With humanitarian missions into Haiti, they will carry memories of combat with them

With humanitarian missions into Haiti, they will carry memories of combat with them
by
Chaplain Kathie

The Haitians could have had a better chance of recovering from the earthquake had there been relief ready for them. This was impossible considering how far spread the destruction was. Many of them found themselves being helped by total strangers in their time of need. The aid given offered hope, showed them they matter to someone and they were not alone. For some, they encountered selfish people and they will need more help to recover from this natural disaster because of what people did following it.

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With Katrina, the trauma was compounded by what people did and did not do as they waited for help, for medical care, food, water and shelter. Some had someone there to help them and this offered the restoration of hope, belief that they mattered as the kindness of strangers reached out to them. For other survivors, they had to survive the aftermath compounded by neglect.

When you look at your own life, you will find many times of trouble and grief related to traumatic events. A car accident will leave you more nervous driving as you are not able to trust other drivers. While this may ease in time, there is always that memory in your mind. The next time you see another accident, you remember your own.

Surviving a natural disaster is easier to recover from until the next time a tornado, hurricane, storm or earthquake comes. It is harder to recover from if the help you need is delayed in coming and even harder if the actions of other people further place your life in danger.

With September 11th, that was an event other people did. We all think twice when flying about the other people on the plane. Crimes will end up having us constantly on guard until the sense of security returns again. Fires have us worrying about it happening again as we become obsessive with smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and our own personal safety especially if someone died in the fire we survived.

We are all only human.

Each one of us have experienced different types of trauma. Some of us recovered with the memory of the event sleeping peacefully until the next reminder comes and we have to recover from the trauma all over again. We have a time of "normal" a time of peaceful living and we find ourselves returning to wholeness with memories at rest. For the men and women in the military, their deployments can be filled with traumatic events and complicated by whatever events they faced from previous ones.

Feuds grow over reaching victims in HaitiPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A flood of food, water and U.S. troops flowed toward Haiti on Saturday as donors squabbled over how to reach hungry, haggard earthquake survivors still trying to claw others from ruined buildings before the dying became the dead.

The U.S. Southern Command said it now has 24 helicopters flying relief missions — many from warships off the coast — with 4,200 military personnel involved and 6,300 more due by Monday.

Read More

If the previous deployment was filled with traumatic events and the emotional needs were not taken care of, they carry those events into the next deployment so that even if the deployment was less traumatic, they may experience an emotional meltdown over something they would have normally been able to recover from more easily had the other past events not happened. They may have trapped out the memories of the other times but those memories feed the one they hang onto. Until all events are addressed, they pay the price with the next one and the next one cutting them deeper.

With humanitarian missions into Haiti, they will carry memories of combat with them as they try to aid the Haitians. We will assume they will have no problem recovering from what they will see because we want to avoid the history of what these men and women have already gone through. If they saw the bodies of children in Iraq or Afghanistan and did not recover from that, see more in Haiti, then even if they know the cause of death was by earthquake, the deaths they saw during combat will be resurrected.

There is an assumption humanitarian mission are healing for all but they are only healing depending on what they have taken with them and what they encounter while doing the aid work. If they are handing out food, water, evacuating the wounded or building shelters, then it can be very healing for them, but if they are filling mass graves, pulling bodies out of the rubble or picking them up off the streets, all of this can feed the pain they are already carrying. This can be the turning point for the better for some but we have to be aware it can also be the turning point for the worst.

Military leaders and Chaplains along with mental health professionals need to be aware of this so they can address it all properly instead of just passing it of and knowing that while these current traumatic events are in their life right now, it is what they have not addressed in their past that will do the most damage. It's called a secondary stressor. It is the event that hit them the hardest because they were already wounded by the other events they tried to put away and get over. If they only address the current event and not the real pain behind it, then it will do no good at all leaving the root of the pain still in place to claim more of their soul and mind.

Suffering goes on and claims of learning fall flat

As hard as it is to get these men and women into treatment in the first place, what they get when they do seek it provides one more road block to healing for them. This is not the first time they have talked about the fact that when they finally go for help to heal from PTSD, they are provided with medications usually first and very little therapy if they receive any therapy at all.

One-third of veterans diagnosed with PTSD receive minimally adequate services
07 January, 2010 10:29:00 Kathlyn Stone

About 33 percent of U.S. military veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receive minimally adequate treatment, according to a study published in the January issue of Psychiatric Services.

Investigators at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Minneapolis, Minn., and the University of Minnesota analyzed records of 20,284 U.S. military veterans who had received a diagnosis of PTSD at Veterans Affairs facilities.

Approximately two-thirds of those diagnosed with PTSD, all of whom were out-patients, initiated treatment within the first six months after diagnosis. Fifty percent received a psychotropic medication, 39 percent received some counseling, and 64 percent received either medication or counseling.
read more here
http://www.fleshandstone.net/healthandsciencenews/1733.html

Admiral Mike Mullen wants to do a better job but even he admits they have no idea exactly how many men and women have committed suicide. They are doing a better job trying to find out but they are far from achieving full accountability. The truth is, it is not just a matter of the suspected suicides not being proven, or the fact that each branch of the military will do their own reporting, or the fact you have the additional National Guards and Reservists in the mix, or even the fact the VA does not account fully for all in the VA system, the truth is there is a dark hole they drop into between the military and the VA systems have the ability to track them at all.

And I don’t know how else to get at this except leadership – and figure out who’s at risk, understand it, train to it. Back to this study, I was also struck – and these were five of the leading individuals in our country on suicide from East Coast to West Coast who were leading this. And I was also struck at how from their perspective, how little national attention is paid to this issue and the tens of thousands of suicides every year; it doesn’t generate the kind of interest and effort to get at the causes across the board in America. And so this study is really part of what I would call really a landmark study upon which we are greatly dependent.

And these experts explained that they really hadn’t been able to do anything like this in the past. So I am encouraged by that as well. Like so many things, we’re trying to solve these very difficult problems while we’re in two conflicts. We’re trying to release the pressure, build resilience, understand how we identify at-risk people and then extend the web. Deb will comment here very shortly: We also find it extending into families and into children.

So how do you extend the web? How do we know as an institution? We don’t track suicides longer than 120 days after somebody is ETS. So how do we really know what’s happened to those who have served so well, who aren’t necessarily connected to the VA?
DoD/VA Suicide Prevention Conference

http://www.jcs.mil/speech.aspx?id=1314
As Delivered by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Mrs. Deborah Mullen , Hyatt Regency, Washington, D.C. Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What did they learn from other years if the numbers kept going up?

Veteran Suicides: How We Got The Numbers - CBS News
Nov 13, 2007 ... How The CBS News Investigative Unit Got The Statistics

Press Releases/Advisories - 2008 DoD Suicide Prevention ...
The 2008 Department of Defense Suicide Prevention Conference concluded April 24, 2008

DOD suicide prevention conference under way
Jan 13, 2009 ... DOD suicide prevention conference under way. More than 750 gather for the 2009 Department of Defense/Veterans Affairs

This is the part that should have all of us really concerned. Numbers rising with nothing being done to address it would make sense but the number still going up after so many attempts have been made to address suicides should have all of us demanding answers.

They didn't have the suicide prevention line but the numbers were lower.

Dr. Jan Kemp* , VA's National Suicide Prevention Coordinator, has been presented with the 2009 Federal Employee of the Year Award on September 23rd at the prestigious Service to America Medals annual gala at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. Dr. Kemp is being recognized for her role in the development of the Suicide Prevention Hotline in July of 2007.

Since its inception, the Suicide Prevention Lifeline has directly saved more than 5,000 lives from suicide and provided counseling for more than 185,000 Veterans and their loved ones at home and overseas.
http://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/

Many groups started their own suicide prevention efforts but the numbers went up anyway. So what's going on? While there are more veterans now than there were a couple of years ago as they tried to address this, there are also supposed to be more people working on this than ever before.

The DOD came out with programs to train the brains of the servicemen and women so they would not become wounded by PTSD and then they said the reason for the suicides was because of other problems before they had to admit it went far beyond a broken relationship. As bad as it is the numbers have gone up, what should give all of us a clue they don't know what to do is the number of graves filled and nearly filled because they still don't understand what works and what has been proven to have been failures.

Looking at history of warfare we had suicides of Vietnam veterans rise as well as the stunning figures coming out from Australia looking at the suicide rate of children of Vietnam veterans.

Massive Suicide Rate for Vietnam Veterans’ Children
Media Release - 7 August 2000
Today, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, the Hon Bruce Scott released the long-awaited report into the incidence of suicide in children of Vietnam Veterans. The report confirms that children of Vietnam veterans have three times the suicide rate of the general community.

The government responded in the May 2000 Budget after it was established in an earlier report released in December 1999 that rates of death by accident and suicide in children of Vietnam veterans were significantly elevated when compared with other Australians. The response included a 32.3 million dollar package over four years to expand existing programs and to provide additional support services mainly through the Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service.

http://www.vvaa.org.au/media12.htm

Over the years we've learned a lot when it comes to this and we knew there were more casualties after war than during it, but we have yet to find the key to stopping this from happening. If the DOD and the VA keep making the same mistakes they've been making since Vietnam, then there isn't much hope of the numbers going down. We've seen the reports as they claim they have learned from mistakes of the past but there is very little evidence they have learned the right lessons.

After Vietnam we knew that it would take the entire family being involved in the healing of not just the veteran but the family as a whole. Support groups and veterans centers opened their doors across the nation. Almost every VA hospital had support groups for the veterans and then even more for the spouses. They knew the families had to be included in on therapy because most of these men and women were reluctant to open up about what was really going on within their relationships. The spouse usually had to set the record straight that the veteran was still having nightmares and flashbacks, that they didn't talk, laugh or even come close to the way they were before. This we knew worked best along with the fact the spouse received some support to cope with the changes as well as help them to understand these changes and responses had nothing to do with them and the few responses that were in direct response to their own actions, well, they learned how to change the way they acted as well. Everyone was learning and working together to heal, now there are more and more sites online showing up trying to make a difference however, as we see the numbers keep going up on suicides and attempted suicides, drunk driving and drug related criminal issues so much so there has to be veterans courts established, divorces going up just as claims are rising, there should be a clear alarm bell sounding across the nation that while it all could be worse without these groups stepping up, it should be a lot lower if they were all working properly.

There is hope because they are trying but if they keep trying the same things that have been proven to not have worked, things that could work will never be tried. Time to step out of the box and instead of trying to make the brains of our troops change, it's time to change the approach they take when the evidence shows it does more harm than good.

US vets return to see grim legacy of Vietnam War

US vets return to see grim legacy of Vietnam War

By BEN STOCKING
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 16, 2010; 1:08 PM

DONG HA, Vietnam -- A piece of shrapnel sliced Jerry Maroney's right leg. A bullet pierced Peter Holt's neck. Les Newell took a shot in the rump.

These old American soldiers recovered from the physical scars of combat long ago. But last week, they visited a place where people still have fresh wounds from the Vietnam War, which ended nearly 35 years ago.

They came to Quang Tri Province, which is still littered with landmines and unexploded ordinance that routinely kill and maim people trying to scratch out a living in the rice fields. Their visit was organized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which built the Washington, D.C., monument that commemorates the lives of the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam.

VVMF sponsors Project RENEW, a non-profit organization that helps Quang Tri residents like Pham Quy Tuan, 41, whose left hand and right arm were blown off by a leftover American projectile he found in a rice paddy four months ago.

"When I realized I'd lost my hands, all I could think about was how much I love my wife and kids, and how I would become a big burden to them," said Tuan, who also suffered severe burns and remains in chronic pain.

The VVMF delegation was led by Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star general who served as President Clinton's drug czar and now appears as a military analyst on NBC news. Also participating were family members of fallen soldiers and Vietnam veterans making their first trip back to Vietnam, several of whom had personal missions.
read more here
US vets return to see grim legacy of Vietnam War

VA Claims:Prove it or suffer on your own

Reading something like this is infuriating but even more so when you think about the number of times we've read about phony heroes managing to get claims approved even though they have never been in the combat they claimed to have been in, or the other fakers never in the military at all. Yet when you have a veteran of so many combat missions and wars, what is happening to him is so beyond wrong, there are no words.

How many years does it take to serve before whatever health issues they have are considered to have occurred during service at least even if not caused by it? We assume if they become ill while serving, their medical needs would be tended to even if not caused by a combat wound. We assume wrongly. There are thousands of veterans suffering from Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, toxic exposures in Iraq and Afghanistan as the list grows longer and longer. The fact is, if these men and women did not deploy, did not enter into these combat situations, they would not have been exposed to that which may in fact kill them as sure as the enemy tried to.

This is wrong but this is not unusual. The question is, if you worked for a company as a civilian and later found out they jeopardized your health by what they did, you would sue to make sure your needs were taken care of and your family provided for because you could no longer do it for them. You would sue to make sure it did not happen to someone else. In the case when your employer happens to be the military, you can't sue and you must through yourself at the mercy of the people reviewing your case while they have a set of rules they have to go by. Don't we owe them at least what is equal to workman's comp?

The order of the ill: What doesn't kill you
Government waits for proof - sometimes for decades - before caring for sick veterans
Health care » The VA requires former service members to prove an illness was caused by military service.
By Matthew D. LaPlante

The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated: 01/15/2010 02:32:05 PM MST

Editor's note: First in a three-part series.



In Vietnam, Jim Ogden flew through clouds of Agent Orange. In Desert Storm, he hovered past burning oil fields. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, he worked near a thick black plume of burning plastic, metals, chemicals and medical waste.

Along the way he took injection after injection and swallowed pill after pill. He breathed in herbicides and pesticides. And he never questioned whether all of those drugs, toxins and poisons might someday do him harm.

Not until he lost his eyesight.

Now the former Marine and master helicopter mechanic can't help but wonder what, if anything, was to blame.

The diagnoses were terrifyingly specific; the causes were maddeningly unclear. No one could tell Ogden what had gone wrong. But in between medical appointments, unable to do many of the activities he had planned for his retirement, the 67-year-old man had a lot of time for speculation.

Perhaps it was the Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used by the U.S. military to destroy enemy jungle hideaways in Vietnam, linked to more than a dozen diseases and suspected of contributing to dozens more. Or maybe it was the bromide pills he took during his first trip to Kuwait in the early 1990s. The tablets were supposed to help increase survival during a chemical weapons attack, but are suspected of contributing to a slew of conditions known as Gulf War Illness.

Or possibly it was the putrid fumes and thick black smoke that wafted over the largest U.S. military base in Iraq from a 10-acre trash heap that was set ablaze in 2003 and, in subsequent years, burned all manner of toxic garbage. Some veterans and their families believe the Balad Air Base burn pit -- and similar operations scattered throughout Iraq and Afghanistan -- are to blame for numerous respiratory, neurological and cancerous conditions.

"It could be any of that or it could be nothing at all," Ogden conceded. "I don't think there is anyone out there who has the answers."

Because he can't prove that his illness is connected to his service, Ogden doesn't qualify for VA care. "We're fortunate that we have other means," said his wife, Kathy. "But we've tried to find someone from the VA who might be interested in looking at him, just to see if there's anything they can learn about him that could help other people. No one is interested."

read more here

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14182249

Humanitarian mission to Haiti can be healing for battle scared

What we have been witnessing reported coming out of Haiti has been horrifying at times when you see people desperate for food and water as well as medical attention, taking to the streets with machetes. As bad as those images are, the people are also showing great compassion for others even with their own pain to carry.

We've seen this when they lost members of their own families but still manage to climb onto the rubble piles using their bare hands to save someone else. They carry the bodies of strangers to the streets and cover them out of respect. Hundreds of thousands of people lost everything but retained their compassion.

Strangers from other nations rush in supplies, search and rescue teams, hanging onto hope they will reach yet one more in time to save their lives. People donated from around the world simply because they felt compassion.

And then we have the military, returned from combat, now deploying on humanitarian missions.

82nd Airborne troops headed to Haiti for quake aid
Thu Jan 14, 8:55 am ET
WASHINGTON – More U.S. forces are getting under way as the military ramps up its mission to help earthquake victims in Haiti.

An advance group of a little over 100 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division will leave Fort Bragg in North Carolina Thursday. The Army says the group will find locations to set up tents and other essentials in preparation for the arrival of another several hundred from the division on Friday.

The soldiers come on top of some 2,200 Marines also on their way as the military prepares to help with security, search and rescue and the delivery of humanitarian supplies.

More than a half dozen U.S. military ships also are expected to help, with the largest, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, also arriving Thursday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100114/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_haiti_troops

22nd MEU Marines Depart Camp Lejeune for Haiti Relief Operations
22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit Public Affairs
Story by Master Sgt. Keith Milks
Date: 01.15.2010
Posted: 01.15.2010 10:31

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. -- Less than six weeks after returning home from a seven month deployment to the European and Central Command areas of operation, the Marines and sailors of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit found themselves once again bidding farewell to family and friends.

On Jan. 13, less than a day after a devestating earthquake ravaged the Caribbean island nation of Haiti, the 22nd MEU was ordered to prepare for deployment to head to Haiti to support President Barack Obama's pledge of assisting the Haitian people. By the 15th, the embarkation of personnel, vehicles and equipment was in full swing.

According to Capt. Clark Carpenter, spokesman for the 22nd MEU, the Marines expect the deployment to last at least 30 days, but emphasized that the Marines will remain in Haiti until such time as their service is no longer needed.
read more here
http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=43928

There are others deploying as well after having been involved with some of the worst conditions man can inflict on man, they are deploying with their hearts filled and heavy.

When you talk to any serviceman or woman trying to heal after combat, they will say how healing it was to try and help someone else. Their level of compassion so great, that even with their own pain they find healing by doing something for someone else.

The suffering in Haiti will grieve their hearts and trouble their minds but after they will know they made a difference in the lives of Haitians, other humans in need of help.

When you consider the motivating factor they have to serve this country, that sense of defending and helping will be fed as they work to restore services necessary for survival and in turn, feed that within them necessary to restore the inner peace of doing for someone else. As they help strangers, they will be helping themselves to heal.