Veterans’ transition not always smooth
By Anna Archibald
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Underneath his blankets, a cold sweat interrupts his sleep. That single, life-altering day two years ago still haunts his dreams — well, nightmares.
The Marine unit was on a routine mission in Fallujah, Iraq, at 2 a.m. Everything seemed normal. Matt Stroh was on top of the Humvee keeping a lookout with his M240G machine gun, which was attached to the top of the vehicle. He sat down. Not a second later, he heard a loud bang, followed by a bright flash of light. Stroh’s head slammed against the side of the vehicle. His body twisted and he landed in pain. They’d been hit.
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Veterans transition not always smooth
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
N.C. Marine dies in argument over Texas game
SPORTS DIGEST
N.C. Marine dies in argument over Texas game
COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
North Carolina Marine dies in argument over Big 12 title game
Police in North Carolina are saying a Marine was accidentally shot to death when he got into an argument with a friend over the Texas-Nebraska Big 12 title game.
Police say 21-year-old Johnathan Clinton Rodriguez was shot after banter escalated into a scuffle with a fellow Marine, Lionel Loya, 23, at a home. Loya had a gun that went off during the struggle. Loya has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.
N C Marine dies in argument over Texas game
N.C. Marine dies in argument over Texas game
COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
North Carolina Marine dies in argument over Big 12 title game
Police in North Carolina are saying a Marine was accidentally shot to death when he got into an argument with a friend over the Texas-Nebraska Big 12 title game.
Police say 21-year-old Johnathan Clinton Rodriguez was shot after banter escalated into a scuffle with a fellow Marine, Lionel Loya, 23, at a home. Loya had a gun that went off during the struggle. Loya has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.
N C Marine dies in argument over Texas game
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
PTSD is chemical change in brain
New news? Not so much but this seems like a better study than what has been done lately. If they want to get rid of the stigma, they should start by keeping it simple. The simple truth of PTSD is that it only comes after traumatic events. There is no other way for PTSD to start. It is an invasion. It changes the way the brain works, how we feel, what we believe and how we process all things in our lives. How can anyone be ashamed of being attacked by something?
Traumatic events for witnesses as well as survivors leave us in shock. It was out of the ordinary and very hard to process the fact it was real instead of some kind of movie. In combat, traumatic events become part of the normal, at least they are expected to happen, and the body is automatically on guard, waiting and watching with every sense fully alert. Yet even with vigilance, they happen, leaving humans to overcome all of it. Sometimes, the event itself is just too much to take.
There is survival guilt when they wonder why they are still alive, what they could have done differently and even times when they blame themselves. This adds to the shock of the event. All of it becomes their fault.
Once this sets in, then there is taking on the blame for what they go through feeling as if they are defective because they seem to be the only one really suffering. They wonder what is wrong with them that they are unable to just snap back to "normal" getting over it the way their buddies did. They see what they want to see but if they really pay attention to those around them, they will see the changes in those they simply assume have been untouched. No one walks away from traumatic events the same way but sometimes the changes is so profound, it takes control.
Most of the veterans and warrior types have great compassion within them. This is reported by their families when they reminisce about lives before combat and how much they had changed after, suddenly cold, uncaring, distant and showing anger more than any other emotion. They will look for the veteran to come home the same way since they look the same, time has only been measured in a year or so, leaving them to find it very difficult to understand the profound changes. The obliviousness is also part of the problem when the veteran will not talk about what they went through trying to protect their families from hearing about it, as well as the fact most families do not want to be subjected to the dangers some they loved had to face.
How can they understand when no one will tell them and they have little interest in knowing? They need to have PTSD as part of a normal conversation without all the graphic images but at least being presented with the knowledge of what the veteran is experiencing so they can help them heal.
These studies can go a long way in doing that. With the studies in mental illnesses, like depression, we see commercials making seeking help for depression as easy to understand as seeking help for erectile dysfunction. Maybe some day we'll see a Marine veteran talking about how his time in service to this country has changed him with the frequency of the couples in tubs out in the open talking about "when the time is right" and leaves us thinking everyone is now using bathtubs out in some field. Normalize PTSD because when it comes to traumatic events, changes are normal.
Traumatic events for witnesses as well as survivors leave us in shock. It was out of the ordinary and very hard to process the fact it was real instead of some kind of movie. In combat, traumatic events become part of the normal, at least they are expected to happen, and the body is automatically on guard, waiting and watching with every sense fully alert. Yet even with vigilance, they happen, leaving humans to overcome all of it. Sometimes, the event itself is just too much to take.
There is survival guilt when they wonder why they are still alive, what they could have done differently and even times when they blame themselves. This adds to the shock of the event. All of it becomes their fault.
Once this sets in, then there is taking on the blame for what they go through feeling as if they are defective because they seem to be the only one really suffering. They wonder what is wrong with them that they are unable to just snap back to "normal" getting over it the way their buddies did. They see what they want to see but if they really pay attention to those around them, they will see the changes in those they simply assume have been untouched. No one walks away from traumatic events the same way but sometimes the changes is so profound, it takes control.
Most of the veterans and warrior types have great compassion within them. This is reported by their families when they reminisce about lives before combat and how much they had changed after, suddenly cold, uncaring, distant and showing anger more than any other emotion. They will look for the veteran to come home the same way since they look the same, time has only been measured in a year or so, leaving them to find it very difficult to understand the profound changes. The obliviousness is also part of the problem when the veteran will not talk about what they went through trying to protect their families from hearing about it, as well as the fact most families do not want to be subjected to the dangers some they loved had to face.
How can they understand when no one will tell them and they have little interest in knowing? They need to have PTSD as part of a normal conversation without all the graphic images but at least being presented with the knowledge of what the veteran is experiencing so they can help them heal.
These studies can go a long way in doing that. With the studies in mental illnesses, like depression, we see commercials making seeking help for depression as easy to understand as seeking help for erectile dysfunction. Maybe some day we'll see a Marine veteran talking about how his time in service to this country has changed him with the frequency of the couples in tubs out in the open talking about "when the time is right" and leaves us thinking everyone is now using bathtubs out in some field. Normalize PTSD because when it comes to traumatic events, changes are normal.
“Once veterans see this is a neurobiological disorder in which their brain acts differently in terms of circuitry and chemical function, oftentimes it motivates them to seek treatment,” he said.
2 studies: PTSD is chemical change in brain
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Dec 8, 2009 16:26:09 EST
Two new studies seem to provide more evidence that post-traumatic stress disorder is a chemical change in the brain caused by trauma — and that it might be possible to diagnose, treat and predict susceptibility to it based on brain scans or blood tests.
In one study, Christine Marx, of the Duke University Medical Center and Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, wondered why PTSD, depression and pain often occur together.
Researchers already knew that people with PTSD show changes in their neurosteroids, which are brain chemicals thought to play a role in how the body responds to stress.
Previous animal studies showed that blood neurosteroid levels correlated to brain neurosteroid levels, so Marx measured the blood neurosteroid levels of 90 male Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. She found that the neurosteroid levels correlated to symptom severity in PTSD, depression and pain issues, and that those levels might be used to predict how a person reacts to therapy as well as to help develop new therapies.
read more herehttp://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/12/military_ptsd_diagnosis_120809w/
Pooch platoon gives traumatised troops new life
Pooch platoon gives traumatised troops new life
Christina Lamb in Washington
WHEN John Landry takes his romanian sheepdogs for a walk along the boardwalk of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, everyone stops to look.
“They’re gorgeous!” gasp onlookers as they pull out mobile phones to be photographed alongside the large floppy white dogs that look like something out of Hamleys’ soft toy department in London.
The dogs might be huggable to look at but they have a far more important role — to help re-integrate military veterans scarred by the horrors of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Everyone stops to talk so it’s a way of breaking the ice for those who are finding it hard to fit back into society,” says Landry, a dog trainer.
The US army is using exotic dogs and other animals to relieve combat stress as it finds its forces increasingly stretched. Next week it will hold its first animal assisted therapy symposium at Fort Myer army base in Virginia.
There is growing concern within the top ranks about the human toll of fighting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Military suicides have been on the rise. By late November this year, 141 US soldiers had killed themselves, one more than in the whole of 2008. There were 115 soldier suicides in 2007.
read more here
Pooch platoon gives traumatised troops new life
Christina Lamb in Washington
WHEN John Landry takes his romanian sheepdogs for a walk along the boardwalk of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, everyone stops to look.
“They’re gorgeous!” gasp onlookers as they pull out mobile phones to be photographed alongside the large floppy white dogs that look like something out of Hamleys’ soft toy department in London.
The dogs might be huggable to look at but they have a far more important role — to help re-integrate military veterans scarred by the horrors of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Everyone stops to talk so it’s a way of breaking the ice for those who are finding it hard to fit back into society,” says Landry, a dog trainer.
The US army is using exotic dogs and other animals to relieve combat stress as it finds its forces increasingly stretched. Next week it will hold its first animal assisted therapy symposium at Fort Myer army base in Virginia.
There is growing concern within the top ranks about the human toll of fighting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Military suicides have been on the rise. By late November this year, 141 US soldiers had killed themselves, one more than in the whole of 2008. There were 115 soldier suicides in 2007.
read more here
Pooch platoon gives traumatised troops new life
Fort Drum soldier killed in Providence
RI shooting victim was Drum-based soldier
The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Dec 8, 2009 8:43:42 EST
FORT DRUM, N.Y. — Military officials say one of two men fatally shot in Rhode Island last weekend was a soldier stationed at Fort Drum.
Police in Providence say 22-year-old David Thomas of Boston was shot and killed about 2:30 a.m. Sunday while in a vehicle with his 18-year-old brother, Dwayne, and 21-year-old Domingo Ortiz, who also died. Dwayne Thomas survived the shooting.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/ap_army_drum_shooting_victim_120809/
The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Dec 8, 2009 8:43:42 EST
FORT DRUM, N.Y. — Military officials say one of two men fatally shot in Rhode Island last weekend was a soldier stationed at Fort Drum.
Police in Providence say 22-year-old David Thomas of Boston was shot and killed about 2:30 a.m. Sunday while in a vehicle with his 18-year-old brother, Dwayne, and 21-year-old Domingo Ortiz, who also died. Dwayne Thomas survived the shooting.
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/ap_army_drum_shooting_victim_120809/
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