Experts prove they need to open their eyes to see answer on military suicides

Lisa Firestone, Psychology expert on relationships, parenting, self-destructive thoughts and suicide; author, 'Conquer Your Critical Voice' wrote a piece on the Huffington Post titled "Veteran Suicide Prevention: Getting To Treatment That Works" but failed to see that while they have been doing all this "stuff" oh the hell with it, all this shit, the numbers have been going up in a bad way.

How obvious does it have to get before the "experts" open their eyes that this shit does not work?

"Last year, more active-duty men and women in the military died by suicide than from combat. Recently released data from the Department of Veterans Affairs further shows that about 22 military veterans die by suicide every day. That means, on average, we lose a veteran to suicide every 65 minutes. The record-high number of military suicides in 2012 has left many experts seeking solutions to this tragic increase in lives lost. New treatment methods are bringing new hope, as they're used to directly target suicidality in veterans."

I told you all that I stopped playing nice a long time ago. I ran out of excuses for them. They started this crap back in 2007.

"One form of therapy that takes a targeted approach is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for suicidal patients (CBT), developed by Aaron Beck and Gregory Brown. This model draws upon some of the basic skills-training aspects of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a form of therapy developed by Marsha Linehan that focuses on teaching skills that help a person to regulate and tolerate their emotions. One important element CBT adds could be described as state-dependent learning. Previous research had demonstrated that suicide attempters can learn skills in a non-activated state, but when they are triggered, they can't access these skills. Therefore, the final step Dr. Beck and Dr. Brown added in therapy involves inducing the suicidal state in session and essentially testing the person's ability to implement the skills they have learned, when in the suicidal mode. The therapist is there if it is necessary to help the person through the induced suicidal state. However, the goal is for the person to demonstrate their ability to calm themselves down when triggered and survive on their own. Therapy continues until they can do this on their own."

I left this comment.

Don't you see what the problem is here? Since last year was the highest on record for suicides, and attempted suicides, after they started doing all they are doing including Cognitive therapy years ago, if it worked, we wouldn't be seeing these deadly results.

There were over 900 attempted suicides in the military in 2011 but we don't know about last year because the DOD hasn't released the report for 2012 yet. The last report from the VA had 1,000 attempts per month but again, no one talks about them either.

What works has worked for the last 40 years and that is taking care of the whole veteran. Their mind, their body and soul. Until all that is done together, numbers will go up. I posted in 2009 if Comprehensive Soldier Fitness was expanded, the suicides would go up and they did.

The Suicide Event Report for 2012 has still not been released but no one seems to feel the need to explain why the hell it has been delayed when they collected the data LAST YEAR so it shouldn't take 9 months to release the report.

I am so tired of these "experts" ignoring what has been slamming them on top of their heads for all these years. Enough is enough. One paragraph told about the problem then she went right into what has become part of the problem but didn't see it. Why?

I've been studying the trauma experts for over 30 years now and most of them have the answers but they are ignored. PTSD requires specialized training in trauma or the clients are out of luck on the healing they should have been getting instead of suffering while listening to the wrong people. They are not being pushed into the abyss, they are being catapulted into it. Get them high on meds and keep expecting a different outcome when the real experts say meds only numb them and can't heal them. Keep making them face the worst thing in their lives over and over again so they can be terrorized instead of being able to actually make peace with their lives so they can see there was nothing evil in them, forgive themselves as much as they can forgive others.

Unless they wake up and actually research what has been done in the last 40 years they will keep pulling sheets over heads instead of putting hands around them.

If prevention, the therapy they have been using, the 900 suicide prevention programs, the suicide prevention hotline and the behemoth Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, or any of this crap worked, more would be alive today and more would want to live because they were healing.

Oh hell! If you want to know more than read my book on Suicides After War. Then you'll know what the real experts said about what they have been doing.

Why Is the Military Spending Millions on Christian Contractors

I was sent a link to this story Gov't Spending Millions in Tax Money to Covert Soldiers to Christianity taking me to the original story, leaving me deeply troubled, but not for the reasons listed here.

Why Is the Military Spending Millions on Christian Contractors Bent on Evangelizing US Soldiers?
Why do Christian contractors play such a prominent role in our military?
August 21, 2011
By Chris Rodda

When the average American thinks of military spending on religion, they probably think only of the money spent on chaplains and chapels. And, yes, the Department of Defense (DoD) does spend a hell of a lot of money on these basic religious accommodations to provide our troops with the opportunity to exercise their religion while serving our country. But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the DoD's funding of religion. Also paid for with taxpayer dollars are a plethora of events, programs, and schemes that violate not only the Constitution, but, in many cases, the regulations on federal government contractors, specifically the regulation prohibiting federal government contractors receiving over $10,000 in contracts a year from discriminating based on religion in their hiring practices.

About a year ago, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) began an investigation into just how much money the DoD spends on promoting religion to military personnel and their families.

What prompted this interest in DoD spending on religion was finding out what the DoD was spending on certain individual events and programs, such as the $125 million spent on the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program and its controversial "Spiritual Fitness" test, a mandatory test that must be taken by all soldiers. The Army insists that this test is not religious, but the countless complaints from soldiers who have failed this "fitness" test tell a different story. The experience of one group of soldiers who weren't "spiritual" enough for the Army can be read here. But the term "Spiritual Fitness is not limited to this one test. The military began using this term to describe a variety of initiatives and events towards the end of 2006, and this `code phrase' for promoting religion was heavily in use by all branches of the military by 2007.
read more here

I am deeply trouble because it doesn't work. If it did we would see the number of suicides and attempted suicides go down. Troubled marriages? You'd see the divorce rate go down especially when you acknowledge that when it is a military divorce, the civilian spouse has to go and usually that means taking the kids off to who knows where. Yep, they lose their base housing. There is a lot more to lose but still the rates are higher than the civilian world. Drug and alcohol abuse is up as well. What they are doing is not working but they keep putting money into something that failed.

It is not that spiritual programs are bad or there is anything wrong with having Christian groups working to help soldiers as long as they include other faiths but when the results are what they are, they need to rethink what they are funding.

"Spiritual Fitness" is code for if a soldier belongs to the right group or not. If not, then they are told they're going to hell. This is about conversion. Does the brass know what they are funding or are they part of it? Blaming the Tea Party? Not sure that makes sense since I haven't seen anything Christian about the Tea Party at all so I doubt they'd be giving a green light to this funding. What has been done has not worked but it is not the fault of God or Christ. It's the fault of the people running these programs with a different agenda in mind than healing the souls of the warriors.

Flip side of military suicides is healing

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 16, 2014

I just got back from the car wash. I had my new car washed and waxed. I can't do it anymore because arthritis makes it hard to reach the widows right. I know the person doing the detailed work knows what he is doing and I am glad to pay for it. I wouldn't expect him to know anything mechanical about the car. That is why when it came time to replace my old car, the service department I learned to trust was the number one reason for the purchase. I do expect them to know about the mechanical parts of the car. I know they know what it needs and why the car needs it. As for me, when I bought it I just assumed it had an engine since it started. The salesman asked me if I had looked under the hood yet. I shrugged my shoulders. He opened the hood and tried to explain things to me, but it was as if he was talking gibberish. I care about what I need to know and the rest, well I just leave that to the experts I know. If I tried to do anything to the car when I didn't understand it, I'd make whatever problem comes up worse. That is what Congress has been doing for decades.

I care about my car but that does not make me an expert. They care about the troops and our veterans but they are not experts on anything to do with them. No one should expect them to be but they should at least know who can fix what is broken. They don't. They end up making things worse.

It seems as if everyone is talking about the new bill for the troops by Senator Joe Donnelly. He is on the Senate Armed Services Committee. No one is talking about the duty the members have had to ensure that the troops have the best care along with everything else they need. Even less are interested in asking many questions about what happened to all the other bills the committee has produced in the last 10 years covering military suicides and mental health help. Pretty sad when considering this last bill.

• S. 2300: Jacob Sexton Military Suicide Prevention Act of 2014
• S. 1828: Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act of 2013
• S. 1802: Public Power Risk Management Act of 2013
• S. 1619: Skills Gap Strategy Act of 2013
• S.Res. 262: A resolution supporting the goals and ideals of suicide prevention awareness.
• S. 1320: Military Reserve Jobs Act of 2013
• S. 810: Jacob Sexton Military Suicide Prevention Act of 2013

This is the transcript of the Jacob Sexton Military Suicide Prevention Act of 2014

This started from a phone call I had the other night with an advocate out of Indiana. He emailed me about his Senator's Bill and I replied with, "more of the same" because that is exactly what it is. He wanted to know what I would do, since he knows I track all the reports. I told him the basics.

Dump all of it. The drugs they have the troops on all the way up to the disastrous Comprehensive Soldier Fitness because even I knew this would increase military suicides.

"I fully understand to you, I'm no one. I have been ignored by senators and congressmen, doctors and other brass for as long as I've been trying to help, so you are not the first. I've also been listened to by others trying to think outside the box, but more importantly to me, by the men and women seeking my help to understand this and their families. I tell them what you should have been telling them all along so that they know it's not their fault, they did not lack courage and they are not responsible for being wounded any more than they would have been to have been found by a bullet with their name on it.

If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them."

It is my job to know this. Lives depend on what I learn from experts and have learned over the last 30+ years. It mattered to my husband and our marriage just as much. It breaks my heart to read about suicides especially when they had gone for help and families were blaming themselves for the outcome.

It has all gone on too long when the flip side isn't just staying alive after combat. The flip side of military suicides is healing so they can live better lives.

The answers are simple because experts figured it out a long, long time ago. After all, they have been working on combat PTSD for 40 years.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness claims to teach them resilience but that ends up meaning they didn't train right and their minds are weak. It is dangerous but the military pushes it and congress keeps funding it and there have been no hearings on how this convoluted research project designed for school aged kids ended up being used for soldiers. The Congress needs to start there!

Congress cannot address anything until they actually have some kind of understanding of what PTSD is and what it does before they can plan on helping anyone.

They need to know there are different levels as well as different types. Treating military folks the same as civilians won't work.

PTSD has to be treated mind-body-spirit since all parts of the soldier/veteran are being assaulted.

Medication alone isn't the answer and most of the medications are dangerous. Medications numb them. They do not heal them.

Families are still clueless on what they can do. If they knew, then they wouldn't be blaming themselves for what no one ever told them. It isn't that the information isn't out there but because of the the web, there is information overload and they don't even know where to being to look to learn.

I wish I had some faith left in what Congress is trying to do. I know they care but they have cared for decades. It is time they understood what they were trying to fix so they stop making it all worse. Suicides went up after they started to "address it" and even after the number of enlisted went down.

If you want to know how long this has been going on and what kind of money they spent, read THE WARRIOR SAW SUICIDES AFTER WAR.

PTSD What Are You Really Aware Of?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 25, 2015

This article got to me this morning.

The deepest war wound may be the anguish of moral injury 
Los Angeles Times
BY NANCY SHERMAN
April 25, 2015

Moral injury is distinct from post-traumatic stress disorder, which is generally thought of narrowly as a fear-conditioned syndrome marked by hyper-vigilance and flashbacks. The prevailing treatment for PTSD is therapy to “decondition” the fear response. But guilt, shame, raging resentment and betrayal are different from fear. To overcome them requires relationships that rebuild a soldier's sense of trust in himself and others, no small order given the effects of war.

When the Greek playwright Sophocles came home from war, in the 5th century BC, trust and betrayal must have been on his mind. He wrote “Philoctetes,” about a wounded Greek warrior abandoned by Odysseus on the way to Troy.

The stench of Philoctetes' wound and his wails of distress made him a liability. That is, until Philoctetes' sacred bow, a gift from the god Heracles, turned out to be the Greeks' last hope for defeating the Trojans. Odysseus returned to rescue Philoctetes (or at least his bow), but he dared not show his face to the man he had left behind. Hidden, he coached a young soldier, Neoptolemus, on how to build rapport with Philoctetes in order to exploit it to get the bow.

The twist in the play is that real trust is cultivated instead; and with it, hope that heals.

The ancient Greeks understood Philoctetes' agony and salvation in the context of the Peloponnesian War. Modern Americans can apply it to the longest conflicts in American history: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which 2.7 million troops have served.

Many are bringing home the weight of resentment and betrayal, and often guilt and shame, even if it's masked by a stoic military demeanor. Like Philoctetes, some feel betrayed by commanders or unit members; some by civilians who've been “at the mall while we've been at war”; and some by politicians they think have failed to take full responsibility for the wars they started.
read more here

It seems as if everyone is doing something to help raise awareness on PTSD, and that is a good thing to a point. The trouble is when no one seems aware of what they need to know if they have PTSD.

There is what the general public seems to believe and then there is the reality of what is actually real to the veterans.

First is how they feel about their service with the DOD claiming they are treating soldiers for what comes after their operational battles. The fight to stay alive after combat is the one they are not equipped to win. No matter what the DOD claims about their own "efforts" to help soldiers heal, the end result has been a rise in suicides.
USA Today addressed a huge part of the problem. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is the biggest reason why suicides went up. It tells soldiers that they can train their brains to be mentally tough, translating they must be weak if they end up with PTSD. In other words, it is their fault. This is not just a theory. It is what the head of the Army actually admitted he believes. During an interview with the Huffington Post Odierno said a mouthful. Army Chief Ray Odierno Warns Military Suicides 'Not Going To End' After War Is Over

Q: Why do I think some people are able to deal with stress differently than others?
A: There are a lot of different factors. Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations.

This wasn't just a slip because as later reports showed, it was spread wider reenforcing the soldiers beliefs they had something to be ashamed of. Blaming soldiers and their families in public was tame compared to what they actually had to endure.

They had to even endure this emotional abuse in the very place they were sent to as a place to heal. Warrior Transition Units treated them as if they were a problem to the military.

The Dallas Morning News and NBC out of Texas did fantastic reporting on this in Injured Heroes Broken Promises however, when the national news stations failed to notice, the general pubic was left without a clue as to what was behind most of the suffering they wanted to raise awareness of.

The military keeps telling reporters they understand and are doing something to help mend them after war but as suicides within the military and in the veterans community increased, they failed to change anything they did wrong.

Army morale low despite 6-year, $287M optimism program
USA TODAY
Gregg Zoroya
April 16, 2015

"The Army funds this program because the Army values the lives of soldiers and wants to instill skills and competencies that will enhance their connections, relationships and ability to mitigate stressors and exercise help seeking behaviors through their life," says an Army statement released last month.

More than half of some 770,000 soldiers are pessimistic about their future in the military and nearly as many are unhappy in their jobs, despite a six-year, $287 million campaign to make troops more optimistic and resilient, findings obtained by USA TODAY show.

Twelve months of data through early 2015 show that 403,564 soldiers, or 52%, scored badly in the area of optimism, agreeing with statements such as "I rarely count on good things happening to me." Forty-eight percent have little satisfaction in or commitment to their jobs.

The results stem from resiliency assessments that soldiers are required to take every year. In 2014, for the first time, the Army pulled data from those assessments to help commanders gauge the psychological and physical health of their troops.

The effort produced startlingly negative results. In addition to low optimism and job satisfaction, more than half reported poor nutrition and sleep, and only 14% said they are eating right and getting enough rest.

The Army began a program of positive psychology in 2009 in the midst of two wars and as suicide and mental illness were on the rise. To measure resiliency the Army created a confidential, online questionnaire that all soldiers, including the National Guard and Reserve, must fill out once a year.

Last year, Army scientists applied formulas to gauge service-wide morale based on the assessments. The results demonstrate that positive psychology "has not had much impact in terms of overall health," says David Rudd, president of the University of Memphis who served on a scientific panel critical of the resiliency program.
read more here

The worst part of all of this is none of this should have surprised anyone. Even I predicted pushing this FUBAR research project of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness would increase suicides back in 2009.

If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

Again, there are conversations we have and then there are conversations the general public has. Ours is based on the realities we live with everyday hitting every part of our lives. I didn't got to war, but I was the daughter of an Army veteran and am a wife of an Army veteran. What happens to them hits us and our children.

We become experts on what war does after the fact and the facts don't change just because reporters ignore most of it.

Soldiers have to battle the DOD, struggle with being treated as if they are bad soldiers, enforced by the threat of bad paper discharges, like the Army discharging 11,000 in 2013 alone, and being sent to hell to "heal" and then once they are out of the military, treated to more betrayal because the VA wasn't ready for any of them. Wonder how long it will take to actually give these veterans justice? We have an example of that from what was done to Vietnam veterans as 80,000 out of 250,000 are getting a second chance.

We put blame right where it belongs and that is with members of Congress!

The $125-million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Failure

There was a time when I would read something like this and just shake my head. Now I start to yell at my computer. The evidence is in. It has been in since 2008. This so called program does not work. Aside from this, there was Battlemind, which basically "trained" the troops to think they could toughen their minds and if they didn't, it was their fault, they were weak. Unintentionally, that was the message they got out of the program. This is just a repeat of it.
The evidence is, the suicide rate, attempted suicide rate and the calls to the Suicide Prevention Hotline. With all the reports from the DOD there is also the numbers coming out of the VA. With these reports as bad as they are, aware people are even more saddened thinking about the numbers of servicemen and women not counted in either report. They are discharged, so not the military's problem anymore and they haven't been able to get a service connected disability from the VA, so the VA doesn't count them.
The good thing is that the reporter, Kim Murphy, pointed out that there are experts saying this does not work. I trust the experts I've been learning from for almost 30 years. There are many "programs" that do work but somehow this one got the blessing and funding no matter what the results have been.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program aims to equip troops mentally Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum of Gulf War fame has been deployed to lead the military's new program to prepare soldiers for the psychic trauma of war and its aftermath. By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times December 26, 2011
Reporting from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.— Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum found out what combat stress was in the back of a pickup during the first Gulf War in 1991 when one of her Iraqi captors unzipped her flight suit and, as she lay there with two broken arms and an injured eye, sexually assaulted her.
The reed-thin Army physician, whose Black Hawk helicopter had been shot down, became a symbol of everything America was worried about in sending women to war. Her successful return home — sane and not that much the worse for her ordeal — became a powerful argument for the irrelevance of gender in conditions of indiscriminate violence.

The $125-million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program requires soldiers to undergo the kind of mental pre-deployment tests and training that they have always had to undergo physically. Already, more than 1.1 million have had the mental assessments.

read more here

When you grow up in a family where everyone has a PhD from the school of "talk it to death" it is hard to let anything brew.  Too many times I faced death starting with an alcoholic father who liked to beat up my oldest brother and cause general trauma on a daily basis.  He stopped drinking when I was 13 but the damage was done.  Done to my brothers and my Mom but somehow I was able to just forgive him.  I was changed by growing up the way I did but I didn't end up with PTSD.

When I was 4, I took off from my brothers and headed up the "big kids" slide at the drive-in movie.  I wasn't supposed to go up it on my own but I had a hard time following rules or understanding why my Mom had them.  At the top, I was afraid to go down.  The kid behind me didn't want to wait, so he pushed me.  I went over the side, falling head first on the concrete.  My skull was cracked and I ended up with Traumatic Brain Injury, but no one knew what it was at the time.  It was not until years later research came out about head trauma.  I had a speech impediment and was afraid of heights for many years into adulthood but no PTSD.

I had a serious car accident.  I could have been killed.  As a mater of fact, I thought I was going to die, so I let go of the wheel, covered my face, because I knew my Mom would be furious if she couldn't have an open casket for the Greek funeral.  My parents picked me up at the hospital, drove to where the car was, made me look at it, and then, they did the best thing they could have done.  They made me drive home. I was afraid of that highway for a long time, but no PTSD.

My ex-husband of a year and a half, came home from work one night and decided it was a good idea to  start beating me.  He came close to killing me but our landlord started pounding on the door and called the police.  He snapped out of whatever possessed him and was in shock.  I was afraid every time someone raised their hand for a while after that, but no PTSD.


After my daughter was born, I didn't feel right.  I was tired all the time.  She was my first, so I thought the way I felt was normal.  8 months after, I couldn't get up out of bed.  My husband, the one I'm still married to, got me to the doctor and I had a fever of 104.  By the time I got to the hospital it was 105.  To tell the truth, I was so miserable, I wanted to die and even prayed for it until I thought about my baby and wanted to live. It turned out that a bladder infection after she was born never cleared up and I became septic. My doctor said he had never seen a bacteria count that high on a live patient. Again, no PTSD.

All these years later, I couldn't understand why I didn't have PTSD since I am a very sensitive person.  It just didn't make sense until I started to go through training for crisis intervention.  Then it all made sense.  Talking about it, making things "normal" enough to talk about with people I trusted made all the difference in the world.  The other big factor was my faith.  Being able to forgive the people who hurt me allowed me to move past what they did.  Being able to forgive myself, helped me to forgive everything.

My fears are gone for the most part.  I drive on highways, but avoid them when I can.  I fly when I have to without fear taking control, but it took a lot of flights to be able to say that.  I still avoid rides at amusement parks that are high off the ground because to me, they are still not much fun.

When it seems as if everyone around you is walking away fine from what is taking control over you, you don't want to admit it.  You may feel less than they are.  Less tough than they are.  For me, I had a strong mind already, just like the men and women in the military, so getting their minds tough is a waste of time since you can't get more tougher than being able to do what they do.  The thing that works is being able to talk about it with someone you trust and a strong faith the way it should be.

Thinking that God did it to you can destroy that connection, no matter what faith you practice.  Believing God saved you spares you all the questions you have running around your head.  You can move past "why me" faster.  Understanding what trauma does to a human, helps you to forgive what it is doing to you so you don't feel as if you have to suffer with it, hide it or deny it.  For me there is no doubt that I escaped PTSD because of the support I received and the faith I held onto.  Neither one was perfect.

There were times when I blamed God but those times didn't last long.  There were times when someone in my family said the wrong thing, but I knew they loved me anyway.  There were time when I just wanted to be left alone but my friends wouldn't let me be alone.  All in all, this is how you avoid PTSD or heal from what trauma does to you faster.  One more thing is, understand that no one is ever the same after trauma.  It changes everyone even if they don't end up with PTSD.


If you needed any more evidence, here is another report from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the same base Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum is from. There have been too many reports from here that have not been positive. Keep in mind that this approach has been around for a long time and what they are doing is not new.

A military base 'on the brink' The toll of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is catching up with the Washington state communities near Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the form of suicides, slayings and more.

At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, described by the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes last year as "the most troubled base in the military," all of these factors have crystallized into what some see as a community-wide crisis. A local veterans group calls it a "base on the brink."

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times December 26, 2011 Reporting from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.— Mary Coghill Kirkland said she asked her son, 21-year-old Army Spc. Derrick Kirkland, what was wrong as soon as he came back from his first deployment to Iraq in 2008.
He had a ready answer: "Mom, I'm a murderer."
He told her how his team had kicked in the door of an Iraqi house and quickly shot a man inside. With the man lying wounded on the floor, "my son got ordered by his sergeant to stand on his chest to make him bleed out faster," Kirkland said. "He said, 'We've got to move, and he's got to die before we move.'"
Not long after, Derrick told her, he had fallen asleep on guard duty, awakening as a car was driving through his checkpoint. He yelled for it to stop, but the family in the car spoke no English. "So my son shot up the car," she said.
Summing up her son's mental state after that deployment, Kirkland said: "What's a nice word for saying that he was completely [messed] up?"
Kirkland relates the remaining years of her son's life as if reading a script: He was depressed by his wife's request for a divorce. On a second deployment in Iraq, he was caught putting a gun in his mouth and evacuated on suicide watch to Germany. There, he tried to overdose on pills. He was flown back to his home base here in Washington state. After a brief psychiatric evaluation, he was left alone in his room. He hanged himself with a cord in his closet.
Apparently worried that no one would notice, Spc. Kirkland left a note on the door of the locker in his room. "In the closet, dead," it said. read more here

President Obama and rise in military suicides

President Obama and rise in military suicides
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 26, 2014

The murder-suicide of a female soldier's family soon after she came home from Afghanistan, certainly raises a lot of questions. One of the questions is centered around military families and their need for mental health-support services.

Murder-suicide at Fort Hood raises questions Incident forces look at psychological stress on troops' families.

"Experts and advocates say the incident raises questions about whether, even after 13 years of war, the military is paying enough attention to the psychological stress on families during troops' overseas deployments."

The answer is simple. The military is not doing enough for the troops or families but they make a different claim saying that after all these years of "doing something" about all of this, it is working.

They said it but facts are supported by the outcome and not simple words uttered during a press conference. The number of enlisted personnel has gone down however the number of suicides has not gone down accordingly. Certainly not enough to show any real progress in addressing the psychological impact of stress without end.

Karen Ruedisueli, the deputy director of government relations for the National Military Family Association, said such a study will be vital.

"Anecdotally we have heard that suicide rates among military families have increased," she said. "As deployments decrease ... people may think that behavioral health resources for families are no longer needed. The residual effects will be long-lasting."

Yet while the questions need to be answered, the biggest question not being asked is how did the increase in suicides and mental health issues increase after President Obama pushed to reduce them?

August 28, 2008
Spc. Chris Dana's story told to Obama by step brother
Stepbrother tells guardsman's story to Obama
Helena soldier took his own life after tour of duty in Iraq
By LAURA TODE
Of The Gazette Staff

Montana National Guard Spc. Chris Dana will never know the impact his life and ultimately his death may someday have on the lives of veterans nationwide.

Dana took his life in March 2007, less than two years after returning from a tour in Iraq. His family believes he was a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on by his combat experience.

Since Dana's death, his stepbrother Matt Kuntz has campaigned for more awareness of the costs of untreated post-traumatic stress syndrome in Iraq war veterans.

Wednesday, he was invited to meet with Sen. Barack Obama to share the message he's been spreading statewide for more than a year. At a quiet picnic table at Riverfront Park, Obama sat across from Kuntz, his wife, Sandy, and their infant daughter, Fiona.

The link to this story is long gone however the post is still up on Wounded Times. On August 13, 2008, Editor and Publisher had a question by Greg Mitchell, Why Isn't the Press on Suicide Watch? In 2007 I asked the same question with a long list of names attached.

Looking back, the truth is, while 2012 was the highest year for military suicides, the number of deployed troops was at the lowest during both wars.

Troops strength

But just looking at DOD numbers, we see only part of the story. To get a proper perspective, we have to take a look at the veterans these two wars created. This is as of 11/11/11

THOSE WHO HAVE SERVED

22,658,000

In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, 2,333,972 American military personnel had been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or both, as of Aug. 30,2011. Of that total, 1,353, 627 have since left the military and 711,986 have used VA health care between fiscal year 2002 and the third-quarter fiscal year 2011.

The VA's Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a non-profit whose mission is to improve the lives of veterans, points out that 38 per 100,000 of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans using VA health care committed suicide during latest data available. There is very little information about veterans not using VA health care. Compare that to 11.5 deaths per 100,000 for the general public.

The last Suicide Event Report from the Department of Defense was released in 2012 for 2011. In the report detailed information included branches as well as attempted suicides. As of January 2014, they have not released the report for 2012. We still do not know how many military personnel committed suicide in 2013 other than what the Army reported up to November.

For calendar year 2013, there have been 139 potential active duty suicides.

For calendar year 2013, there have been 139 potential not on active duty suicides (89 Army National Guard and 50 Army Reserve)

The exact same number. 139 Army and 139 Citizen soldiers.

In the same report, the DOD updated the numbers for Army suicides in 2012

Updated active duty suicide numbers for calendar year 2012: 185 (184 have been confirmed as suicides, and one remains under investigation).

They also updated the Army National Guards and Army Reservists

Updated not on active duty suicide numbers for calendar year 2012: 140 (93 Army National Guard and 47 Army Reserve): 140 have been confirmed as suicides and none remain under investigation.

2009 was the year they increased their efforts for addressing suicides and encouraging soldiers to seek help. Or at least that was what they claimed. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness feeding the term "resilient" has been behind the increase in suicides.

If you doubt this then all you have to do is take a look at Vietnam and see what the numbers were back then for the entire war.

Casualty Category for Vietnam War
Number of Records

ACCIDENT 9,107
DECLARED DEAD 1,201
DIED OF WOUNDS 5,299
HOMICIDE 236
ILLNESS 938
KILLED IN ACTION 40,934
PRESUMED DEAD (BODY REMAINS RECOVERED) 32
PRESUMED DEAD (BODY REMAINS NOT RECOVERED) 91
SELF-INFLICTED 382
Total Records 58,220

This has nothing to do with politics but everything to do with the lack of attention by the press on military suicides. They report on the headlines they want us to know but avoid asking any real questions. If you think things are as bad as they are going to get, they are going to get worse according to history. In October of 2007 there was this report 148,000 Vietnam Vets sought help in last 18 months and the number of Vietnam veterans committing suicide went up afterwards as well. The last deaths tied to the Vietnam War were in 1975 but as you can see, those numbers were not the end of the story. The end of the OEF and OIF wars have yet to be written but if we do nothing, the numbers will tell the story of how much we cared and what we did to change the outcome.

For starters, why have suicides gone up among the troops and veterans after President Obama pushed for changes? Why have they gone up after the DOD pushed "resilience" in Comprehensive Soldier Fitness? Why hasn't anyone been held accountable?

The story of the Fort Hood murder-suicide investigation deserves attention however the questions that should have been asked all these years have received no attention at all.

Veteran Suicides Apocalypse Now

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 14, 2015

The word Apocalypse has been flooding my brain lately when I read reports about suicides tied to the military. The rate of veterans committing suicide is double the civilian population with the majority of them being over 50. Then there is the other figure of young veterans committing suicide at triple the rate of their civilian peers.

An apocalypse (Ancient Greek: ἀποκάλυψις apocálypsis, from ἀπό and καλύπτω meaning 'un-covering'), translated literally from Greek, is a disclosure of knowledge, i.e., a lifting of the veil or revelation, although this sense did not enter English until the 14th century.  In religious contexts it is usually a disclosure of something hidden. In the Book of Revelation (Greek Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰωάννου, Apocalypsis Ioannou), the last book of the New Testament, the revelation which John receives is that of the ultimate victory of good over evil and the end of the present age, and that is the primary meaning of the term, one that dates to 1175. Today, it is commonly used in reference to any prophetic revelation or so-called End Time scenario, or to the end of the world in general.

There are reasons it has gotten this bad but it is almost as if it went from crisis to epidemic to Apocalypse unnoticed by the general public. The Apocalypse for veterans is now.

"In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action - what is often called ruthless - what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it." Willard, Apocalypse Now

One of the first posts out of over 23,000 of them, I wondered why the press wasn't reporting on the suicides. After all, you'd think they would matter enough to merit some kind of investigation. I was putting together a video on suicides and found over 400 of their stories way back in 2007. Greg Mitchell at least tried to.

Why Isn't the Press on a Suicide Watch?
You'd never know that at least 3% of all American deaths in Iraq are due to self-inflicted wounds. And that doesn't include the many vets who have killed themselves after returning home.
By Greg Mitchell
NEW YORK (August 13, 2007) -- Would it surprise you to learn that according to official Pentagon figures, at least 118 U.S. military personnel in Iraq have committed suicide since April 2003? That number does not include many unconfirmed reports, or those who served in the war and then killed themselves at home (a sizable, if uncharted, number).

While troops who have died in "hostile action" -- and those gravely injured and rehabbing at Walter Reed and other hospitals -- have gained much wider media attention in recent years, the suicides (about 3% of our overall Iraq death toll) remain in the shadows.

The heartache was just as real as when I was researching suicide among Vietnam veterans. It was like a blister swelling, bursting, healing and then surfacing all over again. It was understandable the reports showed between 150,000 and 200,000 Vietnam veterans had committed suicide considering nothing was really being done until they pushed for the research to be done. Chuck Dean played a huge part in investigating that under-reported casualty count of the Vietnam War.

The thing is, by the time the reports of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans came out, no one was looking back at what had been done, learned and then didn't know what was undone. That pissed me off. Too many people, including Chuck Dean, figured out exactly what worked and they started to do it way back in 1984. Point Man International Ministries was doing peer-support, veteran to veteran in Out Posts and family to family in Home Fronts. No huge donations or commercials whining for more money. They didn't need much money, and frankly, what little they needed, they took out of their own pockets because no one was lining up to write them checks to even cover time and travel.

It was as it is today, side by side peer support from one soul showing another how to make peace and heal so they can live better lives. Nothing fancy but then again, veterans don't need anything fancy or expensive. They just need what works.

Anyway, so I was reading and remembering all the reports, all the cries for help, all the promises made to families and watching more and more suicides each year to the point where I could no longer assure families things were changing for the better. Can you imagine how hard it is to talk to a veteran willing to do whatever he had to do so that he could heal and help other veterans knowing what he'd be up against?

It wasn't a matter of just helping him find peace with what war put him through but I had to help him find peace to live with what the DOD did to him while telling the American people what they were doing for the troops. I figured sooner or later someone would notice that it was all pure bullshit.

They didn't. The military kept telling us that things would change and they were addressing suicides.

Congress did a great performance acting like they understood it as they had family after family telling their stories as the cameras rolled and reporters caught every tear filled testimony. They made their speeches and pushed to have the bills with their names on them, then patted themselves on the back as if they did something worthy of what those families told them.

They didn't.

The DOD came out with Battlemind in 2006 but even though suicides went up, they pushed it.

‘Battlemind’ Prepares Soldiers for Combat, Returning Home
By Susan Huseman
Special to American Forces Press Service
STUTTGART, Germany, Jan. 3, 2008 – Every soldier headed to Iraq and Afghanistan receives “Battlemind” training designed to help them deal with combat experiences, but few know the science behind the program.

Consequently, Dr. Amy Adler, a senior research psychologist with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research’s U.S. Army Medical Research Unit Europe, in Heidelberg, Germany, visited Patch Barracks here, breaking down the program, which is a system of support and intervention.

The Battlemind system includes separate pre-deployment training modules for soldiers, unit leaders, health care providers and spouses. Psychological debriefings are given in theater and upon redeployment. There are also a post-deployment module for spouses and several post-deployment modules for soldiers.

Not every soldier who deploys is at risk for mental health problems; the main risk factor is the level of combat experienced, Adler explained to her audience of medical, mental health and family support professionals.

Army studies show the greater the combat exposure a soldier encounters, the greater the risk for mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anger and relationship problems. When soldiers first return home, they may not notice any problems; sometimes it takes a few months for problems to develop.

They pushed Comprehensive Soldier Fitness after that and by 2009 the DOD announced this.

Army Suicide Rate Increases Five Straight Years
By Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Carden
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 2009 – The rate of soldier suicides this year exceeded the 2008 total with 147 reports through November, marking the fifth consecutive year the service’s suicide rate has increased. In November, 12 potential suicides were reported among the active-duty Army, all of which still are under investigation. In addition, two potential suicides were reported for November among reserve-component soldiers not serving on active duty. For October, three of the 16 active-duty suicides reported now are confirmed, according to a statement released by the Army yesterday.

For 2009, 45 reports of possible active-duty suicides remain unconfirmed, along with 30 of the 71 reported suicides in the reserve components, the statement said.

The Army is working to combat its rising suicide rate through the recently launched Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, the Suicide Prevention Task Force and its five-year research partnership with the National Institute of Mental Health.

Hmm, did they ever have to explain any of this? Did congress?

Nope the years went by and more and more of the same went on and on.

General Raymond Odierno told the Huffington Post exactly what he thought during Suicide Prevention Month in September of 2013.

"First, inherently what we do is stressful. Why do I think some people are able to deal with stress differently than others? There are a lot of different factors. Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations."

Over the years I've talked to more veterans and heard too many stories to ever believe the General in charge would still be talking like this, but he did. Repulsive as that statement was, it turned out that he also had trouble with families.

"But it also has to do with where you come from. I came from a loving family, one who gave lots of positive reinforcement, who built up psychologically who I was, who I am, what I might want to do. It built confidence in myself, and I believe that enables you to better deal with stress. It enables you to cope more easily than maybe some other people."

The trouble is, this is what I remember. I remember parents like Jason Scheuerman had.

"What the soldier's father, Chris, would learn about his son's final days would lead the retired Special Forces commando, who teaches at Fort Bragg, to take on the very institution he's spent his life serving — and ultimately prompt an investigation by the Army Inspector General's office."

"For Jason Scheuerman, death came on July 30, 2005, around 5:30 p.m., about 45 minutes after his first sergeant told the teary-eyed private that if he was intentionally misbehaving so he could leave the Army, he would go to jail where he would be abused."

He is not alone. At least 152 U.S. troops have taken their own lives in Iraq and Afghanistan since the two wars started, contributing to the Army's highest suicide rate in 26 years of keeping track. For the grieving parents, the answers don't come easily or quickly.

Army Suicides Highest in 26 Years

May 4, 2007
Jan Kemp, a VA associate director for education who works on mental health, has estimated there are up to 1,000 suicides a year among veterans within the VA system, and as many as 5,000 a year among all living veterans.

August 15, 2007
The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest since the 102 suicides in 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War.

Then as bad as all that was the belief shared by the General was apparently spread throughout the military as we discovered with the reporting done on Warrior Transition Units and how they treated soldiers being "helped" with PTSD. It was a joint investigation by the Dallas Morning News and NBC called Injured Heroes Broken Promises which you should really read if you want to know why we're seeing more and more surviving combat but not surviving when the DOD no longer has to count them.

We are either determined to repeat history or pretend just enough to let us go to sleep at night feeling as if we did something today. The question is, how does it feel to read another article about another veteran repeating the history we left for them?

Military Suicide Conversation Between Dick and Frank

UPDATE

Plan for Military Oath Against Suicide Could Backfire, Experts Say

Love saying I told you so, but hate the results when people with the power to change the outcome didn't do anything about it.

Military Suicide Conversation Between Dick and Frank

Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 25, 2017



Oath of Exit has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard in a long time, and trust me, I've heard a lot of them. The thing that keeps getting missed is that it isn't as if any of this is new. After all, warnings came out back in 2009, but some just wouldn't think of the reasons behind it.

JUL 14 2017 Mast’s Bill to Combat Veteran Suicide Passes House
Oath of Exit Included in National Defense Authorization Act
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Congressman Brian Mast’s (FL-18) “Oath of Exit” passed the U.S. House of Representatives today as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill creates a voluntary separation oath for members of the Armed Forces aimed at reducing veteran suicide. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of 20 veterans commit suicide every day and a veteran’s risk of suicide is 21% higher compared to an adult who has not served in the Armed Forces.
“The idea for this bill came from friends of mine who have struggled with suicidal thoughts since leaving the military and great organizations like Spartan Pledge that are working to fight the veteran suicide epidemic. Throughout our lives, the most important commitments we make are spoken—whether its an oath upon joining the military, vows at a wedding or saying the pledge of allegiance,” Rep. Mast said. “Integrity is more than just a word to service members, so I know if we say we’ll look out for each other and ourselves, we’ll do it. This Oath of Exit is a strong step forward in doing anything and everything we can to prevent even one more veteran from harming themselves.”
The text of the Oath is below:
“I, ________, recognizing that my oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, has involved me and my fellow members in experiences that few persons, other than our peers, can understand, do solemnly swear (or affirm) to continue to be the keeper of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms and protector of the United States and the Constitution; to preserve the values I have learned; to maintain my body and my mind; and to not bring harm to myself without speaking to my fellow veterans first. I take this oath freely and without purpose of evasion, so help me God.”

How about Officers and Politicians take a new oath of obligation? You know, the one they take when they become officers and politicians and promise to care for all they are put in charge of. Oh wait, that's right, they really don't have one. 

Maybe they think they have that covered by the assumption they would live up to the other stuff that comes with their jobs?

Here is the type of conversation that is being played out all across the country. It is between leaders having enough thought for their troops to actually want to do something that will save lives, and those willing to do the same thing or pull stunts like doing pushups. 

DICK

Well, pushups are attention getters and the videos are shared all over the internet.

FRANK 

But we use pushups for exercise and punishment. How is that supposed to help keep them alive?

DICK

It lets them know they are committing suicide. 

FRANK

They already know that. They already know how to die but they don't know how to find hope to stay alive long enough to heal.

DICK

Well if they don't know that now after over a decade of training them to stop killing themselves, it isn't our fault they still do it. Plus most of the troops killing themselves never deployed.

FRANK

Over a decade of training but not good enough to prevent non-deployed from killing themselves but we push it and then expect it to work on troops deployed 4, 5, 6, 7 or more times?

DICK

Well the numbers have been holding steady, so I'm good with that.

FRANK

But did we spend billions to hold the numbers steady, especially when the number of enlisted went down? Why bother if this is acceptable?

DICK

It isn't our fault if they don't get the message. Besides, more of them are committing suicide after they leave the military too. Is that supposed to be our fault too?

FRANK

So you really expect that 10 days of training for something that was never even proven to work was worthy of you putting the lives of your troops in their hands?

DICK

Well it was good enough all this time. 

What is CSF? WHAT IS COMPREHENSIVE SOLDIER FITNESS? The program, based on 30-plus years of scientific study and results, uses individual assessments, tailored virtual training, classroom training and embedded resilience experts to provide the critical skills our Soldiers, Family members and Army Civilians need. 

FRANK 

Good enough for who? It sure wasn't the ones we let down. But, what about this from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine?
"Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has implemented several population-based initiatives to enhance psychological resilience and prevent psychological morbidity in troops. The largest of these initiatives is the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program, which has been disseminated to more than 1 million soldiers. However, to date, CSF has not been independently and objectively reviewed, and the degree to which it successfully promotes adaptive outcomes and prevents the development of deployment-related mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is uncertain. This paper critically evaluates the theoretic foundation for and evidence supporting the use of CSF."

DICK

Hey, that's above my pay grade. If they don't train right, it isn't my fault.

FRANK

Then who will stand up and take responsibility for the lives we lost with all we said we did for them instead of what we actually did to them?

So isn't it time you stopped being a Dick and started to be more like, well, Frank? 

Will the military ever wise up on military suicides?

General Campbell said he thinks Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is a good thing but the evidence says he has it wrong. This article points out the fact that it has not worked but when you consider they started this approach over 7 years ago, they should have no excuse to continue it. The simple truth is, they only know what they are told, so if they told it works, they believe it. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, very little else will.

Suicide Prevention 365-Day Focus, says Vice
Fort Stewart Patch
Posted by Kelly (Editor)
September 03, 2013

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 3, 2013) -- September is suicide awareness month and while the Army will highlight suicide prevention this month, the service's vice chief said the effort is year-round.

"This is something we can't just look at in one month," said Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell. "It has to be a 365-day mission to make sure we can provide our Soldiers with the tools they need to deal with the stressors of everyday life, and help them understand that seeking help is a sign of strength not weakness."

Comparing the March through July 2013 time period to the March through July 2012 time period, Army suicides have gone down slightly -- by about 17. But if January and February are included in those numbers, the Army has so far had the same number of suicides this year as it had last year during the same period: 184. In 2012, the Army had a total of 325 suicides.

One part of the Army's Ready and Resilient Campaign the vice chief considers critical is the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness Program, responsible for helping Soldiers learn resilience by either becoming master resilience trainers, or by learning resilience at the unit level through Soldiers who have been through the master resilience trainer, or MRT, course.

"I can't stress enough the resiliency piece of it, and this CSF2, tied into MRT," Campbell said. "As I went out and traveled and talked to folks that had gone through the master resilience training ... everybody I've talked to that has been through the MRT has said it has changed their lives and they have been able to impact other Soldiers lives. That's really key."
read more here

When will the military stop pretending CSF is working?

When will the military stop pretending CSF is working?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 16, 2014

Every time I hear a claim like this "Resilient leaders yield resilient soldiers" I want to scream "Where is the proof?"

How many years have to go on before they actually figure out this does not work?

Here are the basic facts.

The Department of Defense Suicide Event Report for 2012 was not released. This is 2014. 2012 was the highest year for military suicides. It was also during a time when there were less serving in the military.

The total for 2013 has not been released yet. The last report from the DOD Army Suicide Information, which includes Army, Army National Guards and Army Reserves, (does not include the other branches) and did not include December numbers.

As of November the total for Army Suicides was 139. The total for all of 2012 was 185.

Army National Guards suicides for 2013 in the same report were 89. For all of 2012 it was 93.

Army Reserves for 2013 50. For all of 2012 47.

The military as a whole have downsized. In other words, less serving in the military topped off with less deployed into Afghanistan, should have given them a clue that this program they hatch in 2009 failed.

This is the claim made about CSF

Master Resiliency Training, a part of Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness, focuses on five areas of strength: physical, spiritual, social, family and emotional. The resiliency program teaches soldiers the skills needed to cope with adversity, adapt to change, and recover from emotionally challenging life events.

If it worked we would have seen a lot less suicides. We would not have seen a 44% increase in young veterans committing suicide.

Suicides Among Young Male Vets Jumped 44 Percent From 2009-2011

That was the headline from NewsMax

New data from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows the number of young male vets committing suicide jumped 44 percent from 2009 to 2011, or roughly two young men a day, reports say.

The suicide rate for all veterans remained mostly unchanged over the same period; the department estimates some 22 veterans a day take their own life, Stars and Stripes reported Thursday.

Top all that off with the fact that even I saw this coming back in 2009 and know that this should not have come as any kind of shock to the people in charge.

May 29, 2009
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness will make it worse

General Casey, now hear this, you cannot, repeat, cannot train your brain to prevent PTSD and until you understand this "Because it is scientifically proven, you can build resilience." does not equal the cause of PTSD, you will keep making it worse! Did the rise in suicides and attempted suicides offer you no clue that Battlemind didn't work? Apparently something told you it didn't or you'd still be pushing this. When you have a program in place to "train them to be resilient" beginning with telling them if they do not, it's their fault, what the hell did you and the other brass expect? Did you think they would listen to the rest of what the Battlemind program had to say to them? Are you out of your mind?

If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

Military Uses Unproven Mental Health Programs

There are things veterans talk about and then there are things the military makes claims about. Finally the truth is coming out, or at least they want you to think this is all some kind of big shocker. The truth is, we knew what they were not telling everyone else!

Was Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Designed to Fail?

Military Uses Unproven Mental Health Programs, Report Finds
NBC News
BY MAGGIE FOX

Veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars, as well as other service members and their families, have high rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders, yet the U.S. military isn’t using tested screening methods to help prevent them, a team of experts said Thursday.

And despite extensive research, the panel of experts couldn’t find any proven Department of Defense programs to prevent domestic abuse. Programs to battle sexual assault — another documented problem — aren’t being assessed to see if they actually work, the Institute of Medicine panel reported.

“A fundamental finding of the committee is that, with some notable exceptions, few of DOD’s prevention interventions are theory- or evidence-based,” wrote Kenneth E. Warner, a public health expert at the University of Michigan who headed the panel.

One obvious example of an unproven and controversial approach is the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program, which includes a mandatory online training program developed with the American Psychological Association, the report finds.
read more here

Congress funded deadly PTSD program

Blame Congress for Deaths at Pathway House

Combat PTSD Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

March 10, 2018

Last night, the trigger was pulled at Pathway House. Three women, who dedicated their lives to help veterans recover from PTSD, were dead. A veteran, who dedicated part of his life to the Army, is dead and will be remembered as a murderer. 

Afghanistan veteran Albert Wong, will not be remembered for his service. He will not be remembered for seeking help for PTSD. No one will remember that he had not just been trained to use weapons, he was also trained, in what he was told, would make him "resilient" against what combat could do to him. How do I know? Because every member of the military has been told the same thing.

May 29, 2009 post was titled "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness will make it worse" along with this predication,

"If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them."

In this case, as with most of the deadly outcomes, I'm sick to my stomach knowing I was right. All the people in charge of this clusterfuck have been wrong all along.

By 2012 I knew I had to figure out why this was still going on. Why was it still being funded? Why was it being pushed on every member of the military? 

I tracked down reports on who was benefitting from it and laid it all out in The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War and the money was in the billions.

This so-called "resilience" training was not a proven program before the military bought it. It was a research project created to try to figure out how to give school aged children a better sense of self-worth. Yes, you read that right!

By 2013 RAND Corp, along with a lot of others, figured out that it was not working and offered warnings of their own.

In 2014 NBC News reported this 

Military Uses Unproven Mental Health Programs, Report FindsNBC NewsBY MAGGIE FOX
Veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars, as well as other service members and their families, have high rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders, yet the U.S. military isn’t using tested screening methods to help prevent them, a team of experts said Thursday. 

And despite extensive research, the panel of experts couldn’t find any proven Department of Defense programs to prevent domestic abuse. Programs to battle sexual assault — another documented problem — aren’t being assessed to see if they actually work, the Institute of Medicine panel reported. 

“A fundamental finding of the committee is that, with some notable exceptions, few of DOD’s prevention interventions are theory- or evidence-based,” wrote Kenneth E. Warner, a public health expert at the University of Michigan who headed the panel. 

One obvious example of an unproven and controversial approach is the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program, which includes a mandatory online training program developed with the American Psychological Association, the report finds.

Last night, I was trying to get updates on the Pathway House shooting, but the 24-7 national news stations were too busy on political topics. It seems they have also been too busy reporting on politicians than doing any investigations into the outcomes of what they do.

Three women are dead, a veteran survived risking his life in Afghanistan, but ended up committing suicide after killing the women who tried to help him. 

Where are the conspiracy researchers on this? Where are the investigative reporters on this? Where are the Congressional hearings on this? What excuses do the Joint Chiefs offer when military suicides are still averaging 500 a year?

Is anyone being held accountable for any of this? 

How many soldiers have to die before the Army stops pushing them toward suicide?

How many soldiers have to die before the Army stops pushing them toward suicide?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 14, 2013

The Army isn't the only guilty branch but since they have the most suicides and attempted suicides, you'd think they'd know better but it turns out while they call it prevention, it actually has turned out to do more harm than good.

"Most people you talk to, who have been through it, will say it's a game changer," said Gen. John Campbell, the Army vice chief of staff.

Is he out of his mind? I suppose it all depends on who the people are he is talking to because the veterans and their families I talk to have a whole different opinion of this. It is a load of crap! Plain and simple. Telling them they can train to be resilient is one thing but while the DOD seems to think it is good, what the troops hear is that if they end up with PTSD, they are weak minded.

I have had to talk them off the ledge after failed suicide attempts and one I finally get this brainwashing out of their heads, they are pissed off the military put them through needless hell. If the evidence of higher suicides after this program started isn't enough to convince them pulling this stunt on the troops was a bad idea, nothing will. Evidently they think a research project for school aged kids was enough to push it on the troops all these years and watch them die. Hell, considering General Odierno blamed soldiers and families for suicides the Army must really feel that way or they would have stopped this a long time ago.

Army expanding mental health program despite research
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
USA TODAY
Gregg Zoroya
October 7, 2013

The Army is expanding a $50-million-per-year program created in 2009 to help soldiers withstand mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder despite research by its own scientists showing it does nothing to reduce PTSD.

Study authors said the training created small, indirect benefits but not affect PTSD rates. Their report was posted online earlier this year and scientists recently discussed their findings with USA TODAY.

"I wish this was the magic bullet," said lead author Peter Harms, an assistant professor of management at the University of Nebraska. "I wish we found huge findings. I think we found reasonable things."

About 900,000 soldiers receive instruction each year in the program, originally called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness or CSF. It is being expanded this year under the name Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness and will cost $75 million annually by 2019.
read more here

Zoroya did a good job on this but if you read Wounded Times then you already know he is only closer than other reporters but far off the amount of money really paid for this BS.

If you don't read Wounded Times read about Suicides After War and discover exactly what was known and how much they spent for this no matter how many had to die to prove them wrong!

Open Letter to Sen. Joe Donnelly to Open Your Eyes

UPDATE
Considering the DOD released their suicide numbers for the second quarter it pretty much proves the point DoD releases 2nd quarter suicide figures on Army Times

Suicides among active-duty service members rose by 20 percent in the second quarter of this year to 71, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Defense Department.

The Marine Corps had the highest percentage increase, 12 suicides, up from three the previous quarter.

The Army had 28 active-duty suicides, the Air Force, 17, and the Navy, 14, according to the report.

Over the first six months of 2015, 130 active-duty troops took their own lives, along with 89 reserve members and 56 National Guardsmen. In the second quarter, the reserve component experienced 47 suicides and the National Guard, 27.

Trained to Fight, Trained to Suffer in Silence
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 1, 2015

Suicide Prevention month is over and evidently did little good to prevent them.

I just read the headline with Donnelly Says Military Still Has Work To Do To Help Prevent Suicide and after reading about your efforts, I think you may really want to do something to save lives. Your answer is right here.

“You have to be able to ask for help – and it’s okay to ask for help," Frost said. "And that stigma that existed, really a lot in what is that Army tough, Army strong, we’re soldiers, we’re hooah…that has really started to melt away.”

I have over 30 years crammed in my brain but since we're running out of time, and frankly, I ran out of patience long ago, I will be blunt but I mean you no disrespect. I am just tied of all of this getting worse when the reason behind it was predicted back in 2009.

If you promote this (Comprehensive Solider Fitness) program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

Overwhelmed VA didn't happen overnight but then again if you fail to factor in the obvious crush of younger veterans against the already long line at the VA, this was a predictable catastrophe, or it should have been.

Wounded Times has documented all the ups and downs members of Congress have let happen. While the press seems to forget, veterans remember, especially since it is their lives we're talking about. Somehow members of Congress have managed to get away with just blaming the person in the Chair of the VA even though you've all held hearings and promised changes only to turn around every time the press reports on another crisis and veterans get more promises.

Here's a blast from the past with Senator Bernie Sanders as he and Senator Daniel Akaka were calling for more funding for the PTSD Center Funding. It came out in 2008, a year after Congress had the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill passed and signed into law in 2007.

In recent years, the Center for PTSD has been called on to dramatically expand its mission and conduct research on a larger scale. At the same time, an increasing number of servicemembers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD. However, the Center's budget has increased by less than 10 percent in the past half-decade. Due to limited funding, the Center's capacity to continue its work is severely restricted, and staff levels have been reduced since 1999.

While all of you were blaming Shinseki, veterans noticed this going on,

In a departure from the rhetoric Shinseki has used before Congress, Shinseki said at the American Legion's National Convention that he's not afraid of the claims backlog that has grown to about 600,000 -- a sore point when Senators and Congressmen question him on Capitol Hill. The VA secretary said he doesn't regret opening the opportunity to issue disability claims to nearly a million veterans of wars going back more than 60 years. He only wishes the decision had been made sooner to give the VA a head start.

We also remember this, Obama to order VA to add staff, see suicidal vets within 24 hours from Stars and Stripes reporter Megan McCloskey on August 30, 2012

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will sign an executive order Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand mental health services and suicide prevention efforts. The president will make the announcement in a speech to troops at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he’ll also hold a roundtable with soldiers and their families. Much of what's outlined in the executive order are initiatives that were previously announced earlier this summer by the VA. Obama is instructing the VA to ensure that any veteran with suicidal thoughts is seen by a mental health professional within 24 hours -- a standard already set for the VA, but which the department often fails to meet. The VA has until June 2013 to figure out how to fix that issue with pay, loan repayment, scholarships and partnerships with community-based providers and training programs. The goal, announced by the VA in June, is to hire 1,900 mental health staffers.

The VA is also being told to increase the veteran crisis hotline capacity by 50 percent by the end of year and to develop a national 12-month suicide prevention campaign that would help connect veterans to mental health services.

The president ordered the Pentagon to review and rank its mental health and substance abuse prevention programs by quality and effectiveness. “By the end of Fiscal Year 2014, existing program resources shall be realigned to ensure that highly ranked programs are implemented across all of the military services and less effective programs are replaced,” the order states. That forces the Pentagon to take ownership of the programs military-wide instead of allowing each service to decide on its own what programs to use. Reviewing the vast and disparate programs will be a big task and could lead to kickback from the services, which are protective of their programs.

In addition, the president is convening a Military and Veterans Mental Health Interagency Task Force to present him with recommendations in 180 days on how to improve treatment services.

We also knew that the Pentagon hadn't even spent the money they were already given to prevent suicides and that came out during a U.S. House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing a month after President Obama made his announcement.

In July, the McDermott-Boswell amendment that would increase critical funding for suicide prevention for active duty military by $10 million passed with strong support in the House Defense Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2013.

“The Pentagon hasn’t spent the money that it has for suicide prevention for this year – and that money wasn’t nearly enough money to reach all the soldiers who need help. Now we are hearing about bureaucratic technicalities at the Pentagon that are preventing them from acting. This is unconscionable,” said Congressman McDermott. “The Pentagon is funded to help soldiers and needs to do much more on the epidemic of suicides. As we commemorate National Suicide Prevention Week, we are calling on the Pentagon to move much faster.”

So we've been watching and waiting for our elected officials to wake up and change what has been proven to be wrong. We keep reading about this bill and that bill while veterans pay the price for their service as they get speeches. Enough it enough! Before you try another attempt at writing yet one more bill, ask yourself "Why it has gotten worse as Congress has done more than ever before?" and then toss in the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of charities all over the country collecting billions a year after veterans did everything possible to make it home from war alive but cannot survive right here at home.

Want to remove the stigma of PTSD? Then get to the original problem. Some yahoo decided a research project designed to give school aged children a better sense of self worth would be just fine and dandy for service members. That is what Comprehensive Soldier Fitness was. Take and look at what RAND Corp had to say about this and then hold folks accountable for doing it. Dark Side of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

There seems to be reluctance and inconsistency among the CSF promoters in acknowledging that CSF is "research" and therefore should entail certain protections routinely granted to those who participate in research studies. Seligman explained to the APA's Monitor on Psychology (link is external), "This is the largest study - 1.1 million soldiers - psychology has ever been involved in" (a "study" is a common synonym for "research project"). But when asked during an NPR interview (link is external) whether CSF would be "the largest-ever experiment," Brig. Gen. Cornum, who oversees the program, responded, "Well, we're not describing it as an experiment. We're describing it as training." Despite the fact that CSF is incontrovertibly a research study, standard and important questions about experimental interventions like CSF are neither asked nor answered in the special issue. This neglect is all the more troubling given that the program is so massive and expensive, and the stakes are so high.

We also know this,

The Defense Department runs 900 suicide prevention programs, yet the number of military suicides has more than doubled since 2001, the head of the Pentagon’s suicide prevention office told lawmakers Thursday.

Jacqueline Garrick, acting director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon has identified 291 suicides in fiscal 2012 with investigations into another 59 pending. This is up from 160 in 2001. She said the suicide rate for 2012 is expected to increase once death investigations have been completed and a final manner of death determination is issued.

When suicides went up instead of down, it would have been helpful if you guys started to ask why what you already failed before you just did more of it.

The worst thing is none of you seemed to notice that for veterans in general, they are double the civilian population rate, which is really bad, but when they looked at the percentages for younger veterans, the ones who got that "training" their rate was triple their peer rate.

The suicide rate among young male veterans continues to soar: ex-servicemen 24 and younger are now three times more likely than civilian males to take their lives, according to a federal study released Friday. Former troops in that high-risk age group — who were also enrolled for care at veterans' hospitals — posted a suicide rate of 79.1 per 100,000 during 2011, the latest data available. In contrast, the annual suicide rate for all American males has recently averaged about 25 per 100,000, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports. During 2009, the suicide rate for veterans 24 and younger was 46.1 per 100,000 — meaning the deadly pace increased by 79 percent during that two-year span.

Seems like one of your staffers should have paid attention to all of this since we did.

Anyone can get PTSD after trauma, but not everyone went into traumatic events willingly. They put their lives on the line for each other but couldn't talk to each other about needing help to heal from it. That is the real problem behind all of it. They were trained that way.