N.J. flags to fly at half-staff to honor those killed in Fort Hood shooting

AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
Soldiers from Fort Hood fold an American flag inside Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas today in preparation for President Obama's planned visit on Tuesday. Flags will fly at half-staff in New Jersey on Tuesday.

N.J. flags to fly at half-staff to honor those killed in Fort Hood shooting
By The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk
November 09, 2009, 3:38PM
TRENTON — Flags in New Jersey will fly at half-staff on Tuesday to honor those killed in last week's shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.

Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey signed an executive order today directing that United States and New Jersey flags be lowered in recognition of the lives lost.

Thirteen people were killed and 29 wounded, including Alan Carroll, a 20-year-old soldier from Bridgewater, in the shooting on Thursday.

Carroll, who was shot in the bicep, tricep and side during the rampage, was reported to be making a steady recovery.
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http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/nj_flags_to_fly_at_half-staff.html

Army Therapists Stretched Too Thin? Obviously!

They say they want to reduce the stigma of PTSD but they won't say they will change the way they hire and train people to treat PTSD the way the rest of the country is, by heading most of it off as soon as possible. They tell you that you have to be a certain age and have to enlist with two military operations going on, eliminating probably thousands of experts on PTSD. Even becoming a chaplain is close to impossible when they will not open doors to chaplains who are good enough for police and firefighters, but just not good enough to help fill the gaps to save the lives of the troops while they finally get up to speed on all of this. So much for planing. Reducing the stigma would have happened if they had put some of their focus on this a long time ago and removed any roadblocks standing in the way of them getting the care they needed as soon as they needed it.

Army Therapists Stretched Too Thin?
Military Hopes to Take Away Stigma of Seeking Therapy
By Don Teague


(CBS) Their mission was to help soldiers deal with the stress of war on the battlefield. Instead, they were attacked at home. Three Army therapists were killed, and six other members of a combat stress control team were wounded in last week's rampage on fort hood.

They were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. The team's critical mission is on hold for now.

"We're taking a hard look and making sure they have every thing they need and again they may be delayed in regard to additional personnel being brought in," said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone.

Special Section: Tragedy at Fort Hood

Eight years of war has taken its toll across the military. Some 300,000 service members, almost one out of every five who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, report symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Corporal Nathan Hewitt, an Iraq war veteran who was wounded in last week's attack, says his commanders encourage returning veterans to get help.

"They tell us soldiers all the time you know if you have problems like this, go see the psychiatrist, or go get some mental health," he said.

But experts say finding enough qualified counselors is a challenge. "It's the face to face counseling that's so important for preventing and treating PTSD," said former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. S. Ward Casscells.

The Army has just over 400 psychiatrists to treat nearly 550,000 active duty soldiers.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/09/eveningnews/main5593039.shtml

Did the military's own negligence contribute to the slayings?

While I don't think it was all the fault of the military, it is easy to say that what they did not do added to all of this. Just think about knowing repeat deployments incresed the risk of PTSD but no one seemed to be bothered by this fact at all even though this report came from the Army. Think of the lack of programs proven to work instead of as one provider told me, "better than nothing" when it came to addressing the never ending stress on these men and women. Then remember how they saw over 22,000 needing mental health care, asking for it, but being kicked out of the military with dishonorable discharges, leaving them unable to get any help at all or any benefits. If you think that did not make things worse for the attitude of the troops, you may be of like mind with military leaders and part of the problem as well.

The Fort Carson Murder Spree
Soldiers returning from Iraq have been charged in at least 11 murders at America's third-largest Army base. Did the military's own negligence contribute to the slayings?
L. CHRISTOPHER SMITH
Posted Nov 06, 2009 9:58 AM

It was just after closing time on Saturday night when the four soldiers staggered out of the Rum Bay nightclub ("Southern Colorado's largest supply of rum!"), piled into a gray Audi A4 and lit a blunt. Since they had returned from fighting in Iraq, where they had seen some of the bloodiest action of the war, nights like this had become common. There are more than 50 bars in downtown Colorado Springs, and on some nights thousands of people, many of them troops from nearby Fort Carson, pour out onto the streets after last call, looking for trouble. Rum Bay was one of the worst dives in town: Infamous for brawls involving drunken soldiers, locals called it "Fight Club." That night, the bar offered a special dispensed by shooter girls in denim cutoffs, who carried trays filled with test tubes of vodka mixed with apple schnapps. "We drank an ungodly amount," one of the men, Kenneth Eastridge, later recalled. "Like, hundreds of shots."

Eastridge and the others were members of the same Army unit, and they had all served together in Baghdad during the most volatile phase of the war. A 24-year-old specialist known as a "crazy bastard with no remorse," Eastridge had been court-martialed for stockpiling 463 pills of Valium in his barracks. Two of his buddies from Charlie Company carried equally sketchy reputations: Bruce Bastien, a 21-year-old medic who had been arrested for beating his wife while on leave, and Louis Bressler, a 24-year-old private who "started acting like King Kong," in the words of a fellow soldier, after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Tucked beneath the driver's seat of the Audi was a .38 revolver registered to Bressler's wife.
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30794989/the_fort_carson_murder_spree/

Scanning invisible damage of PTSD, brain blasts

Whenever you hear anyone complain about money being spent taking care of our veterans, remind them of something. Anything done for them is done for the benefit of the rest of us as well.

What scientist study, really study with new technology not available when PTSD research first began, will end up helping all civilians in their own lives.

If you doubt this then think about what happens when traumatic events strike. Crisis teams arrive to be able to address these horrific events right after they happen so that no one has to walk away with no one to talk to. We have to face the fact that trauma survivors will return to family and friends with absolutely no understanding of this and unable to help. Worse, they may make things worse because of what they do not know. Trauma is abnormal but their reactions to it is what normal humans do.

The only objection we should have when it comes to doing this type of research is when they repeat studies they've already done over the years. This type of study is new and this technology is vital to addressing the "realness" of PTSD and TBI.

Scanning invisible damage of PTSD, brain blasts
By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP) – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON — Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries — signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It's work that one day may allow far easier diagnosis for patients — civilian or military — who today struggle to get help for these largely invisible disorders. For now it brings a powerful message: Problems too often shrugged off as "just in your head" in fact do have physical signs, now that scientists are learning where and how to look for them.

"There's something different in your brain," explains Dr. Jasmeet Pannu Hayes of Boston University, who is helping to lead that research at the Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. "Just putting a real physical marker there, saying that this is a real thing," encourages more people to seek care.

Up to one in five U.S. veterans from the long-running combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is thought to have symptoms of PTSD. An equal number are believed to have suffered traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs — most that don't involve open wounds but hidden damage caused by explosion's pressure wave.

Many of those TBIs are considered similar to a concussion, but because symptoms may not be apparent immediately, many soldiers are exposed multiple times, despite evidence from the sports world that damage can add up, especially if there's little time between assaults.

"My brain has been rattled," is how a recently retired Marine whom Hayes identifies only as Sgt. N described the 50 to 60 explosions he estimates he felt while part of an ordnance disposal unit.

Hayes studied the man in a new way, tracking how water flows through tiny, celery stalk-like nerve fibers in his brain — and found otherwise undetectable evidence that those fibers were damaged in a brain region that explained his memory problems and confusion.

Her lab performed MRI scans while patients either tried to suppress their negative memories, or followed PTSD therapy and changed how they thought about their trauma. That fear-processing region quickly cooled down when people followed the PTSD therapy.

It's work that has implications far beyond the military: About a quarter of a million Americans will develop PTSD at some point in their lives. Anyone can develop it after a terrifying experience, from a car accident or hurricane to rape or child abuse.

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Scanning invisible damage of PTSD, brain blasts

Reservist Arkansas Army National Guard Capt. John Vanlandingham Earns Silver Star in Iraqi Save

Reservist Earns Silver Star in Iraqi Save
November 06, 2009
Stephens Mediaby Lewis Delavan
Bullets, grenades, shrapnel and smoke seared the desert. Danger lurked where reed-lined ditches hid ambushers on the narrow, isolated dirt road.

"You couldn't see anything from the dust and the smoke as we moved through the explosive area," Capt. John Vanlandingham recalls. "I saw a black object coming through the air over the reeds. It landed about five feet from me in a tire rut. Luckily, it rolled away. I dove down by a wounded soldier and the grenade blew."

It was Nov. 14, 2004, and the insurgency was rocking the Sunni Triangle. Leader of a 10-vehicle convoy that came under attack, the 37-year-old Arkansas Army National Guard captain from tiny New Blaine, 97 miles northwest of Little Rock, refused to leave behind the Iraqis he had trained to become guardsmen.

Twenty miles short of safety at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) ripped motors, trucks and human bodies during the enemy attack.

One explosion pitched 25 Iraqis from an unarmed troop carrier into a ditch. Three dead and others wounded. None, however, would be left behind.

Smoke hid the carnage. Some 200 yards toward safety, Vanlandingham realized one Iraqi vehicle was missing. He told his sergeant to reverse the Humvee and ordered a Mark-19 grenade launcher to cover one roadside, two 50-caliber machine guns to cover the other.

Vanlandingham then ran into the kill zone.
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Reservist Earns Silver Star in Iraqi Save