is Hispanic) plays or ought to play a part in how PTSD is diagnosed and treated.

First, some facts. Marine Lance Corporal Eric R. Acevedo, 22, was arrested over the weekend for allegedly murdering his former live-in girlfriend, in Saginaw, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has been covering the story, and it's typically gruesome, but it's also a tragedy for all concerned. The victim, who was a single mother; the alleged perpetrator, who will likely do substantial prison time; and both people's families -- the 10 year old girl who now grows up motherless, as well as Acevedo's family, who believed he was struggling with PTSD, but was sent back to Iraq.
go here for the rest
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/03/the-ugly-backst.html

What They Found in the Wastebasket

January 01, 2008
What They Found in the Wastebasket
The McClatchy newspapers continue their great series about whether and how the VA system is serving, or under-serving, returning combat veterans with PTSD.
In their recent story, "Suicide Shocks Montana into Assessing Veteran's Care," which by the way is an excellent fact-filled article, there is this troubling mention about what Chris Dana's dad found in his wastebasket, after Chris shot himself last March. Let's let the McClatchy papers tell the story:
HELENA, Mont. — Chris Dana came home from the war in Iraq in 2005 and slipped into a mental abyss so quietly that neither his family nor the Montana Army National Guard noticed.He returned to his former life: a job at a Target store, nights in a trailer across the road from his father's house. When he started to isolate himself, missing family events and football games, his father urged him to get counseling. When the National Guard called his father to say that he'd missed weekend duty, Gary Dana pushed his son to get in touch with his unit. "I can't go back. I can't do it," Chris Dana responded.

go here for the rest

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/01/the-increasing.html