Iraq Veteran Helps Others Heal PTSD After 8 Suicide Attempts in One Year

Veteran talks about suicide to help other Veterans

Department of Veterans Affairs

August 29, 2017

“Helping my fellow Veterans at the VA has made me whole again. At this point, I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else.” Alexandra Gries

She tried to take her own life eight times in one year while serving as a soldier in the 4th Infantry Division in 2008. The stressors of combat, losing a couple of very close friends in battle and adapting to life back in the U.S. after serving in Iraq was too much for her to handle.

And when she left the Army a few months later after being assigned to a wounded warrior unit – and she came back to Fresno where she grew up – things didn’t get any better. But she went to VA for help, and the process of healing began.

Alexandrea Gries, now a peer support specialist with the VA Central California Health Care System, has come a long way in eight years thanks to the VA in Fresno and the people who work there, she said.

Starting out at the VA as a volunteer and work study student, escorting patients by wheelchair and working in the canteen store, the kitchen and then the coffee shop – Gries said she realized right away VA was a place she could relate to, and the people there were people she could relate with.

“I developed a very strong kinship,” Gries said. “I love these people, and this is the only family I have now.”

“Alexandrea Gries is a true leader. She has impacted so many lives in a positive way, and she’s been through so much,” said Mary Golden, the VA CCHCS Voluntarily Service Program manager.

Pushing Wheel Chairs Nine Hours a Day – “I love these Vets.”

Although she knows she’ll probably never fully recover from the scars of war, Gries said she believes the healing starts with sharing her experiences with others.

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UPDATES from VA on Hurricane Harvey

New on VAntage Point:

• VA team in Arkansas takes the call supporting Hurricane Harvey response
• Responding to the needs of Veterans affected by Hurricane Harvey
• Alternate VA Medical Centers and clinics if your facility is closed or inaccessible
• VA continues to provide benefits and services in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey
• Houston VA medical team treating around the clock
• As Harvey moves eastward, VA sites collaborate to maintain operations
• Despite hurricane and floods, VA Houston soldiers on to serve Veterans

Joseph P. Dwyer Peer Support Program Spreads Healing PTSD

Local veterans are finding help through peer support
OUR MILITARY: Joseph P. Dwyer Peer Support Program aims to help PTSD, depression sufferers
Lockport Union Sun Journal
BY TIM FENSTER
June 10, 2017

"I just picked myself up off the floor of the Humvee and continued to do my job," Greg Conrad

Joed Viera/Staff Photographer

Members of the Joseph P. Dwyer Peer Support Program enjoy a recent afternoon together at a local stable

When Greg Conrad thinks back to his two tours in Iraq, he sees a striking image that summarizes his experiences at war — a bomb going off.

While serving with the U.S. Army in overseas in 2007-08 and 2009-10, Conrad was involved in five separate enemy attacks using improvised explosive devices. He managed to avoid injury from the bombs themselves, but the attacks took a severe toll on his mind and body.

"My battalion commander lost his legs (in an IED explosion)," he said. "It's one of those things that just stays in your brain. It brings up crazy emotions."

In another attack, on a summer night, he was standing in the turret of a Humvee when a roadside bomb went off. The driver pulled off the road to evade further enemy ordnance, and drove into a raw sewage ditch alongside the road. Conrad was thrown forward into the turret ring, injuring discs in his back. But, like with so many other injuries he suffered during the war, he never stopped and gave his body the rest and recuperation it needed.

In 2015, Conrad was connected to the PFC Joseph P. Dwyer Peer Support Program. Unlike traditional mental health programs that involve trained counselors and psychologists, the Dwyer program connects veterans with other veterans.
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Vietnam Veterans Formed Tight Bonds to Heal Combat PTSD Together

Albany area vets get less VA therapy, but support each other
LMT Online
By Claire Hughes
April 15, 2017

The vets' former therapist, now retired, had handpicked them to be together, and they have formed tight bonds, said group member Peter Risatti, 72, of Tyringham, Mass. 

East Greenbush
They don't get as much professional help with their PTSD as they used to, but a dozen or so Vietnam veterans are doing what they can to keep each other strong.

The Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany last year ended the type of group therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder that the vets had received for about 15 years. The VA offered the vets different therapists and approaches, but not all together and not in a way they were accustomed to, as the group tells it. The big difference, from the vets' perspective, was that the new therapy would require them to confront their combat experience, 40-50 years after they'd been at war. The rules of their old therapy were to never exhume those memories — "you didn't go back into Country" is how they put it — unless everyone in the room agreed to it.

The vets, in their late 60s and older, think the time has passed for them to face down the blood and gore they witnessed.

"They're not tailoring it to us," said Tom Gage, 72, from South Egremont, Mass. "They're tailoring us to them."

The vets' former therapist, now retired, had handpicked them to be together, and they have formed tight bonds, said group member Peter Risatti, 72, of Tyringham, Mass. The group focused on issues in their current lives ignited by their PTSD — anger, anxiety, alcohol abuse. In an interview last year, some of the men said there were no other people in the world they talked to about anything, ever.

After a story appeared in the Times Union in January 2016, fellow veterans offered the guys support to get their therapy reinstated, and a protest was planned for the end of March, Risatti said.

Then a psychologist at the VA, a veteran herself, offered to facilitate the group, he said. The guys like her. But instead of a 90-minute session every week, the vets now get 60 minutes every other week. And that hour-long session can be shortened if an earlier scheduled meeting in their room runs long.
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Female Veterans Get Rejuvenated in Nebraska

Female vets in Nebraska paint to relieve stress
ABC News Nebraska
by Rasheeda Kabba
March 24th 2017

Female military veterans in Grand Island have started a fun stress relief group called, Rejuvenate.

The group started back in January and meets every other week for stress relief activities. On Thursday, they met to do some finger painting, and they were painting more than just red, white and blue.

They say activities like this allow for some much needed "me time."

The group Rejuvenate has participated in activities like getting facials, yoga, and acupuncture therapy.

Though the events usually revolve around stress relief, Jennifer Kerkland, a Navy vet, says the group has allowed her to connect with other female vets who have served. She says it’s given her some time to herself.
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When Homecoming Euphoria Wears Off PTSD Awakens

Scars of War Set In
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 4, 2017

The thing you missed is that when the euphoria wears off, you came back with a different "you" inside. Homecoming feels great and folks are really happy to see you. You get to eat what you want, go where you want and do what you want to. It feels good to get into your own bed. All of a sudden, nothing feels "normal" to you. That is because PTSD came home with you.

Coming home doesn't have to be filled with heartache and hardships. It all depends on what you are willing to do with what you know how to do.

You left your civilian family to deploy with your military family. It doesn't matter where you were heading, which war or decade. It is always the same story. You get trained to be able to fight the battles and protect the others you are with. 

Sure, you're told about the reasons used to send you, as if you'll get the message it is for the sake of our nation, but the truth is, it is always about the family you risked your life with.

You became attached to them. Shared your meals with them. Experienced the same dangers and fears as they did. You endured all the same hardships. They became a part of you and you would have died for them. They would have died for you.

When you come home, that detachment from that family, hurts. No one back home can understand what it was like. Too few want to understand and they seem to want you to just go back to the way you were before. Some want to understand but they can't until you explain it to them.

If you hold it all in, you push them away. If you do, then they will become more and more distant emotionally. Sooner or later, you figure out that you are alone in your own hell. A hell, partly built by your own actions.

The thing is, in combat, you do everything you can to stay alive. So why not do the same when you come home? Why give up so easily? Is it because you think others will judge you for not being tough enough to just deal with it? Is it because you are supposed to be the strong one and never in need of anything from anyone? How is that supposed to work?

No one is ever in any kind of position they need nothing from anyone. You needed your brothers and sisters to watch your back in combat. You needed someone to take care of your meals and clothing. Someone else had to supply your weapons. Someone else had to find you to bring your mail. Someone else had to take care of the vehicles you rode in. Someone else had to make the plans for where you were going and when you were going back to the place someone else figured out you needed to be in.

Do you see where this is going?

Back home, no one is ever really alone no matter how much you want to pretend you are. How close you feel to someone depends entirely on you. You decide who you share your life with and how much you share with them. If you share your pain, then you share your healing. Same as being in combat, you have someone to share healing the scars created by it.

The only people able to really understand what it was like for you are other veterans. Sure, it is better to have members of your own unit to fight with you again, but if not, then try to find a combat veteran from your own generation. Then learn from older veterans how they took back control over their home-life after military-life. 

This is the battle you are in control of. Do you surrender to the enemy inside of you or do you do whatever you have to do to defeat it?

Walker County Wounded Warrior Banquet Draws 1,200

A sight to behold: More than 1,200 people show support for veterans during Wounded Warrior Banquet
The Huntsville Item
By JP McBride
Jan 27, 2017

In suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, many veterans feel like they are alone in their pain and are helpless in finding the healing they need.

The residents of Walker County and others from around the state of Texas showed that there are many Americans who want to help veterans struggling with PTSD find a solution and get them on the road to recovery during the eighth annual Walker County Wounded Warrior Banquet on Thursday night.

A sellout crowd of more than 1,200 generous folks made their way to the main building of the Walker County Fairgrounds for the banquet to honor the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country by donating to organizations like the Lone Survivor Foundation and Mighty Oaks Warrior Programs, as well as the Warrior Family Support Center in San Antonio.
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Stronger (2017) - Official Trailer (HD)

Film draws awareness to PTSD, provides suicide intervention

You Have The Power To Change The Conversation On PTSD

Veterans consider the next commander-in-chief on PRI by Steven Snyder posted yesterday, this report on how our veterans are looking at the results of the election differently.

Brian McGough is a combat-wounded veteran who served in the initial invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

McGough, who has fought for the right of women to serve in combat, worries that President-elect Trump's views might result in limiting opportunities for women in the military.

"It's important to remember that there are a lot of veterans out there who are now feeling like they don't belong in this country," McGough adds. "There are veterans of color, veterans of different religious preferences, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender veterans who now feel threatened in their own country. And for me that's very concerning."

Another vet, who wrote to us from Ellwood City, Penn., expresses bitterness.

"I'm a veteran with mental health issues, and we just elected a man that thinks I need to just toughen up. ... I wish I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm neither proud of my country nor my service today. I just want to wake up from this nightmare."

But Dean Castaldo, an eight-year military veteran, points out that the men and women in the armed services — more than a million — represent a cross-section of America.

And regardless of their differences, Castaldo says, they all work together as a team.

Residual War, Something Worth Living For is about a female soldier, proven hero, suffering for what she thinks she caused by saving the wrong person. Suicides, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, military women, Warrior Transition Units mistreatment of our soldiers and the rest of the things that they really go through are within this work of fiction. 

Some hear about a female soldier with PTSD and assume it is just because of sexual assault, failing to notice females are just as human as the male soldiers and are exposed to the same dangers of combat. Some hear about soldiers committing suicide, assume they "just couldn't take it" without ever considering the simple fact they managed to "take it" when other lives were in danger, but did not receive the help they needed to heal afterwards.

Some hear about folks running around the country, screaming about how they are raising awareness, but the reality is there are less serving now than when the Army started to "address PTSD" yet it translated into more suicides among less to count.

Whatever you have heard up to this day after Veterans Day, you will now have the power to change the conversation.

Keep in mind that Combat PTSD Wounded Times has over 27,000 posts on it, so there is a lot of "news" put into this book. Your challenge is to discover what is true about the lives of these fictional characters.

Suicide Awareness: Something Worth Living For

Something Worth Living For
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 25, 2016

Did you have something to risk your life for? Obviously you did or you wouldn't have joined the military. Were you willing to die to save someone else? Easy to guess that was a fact and you proved that one everyday you were deployed. So after all that, with the life of others mattering that much, why are thinking about taking your own life? Isn't there something worth living for?

That is the part no one has been able to explain to me. The thing is you can come up with all reasonable answers but none of them really equal to anything being any harder than combat. You survived all that. While coming back home shouldn't be this hard for you or any veteran, none of it is as hopeless as you think it is.

When I told the truth about what was going on in the Veterans' Community, folks wanted what was easy to understand. Like some saying they are raising awareness and getting away with taking a couple of headlines, quoting numbers as if they even begin to understand the report they came from.  

Anyway, after thirty four years I figured since those folks are winning attention for themselves while veterans have been losing their lives for decades, it was time to do some fabricating of my own. Most of the characters came from listening to veterans over all these years and blended with imaginary situations. They got into trouble for something worth the risk.

Everyone is talking about veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. No one is talking about the fact that the majority of veterans committing suicide are over the age of fifty. Yet our older veterans have more wisdom about what needs to be done than the younger generation has begun to understand.

So I created a story to tell what it is like for the newer veterans wrapped in a mystery, blended with a fictitious conspiracy using homeless veterans as lab rats in order to create the perfect soldier. 

These veterans were among the eleven thousand kicked out of the Army in 2013. This came after years of prevention training, the military telling us they were taking all this seriously at the same time they betrayed the very men and women willing to die for the sake of someone else. They got away with it because the American public wasn't paying enough attention.

A group of proven heroic soldiers are transferred to a old fort taken over by a high ranking member of the Army to protect them from being kicked out as well. Each of them had multiple deployments and even though they were suffering for their service they did not leave their military family.

The story is about passing judgment, raw emotions, survivor guilt, nightmares, flashbacks and losing hope that anything will ever get better. It is also about being betrayed by some while being supported by the family they entered into when they became the smallest minority in the nation. 

Those willing to die to save the lives of others yet having to search for a reason worth living for are all over the news but what is being talked about is far from the real world they live in.

You are not like the other 90+% of the population who never put their lives on the line. They suffer PTSD too and they commit suicide, but you risked your own life because other lives mattered more. Seems there should be a "veterans lives matter" movement because obviously most of you missed that. Still you don't fit in with them now that you live everyday as a veteran. You do fit in perfectly with other veterans and they are ready to help you heal so you can pass the healing along to others. That's something worth living for!

Ask yourself a question they don't want you to think about. "How does raising awareness save a single life?" What good does it do anyone to talk about a fabricated number of veterans killing themselves when they still don't know how to heal?

It is time to change the conversation from suicides to surviving. Evidence has shown no sign of suicides being reduced, no matter how much money they spend or how many times sad outcomes get into the news. You don't need someone to tell you that you don't want to live anymore. You need someone to give you back hope so you know there is something worth living for.  

RESIDUAL WAR will be on Amazon soon so get ready to see a world they only heard about from slogans.

PTSD Veterans Healing Past Demons of War

Veterans share their stories to help others fight PTSD
CBS News
By JIM AXELROD
September 7, 2016

After two tours in Iraq, after trying to drink himself past the demons that darkened his mind, and after a second member of his old platoon committed suicide, Frank Lesnefsky got help. Finally.

In his therapist’s office, he can talk about his post-traumatic stress instead of being haunted by it.

“I was immobilized,” Lesnefsky said. “It’s like being frozen, just watching time pass. It’s crazy.”

Lesnefsky, a retired Army staff sergeant, hit his own bottom and contemplated taking his own life.

In 2014, Lesnefsky found help through Headstrong, a non-profit whose mission is helping any vet who needs it deal with their hidden wounds. No cost, no wait.

Now, Lesnefsky is leading by a very public example. He is sharing his struggle with the 20 million followers of the popular blog Humans of New York.

More than a dozen stories have been published. CBS News asked a few of the bloggers to share what they posted.

Lesnefsky shared the story of how he was drawn to serving in the military, and detailed some of the horrors he witnessed in Iraq.

“There was an old man who fished in the same spot every single day. ... And one day this fifteen-year-old kid rides by on a scooter and drops a bomb behind him. ... I always honored the human form and now I’ve come to a place where the human body is shredded and stomped and blown to bits. And that just wasn’t me. I used to be jokey. I used to be goofy. I was Frank from North Scranton. And now i won’t ever be that again,” Lesnefsky wrote.
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PTSD Vietnam Veteran Became "Brother's Keeper"

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."

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PTSD Awareness, Go To Hell

Go Into Their Hell To Get Them Out
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 13, 2106

How can you think you will change anything for our veterans if you have not spent time in hell with them? That should be the first question that gets answered if we will ever save more veterans after combat instead of losing survivors of it.

There is no doubt in my mind that most folks have good intentions with all the "awareness" they are trying to raise.  Those good intentions have had deadly results because far too many of them did not understand what they were getting into.

The trouble with veterans trying to raise awareness is, while they do understand the trip to hell, they do not necessarily understand what to do or what to say to help their "brother" find hope to heal.  

Peer support is vital and works if the veteran is armed with more knowledge than the veteran in crisis. After all, think about support groups for all different issues.  These groups are divided up so that everyone in them has been in the same type of situation.

If you have a drug problem, you would not go into a sexual addiction group and expect it would help you with your problems.  If you have PTSD from one cause, going into another support group does not work as well as if members of the group survived the same type of event.

Imagine a person with PTSD from abuse in a group where the majority are suffering from PTSD after car accidents.  Do the others understand the symptoms? Sure but they do not understand what it is like to have been abused and what that did to the survivor of it.

It is the same thing with PTSD caused by being willing to risk your life for someone else. Firefighters support other firefighters because they understand all of it. Police Officers support other Police Officers for the same reason. Veterans support other veterans because they also understand what it is like no matter what war title is on their hat.  What is under their hat are a lot of memories they wish they never had known.

In the line of this work, I have been pulled into their hell but have only stood in the doorway of it watching from a safe distance. I am a family member, so while I can offer other families a deeper level of support than to a veteran, because of the years behind me, I've helped veterans as well as families.

While I have experienced my life on the line for 50 years with very different types of trauma, I have never been in combat and have never been in the service.  I just spent my life with veterans.  I understand them, but only to a point. I can help them because while I do not understand combat, I can understand what it did to them as much as they can understand what my life did to me.  What I cannot do is offer them the same level of support as another veteran can.

I can help them understand what PTSD is and why they have it and I can help them begin to heal but then I have to get them to the point where they go for professional help and into more support than I can give.

That is what has been lacking all along.  Good intentions without enough knowledge to what to do and when to do it has produced deadly outcomes for far too many.

If you are a veteran, then you are the best source of support for other veterans. Time to live up to it.  

It is great to be willing to call a buddy and be there to listen to them.  Most of the time a veteran in crisis just needs to know they matter. That gets them from one minute but what about the next if they are left lacking any more knowledge on how to heal so that tomorrow will be better than "this day" was?

Spend time learning what PTSD is and then go one step further to learn how to help them heal. That is the only way to get them out of the hell they are in right now. If you really want to change what has been happening, then understand what had happened over the last 40 years when researchers discovered what works best along with what failed.  So far the failures have been repeated and the successes have been obliterated.

Las Vegas Vietnam Veterans Learned to Heal PTSD Together

Las Vegas psychiatrist helps Vietnam veterans heal ‘invisible wounds’
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
By KEITH ROGERS
August 7, 2016

Until he began therapy sessions with Dr. Steven Kingsbury to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder, Marine veteran Lonnie Coslow was in denial about his invisible wounds from the Vietnam War.

“I told him that if the Marines wanted me to have PTSD they would have issued it to me,” Coslow, 71, said Thursday.

Looking back, Coslow now understands how Kingsbury, a wheelchair-bound psychiatrist at the North Las Vegas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, helped him realize how to live with the nightmares, flashbacks and pent-up emotions that have simmered since 1968.

Kingsbury became a mental health expert after earning degrees, completing residencies and serving on faculties at universities like Harvard, Loyola, Miami, Texas and Southern California. Through his knowledge and experience he gradually won Coslow’s confidence.

After 10 years of private sessions with Coslow, the affable doctor persuaded him to join the Tuesday gatherings of a group of about 20 other Las Vegas area combat veterans.

“One of the great things we had going was we saw these guys in a group and they were able to help each other,” Kingsbury said. “Any trust issues that they had with me, they still had trust among themselves.”

When issues like suicidal thoughts, marriage problems and anger flare-ups surfaced, he said, 


“They were there for each other and they could call each other and just get away for awhile.”
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PTSD EVOLUTION
There wasn't a specific name for post-traumatic stress disorder when Dr. Steven Kingsbury first began working with combat veterans a few years after the Vietnam War ended in 1975.

PTSD didn't become part of the VA's vocabulary until the American Psychiatric Association's manual for mental health disorders was revised in 1980.

Some symptoms had been described as "shell shock" or "war neuroses" for World War I veterans; or "combat stress reaction" from "battle fatigue" for World War II veterans, according the VA's National Center for PTSD.

During the Korean War era, the association's manual from 1952 made reference to "gross stress reaction" as a symptom of traumatic combat events. The diagnosis, however, was struck from the revised 1968 manual and replaced with an "adjustment reaction to adult life." That was later described on the center's website as "clearly insufficient to capture a PTSD-like condition."

In 2013, more than 500,000 veterans were receiving treatment for PTSD at VA facilities.

Suicide Awareness Not Same As Reason To Live With PTSD

Stop Raising PTSD-Suicide Awareness, Start Sharing Hope
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 6, 2016

This morning my email box was full of news on veterans committing suicide and folks "raising awareness" about what they were doing for them.  Some use "22 a day" others use the latest number from the VA of "20 a day" and some even use "25 a day" as if any of those numbers will change anything.

The simple fact is, none of what has been done since 1999 has been enough to actually help change the outcome for far too many. With a reduction of almost 7 million veterans leaving us since then, the numbers from the VA on suicides are still "20 a day" even after a decade of stunts to "prevent" them from taking their own lives.

Pushups put focus on veteran suicides on the Clarion Ledger covered an event with participants dropping to the floor while believing they will do what exactly?

Senator Roger Wicker, center left, and Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber, center right, do pushups as part of the "22 Pushup Challenge," a social media campaign to raise awareness for veteran suicide prevention, Thursday at the Capitol. (Photo: Elijah Baylis/The Clarion-Ledger)

This happened at the Mississippi State Capitol. In the article there was this,

"There’s no reason for any veteran to feel that he or she needs to take their own life," said Senator Roger Wicker just before he, Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber, Flowood Police Chief Richie McCluskey, and others hit the deck for 22 pushups in the Mississippi state capitol rotunda on Thursday.

I have no doubt they are filled with good intentions but lack good information so they share pain instead of hope.

The problem is, there are plenty of reasons veterans are still taking their own lives after risking them for the sake of others. All the raising awareness about them committing suicide has managed to do is spread the hopelessness. If others did not find the help they needed, then what are the chances a veteran in crisis will be able to change his/her own tomorrow?

The other thing is that older veterans, waiting longer for help and hope, forgotten by all these "new efforts" has left them in the majority of veterans committing suicide. They look at all the attention the younger veterans are getting, doing little good, and that removes hope for them. It devalues all the decades of them suffering in silence for what they fought so hard to change.

I could go on and on, but you have read enough of the bad reports here for a very long time. This month Wounded Times has been up for 9 years. That is a lot of covering the sad news but for now, I think it is vital to talk about the good news. If anything will ever change, we need to start raising awareness on what works. That begins with telling them what they have not heard enough. They are not condemned to suffer as much as they are today and their lives are healable.

Yesterday a veteran called to thank me for what I helped him with. Usually when I hear that, it is followed by heartache and I prepare to do battle with the demon of death to give them back the hope they lost.  This time, the thank you was followed by a series of blessings shared by him.

He proceeded to tell me that his claim had been upgraded and he would not have to worry about how to feed himself and his service dog. He talked about how so many people surrounded him in his darkest times, listening to him pour his heart out. They made sure he had food to eat and rides to get to around. They made sure he knew he mattered to them when he could not find a reason to matter to himself.

He also talked about how God was very busy in his life when He sent all of them to get him through all the hardships he had to face.

The most wondrous thing of all about this veteran is his voice was filled with hope when he talked about helping other veterans heal like he did.

So, for what it is worth, after over 3 decades of doing this work, this is what I feel needs to be shared right now to actually make a difference.

We have to start with what PTSD really is.

Post means "after' because things go from one way in your life to chaos and your life changed in a second. Trauma is something you survived that very well could have taken your life or the life of someone else. In other words, it happened to you. That trauma caused your entire body to go into stress mode. That caused the way you think and feel to be in disorder.  In other words, it was in order before it, got shaken up and you can put things back in order again. Maybe not in the same exact way, but at least an order you can live with.

One more thing to mention on this is  that "trauma" is actually Greek for "wound" and with all wounds, left untreated they get worse but with help, all wounds do in fact heal. YOU CAN HEAL!

If you think that PTSD is something to be ashamed of, think better about yourself since you survived it.  You are not a "victim" of the event but you are a survivor.  It was not able to kill you. So why are you letting it destroy you now?

Like the veteran needed to be reminded of a long time ago, when you were in combat and outnumbered, you called in all the help you could get.  If ground support was not enough, then you called in for air support.  Lives were on the line so you did what you had to do to keep them alive. How is this different?

Every veteran I have helped over the years said the first thing they wanted to do was help other veterans live better lives. Staying here and healing actually means you will save lives now by getting whatever you need to defeat this.

If you do not find what you need, then keep calling in as much help as you can find the same way you did in combat.

Brandon Ketchum tried to stay alive and tried to help raise awareness but when he was in his darkest hour, he was turned away from the VA after requesting emergency care.

Last October, former Marine sergeant and Army National Guard veteran Brandon Ketchum led a team in an awareness walk to honor military friends who had died by suicide.But this year, Ketchum won’t be present at the Out of the Darkness event in Rock Island, Illinois. Instead, he will be among those remembered, having died July 8 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound just hours after expressing his frustration with Veterans Affairs medical care on a closed Facebook page.Ketchum wrote that he had sought emergency inpatient care for his substance abuse issues but was turned away.

Right now no one knows for sure why it happened anymore than they know why he did not keep trying to find help in crisis with all the other groups out there or even something as simple as calling 911 to get into a mental health hospital until he could get a bed at the VA.

Right now if you are like me, you are wondering what good the "Out of darkness" awareness did when he did not think about turning to them for help. Ketchum turned to Facebook to post his exit interview.

I do not have anything to do with that group but I do have something to do with Coming Out of The Dark. This is a video I made 10 years ago.


You are not alone so why be afraid? You may feel like reaching out for help is like hitting a stone wall, but look on your side and find folks standing right there waiting to help you.

They may not be able to give you what you want, but if you let them, they can give you what you need. If you are hungry, let them feed you. If you are without clothes, let them cover you. If you are lonely, let them visit you.

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Matthew 25

When you were able to help someone, how did you feel? Did you feel good or did you feel as if they were less since they needed help? Safe bet you were glad to help them and felt blessed being able to.  How is it different being on the receiving end and letting them get that same rush by helping you so you can help someone else along the line?

Do not let the life you lived go without putting up a fight the same way you did in combat.  They talk about the lives lost but it is time to talk about the lives not just spared, but shared. You cared so much you were willing to die for the sake of someone else.  How about you care enough to live for the same reason?

How Coffee Became Salvation for Soldiers and Veterans

If you read Wounded Times then you know about Point Man International Ministries being started by a Vietnam veteran, Seattle Police Officer meeting other veterans for coffee to help them heal. Just thinking about that simple act of kindness and time saving so many lives makes me proud to be among them.

If War Is Hell, Then Coffee Has Offered U.S. Soldiers Some Salvation
KAZU NPR
By THE KITCHEN SISTERS
July 25, 2016

"The UFO became a place where soldiers could gather and talk openly about their worries and frustrations, without the military brass around," Gardner recalls. And in Columbia, says Gardner, UFO was a rarity ­­-- a place that "not just black and white but students and soldiers" could share.

During the Vietnam War, GI coffeehouses located near military posts became a place for soldiers to gather and organize against the war. Since 2007, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

In April 1865, at the bloody, bitter end of the Civil War, Ebenezer Nelson Gilpin, a Union cavalryman, wrote in his diary, "Everything is chaos here. The suspense is almost unbearable."

"We are reduced to quarter rations and no coffee," he continued. "And nobody can soldier without coffee."

If war is hell, then for many soldiers throughout American history, it is coffee that has offered some small salvation. Hidden Kitchens looks at three American wars through the lens of coffee: the Civil War, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
read more here

Montana Veterans Walk As Team Toward Healing PTSD

Montana veterans find healing through nature, camaraderie
Great Falls Tribune
Jenn Rowell
July 1, 2016

"It’s the weight that they feel. Not one person can hike that the entire way, we have to do it as a team.”
Luke Urick

Pills and counseling don’t work for all veterans coping with post-traumatic stress disorder.

That’s why Luke Urick and Scott Moss wanted to create a third leg to what they call the tripod of healing.

Veterans with the Montana Vet Program, part of Eagle Mount Great Falls, hiked from Livingston to Yellowstone National Park in May to raise awareness of the program.

(Photo: Photo courtesy of Amber Fern)

The two combat veterans, who were Marine Corps snipers, have created the Montana Vet Program at Eagle Mount Great Falls. MVP for short, the program involves veteran-led therapeutic hikes through Montana’s iconic locations, including Yellowstone and Glacier national parks and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.

MVP is a culmination of ideas that Moss and Urick had been kicking around and started coming together when Deb Sivumaki, director at Eagle Mount Great Falls, talked to Urick about creating a program for veterans.

Moss hiked in Yosemite National Park with a good friend and a fellow service member, who was killed about a year and a half later in 2009. Moss left the Marine Corps in 2011 and was living and working but wanted to do something.
read more here

Three North Dakota Marines Committed Suicide Within Last Month

Addressing PTSD, Suicide Among Marines
KX News
Posted: Jun 24, 2016

Three North Dakota marines took their own lives within the last month.

Commandant Raymond Morrell says those are not statistics that are well known, nor should they be, but through the Marine Corps League, he says future statistics should not be so grim.

Morrell says military members know better than most that battles continue to be fought at home.

He says whatever you choose to call it: PTSD, combat issues, or what he 'less than stellar conditions,' he says the way to heal is through camaraderie, and the best camaraderie comes from a fellow veteran.

(Raymond Morrell, Dakota Leathernecks Detachment #1419) "One of the best resources they have, is someone to talk to. You tell me, who understands marines better than a fellow marine? As fellow marines, that's one of the biggest issues. One life. The ability to save one life. That's what I feel we're here to do."
read more here
KXNet.com - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson-KXNEWS,ND

Texas Veterans Try To Find Ways to Prevent More Suicides

Experts address suicide at veterans center event in Texas
Victoria Advocate, Texas
By Laura Garcia
Published: May 7, 2016

This week when he talked to his friends from that unit, they agreed they should check up on each other more often - before someone else dies.

Often suicide leaves friends and family members wondering what they could have done to prevent the death.

Michael Allen woke up Monday to messages from old Army buddies saying they had lost another one.

Six veterans in his unit have committed suicide after returning home from war, including the chaplain and chaplain's assistant.

The combat soldiers in this unit were deployed to Iraq in 2008. Allen was a platoon sergeant.

"You go from somebody watching your back 24/7 and then it's not there," he said.

An often-cited and alarming statistic states 22 U.S. service veterans take their lives every single day.

For many veterans, it's difficult to transition back into civilian life after seeing war.

"I try not to lose any more," Allen said in his office, which is in the Crossroads Area Veterans Center.

The veteran service center in the Dr. Pattie Dodson Public Health Center opened in November.

Allen points out a photo on a bookshelf of him and a friend whom he lost to suicide a couple of years ago.
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Vietnam Veterans Find Fellowship and Support

Aging Vietnam vets find fellowship
Cincinnati.com
Anne Saker
March 5, 2016

MIDDLETOWN — On Thursday afternoons, in a small church in this Butler County city, a band of brothers gathers. They are gray now, many soft in the middle, stepping over the line into retirement. They slip on the VETERAN caps. Outside the church, they say, they don’t talk much. But inside, they can point at last to the shadows that haunt them still, and a brother says, I see them, too.

Some of the men discuss government paperwork. Others brew coffee. One nudges the next man, wearing the Silver Star for valor on his hat, and teases, "you know, he’s the crazy one." At one recent meeting, some of the men shake their heads over a troubled Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD, whose body was found Feb. 20 in the Little Miami River near Loveland.

The men call themselves the Veterans Social Command, but the name is more formal than the group itself. Seven years ago, seven veterans of the Vietnam War started meeting to helping others file claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs. As the years passed, they found that what their brothers needed was fellowship. Today, the command counts its number at 90 and growing.

“We didn’t start out like this,” said James Shepherd of Middletown, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam and was a charter member of the Veterans Social Command. “It was just a few people in PTSD group. We realized the more we met that the guys needed two things: help with the VA, which we could do, and a fellowship, just being together. Some of these guys haven't talked about what they did in the war since they came home."
read more here

Grab Them And Save Them

How many times have you wondered why someone didn't ask for help or let you know they needed you?  How many times have you wished that you let them know you were there for them no matter what they needed?

Sometimes people just can't find the words.  Other times they can think of what to say but their buddy just didn't ask.

Remind them that in combat, not asking for help or all the support they could get, ended up getting buddies killed.  Asking for help now is no different and they mean no less to you now than back then.

Send these or upload onto Facebook if you think one of your buddies needs help and you don't know how to offer it. Make sure you put your contact information in it and when they can get a hold of you.

If you have a non-profit and think of using these to raise funds or awareness for yourself, don't try it. These are for veterans to use for their buddies, not for you to use to make money off them.

UPDATE February 18, 2020
add these to them