Three weeks shy of his 21st birthday, Tilton had shot himself

After over 30 years of trying to get ahead of what PTSD does, will there ever come a day when we can finally say it is no longer claiming more lives after war than during it? Time ran out for too many last year and the year before that and so on and so on. It ran out for too many families as well.

Military suicides the deepest wounds of war
By LAURA BAUER
The Kansas City Star

Two months after returning from Iraq, 20-year-old Pfc. Gregory Tilton committed suicide. The soldier, who was based at Fort Riley, is seen here with his wife, Molly.

The day before Thanksgiving, Army Pfc. Gregory Tilton was on the phone with his parents, talking about recipes.

He needed tips on ingredients for the first holiday meal he and his wife, Molly, would prepare together. The previous year during the holidays, he was in Iraq with Fort Riley’s 1st Battalion, 63rd Armor, so this one was important.

“I’ve got to make Thanksgiving a great thing,” the soldier told his dad, Tim Tilton. They were to host four other couples at their apartment near the post. “We have to do things up right.”

But as the day went on, things weren’t right. Flashbacks of the war — the crack of gunfire, helicopters overhead, the smell of smoke and images of blood-soaked earth — were playing through his head.

By 9 that night, his family said, he was mentally back in Iraq, climbing a hill to bury bodies. About four hours later, there was a gunshot — and not just in his nightmares.

Three weeks shy of his 21st birthday, Tilton had shot himself.
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Military suicides the deepest wounds of war

Just 20 years old.

4,000 more U.S. troops to Haiti
The U.S. military said it plans to send 4,000 more troops to earthquake-ravaged Haiti, bringing to 15,000 the number of U.S. service members in or near the country. FULL STORY
When they come home at the age of 19 or 20, they have seen and done things most of us will never go through in an entire lifetime. Most of us will decide that we don't need to pay attention to what happens when they come home and the media, well, they certainly won't take the time to remind us. Most reports come from local newspapers never picked up by national papers or news stations. As for the 24-7 cable news, they are too consumed with stories like Haiti covering that for over a week except for the special election to fill the Senate seat held by Senator Kennedy in Massachusetts, but then it was right back to the Haiti reports. When that was not enough the story ended up being the reporters feeling they needed to do something like the CNN reports Cooper and Gupta. There are thousands of troops arriving in Haiti to supply aid but we don't know exactly how many have arrived after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan or if there is any help for them with what they will see in Haiti. Imagine a young man or woman a few years out of high school going through this after being deployed into combat. It can either be very healing depending on what their mission is or it can be very harmful depending on what they see.

While the devastation in Haiti needs to be reported on, there is a bigger crisis that is being ignored and this is one of them. We are still losing more after combat than during it.

Military suicides set record in 2009
Published: Jan. 16, 2010 at 3:41 PM

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- At least 301 active-duty members of the U.S. military took their own lives in 2009, more than in any year since the Pentagon began keeping track in 1980.

There were 235 suicides in 2008, the Chicago Tribune reports.

In 2009, the suicide rate in all four branches of the military was higher than the national average, Defense Department statistics reported by the Congressional Research Service show. They included 160 in the Army, 52 Marines, 48 sailors and 41 members of the Air Force.
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Military suicides set record in 2009

What if PTSD became a priority 30 years ago? 20 years ago? How about 9 years ago? Did any reporter pick up on the fact no one in the VA was preparing for the wounded when the troops were sent into Afghanistan? Did any reporter pick up on the fact that the DOD was not gearing up with psychologist and psychiatrists in place ready to respond? No. No reporter was covering the fact there were less doctors and nurses working for the VA than there were after the Gulf War. It was assumed since the population of veterans was dying out, they didn't need to prepare anything but they should have known better.

Reporters forgot how to study the facts and history. Reporters covered the Gulf War and they covered what was said, given as a reason to not invade Iraq after the Gulf War, that it would be a "quagmire" in the words of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and leaving the troops "like a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit" in the words of General H. "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf. History provided the need to ramp up services in the DOD and the VA just as history provided the need to do it as soon as troops were sent into Afghanistan. If the reporters had bothered to report on this, the American people would have been screaming for everyone to be ready to take care of the wounded, but most of us were left uninformed.

Even today they jump on stories about these suicides but each and every one of them add nothing to correcting the reason why they would rather die than live after surviving combat. People paying attention see the death by suicide as a condemnation and a price paid that should have never happened. People not paying attention have the excuse no one told them and this, this is the greatest sin of all.

Major Hasan "may have been developing a psychosis" but no test was done

Leaders of Fort Hood review to testify today

By Calvin Woodward and Richard Lardner - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jan 20, 2010 7:59:29 EST

WASHINGTON — Leaders of an internal Pentagon inquiry into deadly shootings at the Fort Hood military installation that left 13 dead aren’t talking about why the accused gunman moved through the military’s ranks despite repeated concerns over his performance and behavior.

Former Army Secretary Togo West and retired Navy Adm. Vern Clark were expected to testify Wednesday on Capitol Hill, but they said they won’t discuss specifics about Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan in open session “in order to preserve the integrity of the ongoing military justice process,” according to their prepared testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.

Hasan’s supervisors sanitized his performance appraisals in the years prior to the shootings, according to government documents obtained by The Associated Press that reveal concerns about him at almost every stage of his Army education.

Officers in charge of Hasan loaded praise into the alleged gunman’s record despite knowing he was chronically late for work, saw few patients, disappeared when he was on call and confronted those around him with his Islamic views.

The materials also disclose concerns that the psychiatrist-in-training might have been developing a psychosis, according to the documents, yet no mental health evaluation was done.
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Leaders of Fort Hood review to testify today

Making peace for a peace keeper

by
Chaplain Kathie

After going through something horrific and life threatening, there is a process the mind automatically begins. Every aspect of that event is stored as the mind tries to find a peaceful conclusion with inclusion of the memory itself. We get in the way of this happening instead of breathing and letting our mind function the way it was intended to do. We question everything. Our motives, our reason for being there, for doing what we did or not doing what we could not bring ourselves to do. We question if we were just rescued by God or it was brought to us because we have angered God in someway and He did it to us. It all depends on how much we know about our own minds, body and spirit, how it all works together and how we can help ourselves heal.

For the men and women in the military they have other things on their minds, like staying alive today as they try to make sense out of what happened yesterday. For them, it is not just one shocking event followed by a return to their normal lives. It is a series of events piled onto others with no time to heal. They know their lives are on the line for the entire time of their deployment into combat zones. For some they will bring back an infection going after every part of their lives in the form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is much like an infection because it keeps getting worse if left untreated. It eats away more and more of the life they had replacing it all with unknown reactions. Like a stranger inside their skin, they are unfamiliar with the way they will react or treat other people. The changes inside of them create yet another shock.

They return back home facing the healing of many traumatic events as well as having to re-establish normal life with normal food, normal shelter, normal beds to sleep in, normal simple life with showers, TV shows, shopping, friends and family. This return to "normal" life is anything but normal for them. They are changed by their experiences. They want to just go back to the way they were before, but this is not possible no matter how hard they wish for it and try to make it happen, the events in their lives have changed them.

The sleeping in their own beds they longed for cannot provide the same rest they had before as nightmares take them back to where their lives were in danger, where they saw something they wish they had never seen, where they did something they wish they didn't have to do and to where it was all just one time too many. The food they couldn't wait to eat again can suddenly turn foul in their mouths as the taste reminds them of an unpleasant experience. Simple TV shows they used to enjoy can snap them back in time. Shopping can remind them of a crowd they were in when chaos struck. Driving down the road can remind them of a bomb blowing up in front of them or under them. It can all come back with living simple "normal" lives.

There are still some people pretending PTSD is not real, that it does not change a person's life, as others want to blame the wounded for it happening to them as if they are defective in some way. They want to dismiss the fact that PTSD comes only after trauma, in other words, from an outside force, and does not come from within. If they were responsible for it, then it would not take a traumatic event to happen for it to strike. It would have been mental illness already there and not brought on suddenly. It would have been any number of them with some of the same symptoms found in PTSD but not caused by trauma. The only way for PTSD to hit is after trauma and that is why it is called Post Traumatic instead of something else.

The good news is that science has been able to show the changes in the brain after trauma, which prove the reality of PTSD.

Brain scans pinpoint stress disorder in war veterans
Study shows that certain brain signals can indicate stress disorder
By MAURA LERNER, Star Tribune
Last update: January 20, 2010 - 12:57 AM
There's never been a simple test to diagnose post-traumatic stress, but a group of Minnesota scientists say they've found a high-tech way to identify people who have the disorder -- by studying their brain signals.
The discovery could have huge implications for the way PTSD is diagnosed and treated in the future, says Dr. Apostolos Georgopoulos, who led the research as director of the Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center.
PTSD is thought to afflict tens of thousands of combat veterans, but it can be hard to diagnose. It's a collection of psychological symptoms that can, in some cases, be caused by other conditions, such as head injuries or depression.

Brain scans pinpoint stress disorder in war veterans

Veterans and family members have seen these changes in the lives of the veterans as they are challenged to heal and the reality of PTSD is all too well known, but for the sake of the deniers, scientific proof may get them to once and for all get out of the medieval response akin to bloodletting and believing that illness is a curse from God.

When an event is trapped, often it is the result of many other events behind it. Veterans may focus on this one event coming back to haunt them but it very well could be the "one that broke the camels back" instead of the one that opened the door. We have to remember combat produces event after event after event. Each one will build on the other, adding more fuel for PTSD to thrive.

Usually it is best to let the veteran talk as we listen very carefully to what they are not saying.

"Just like when" is a clue there is something that happened before not addressed. This usually means a time when they thought they had forgotten about but very well could be the event that set off the changes in them.

They will talk about the nightmares, usually involving the same incident, but if there are more listen until they are done recounting them. There may be a key in the last one they talk about.

While it would be easier to address the beginning of their deployments, this does not work simply because the event haunting them most of the time could have been during the end of their deployment and this is the one they are focused on. We cannot dismiss it or trivialize it. When civilians survive a traumatic event, that is the one we know we have to get them to recover from but with combat, just as with police and firefighters, it is not just one time. All of the other events feed into the one they focus on.

When you hear them walk them through the entire event. Most of the time they are not seeing what happened before because the memory snap shot is usually on the outcome and not the other factors leading to it. Get them to see the whole movie instead of just the ending. They are missing a lot in between.

Walking them through it will remind them of what happened before, what they were thinking, what they were feeling and what they were worried about. An example is the bombs in the road in Iraq and Afghanistan that blow up and this is in their minds every time they drive over there carried with them back on city streets and country roads in their community. While they didn't need to be near any of these bombs blowing up, the chances are they knew someone blown up or at the very least had a strong reaction to the reporting of them. This sticks in their mind because they know it could have happened to them with no warning at all.

There is a big difference between the known, as with a firefight, and the unknown, as with a roadside bomb or suicide bomber. With a firefight, they are mentally and physically preparing for all of it within seconds as all parts of them are fully engaged. With the unknown, parts of them are working independently with some of their senses on high alert subconsciously as they talk to their buddies or listen to music. This unknown factor follows them home just as much as it stays with them while they are deployed.

A soldier can remember the fact he had to take out a car approaching a convoy too fast. He will remember the people in the car he killed but will not remember what happened before he did whatever it took to stop the car. He will not independently think of the fact the practice of blowing away convoys with vehicles was common and he had no idea if this was yet another attempt. He will not think of what he did to try to stop the vehicle from getting too close or anything else he tried to do to prevent the outcome. He has only been focused on the result of seeing dead civilians because of what he did instead of the rest of the event itself.

For a female soldier, deployed with no safe zones, they face the same dangers but for them there is the other factor of sexual attacks and abuse from their own people. While most male soldiers have arrived to the point where they respect their "sisters" having to fight as well, others still see them as objects. There have been reports of women stopping fluid intake at noon to avoid having to use the latrine in the middle of the night out of fear of being attacked by another soldier. They would rather be dehydrated in the heat of the day than have to worry about opening themselves up to being attacked. The other problem for them is that some males will feel strongly they are more of a problem and should not be there. Their attitude comes out with what they say within earshot of the female soldier and it penetrates to their core.

There is still no cure for PTSD but there are keys to helping them heal. If practitioners think of their own human emotions and how they would react, they will get a lot further in helping the veteran heal.

The practice of medicating the veterans of combat is dangerous because the core of the wound is not treated, which are the human/emotional reactions to what they went through. Medication will change only the chemicals in the brain but not the way they remember. Medications calming the nerves will have to be increased as PTSD tries to regain control. Medications to sleep will end up having to be increased because PTSD is allowed to grow stronger. Without addressing the cause of the wound, it will fester like an untreated infection. All parts of "them" need to be treated at the same time. The mind, with medications, the body with re-learning how to relax the muscles and nerves and the soul with learning how to trust themselves and others again.

The best people to treat combat veterans are other veterans or at least, survivors of trauma. It has to be from a true understanding of how humans react to all of it. Reading about it in books and talking to a few veterans will not do much good if there is no personal experience behind it.

When veterans finally find what begins their "journey" home, they stumble and fall as their families encounter enlistment into the result of combat, unprepared and without understanding. Families must be included in healing the veteran. Depending on how they adjust how they react to them they can either aid the healing or hinder it. If they understand where it is all coming from, they are more able to react instead of over-react the wrong way. Waking up a veteran while in a nightmare the wrong way has resulted in a spouse being attacked for doing it simply because they do not understand that while the veteran may be sleeping right there, their mind is in a danger zone back in combat. They will lash out against the enemy only to find their wife is holding her nose or her eye without a clue about what they just did to her.

What families understand can also help them heal from living with a PTSD veteran. They will understand it is not their fault any more than it is the fault of the veteran. They will stop trying to find blame instead of gaining a deeper understanding.

Veterans can make peace with what they had to do. They can heal this wound with the proper help and the right tools to get the job done but as long as the military misunderstands what PTSD is, they will not be able to provide them with the help needed. They can try to avoid addressing the compassion in the soldiers but it is their compassion that opened the door to PTSD just as much as it was strong enough to feed their courage. It should be acknowledged and respected. As soon as it is, they will be able to treat and retain a trained soldier with courage and compassion still motivating them to serve where they are needed and ready to do whatever it takes to get it done. Medicating them allows only anger to come out as everything else is turned inward. PTSD gains more territory and they lose a fully engaged soldier ready for the next battle.

Everyone that comes into the life of a PTSD veteran can either contribute to the healing or harming. What we understand about them and about trauma determines what they will see within themselves and the keys to healing are all there. They just need help finding the keys to unlock it.

What I Did For Love
Kiss today goodbye,
The sweetness and the sorrow.
Wish me luck, the same to you,
But I can't regret
What I did for love, what I did for love.

Look, my eyes are dry.
The gift was ours to borrow.
It's as if we always knew,
And I won't forget what I did for love,
What I did for love.

Gone,
Love is never gone.
As we travel on,
Love's what we'll remember.

Kiss today goodbye,
And point me t'ward tomorrow.
We did what we had to do.
Won't forget, can't regret
What I did for love.

Marines thinking Bibles and bullets shouldn't blend

There is something beyond just having these Bible verses on the sites, as if that was not bad enough, but to think they are on the sites at all is very perplexing. Are they supposed to be looking at the verses or the enemy? What was the manufacturer thinking and what was the military thinking when they let this happen? Didn't they inspect the weapons?

It was pointed out yesterday that should a serviceman or woman become captured and they see the Biblical verses on the sites, they will be treated a lot worse for this and it very well could inspire more hatred toward the troops in Muslim nations. If Trijicon wanted to support the troops with Bible verses then they should have handed out prayer cards with them on it instead of putting them on the sites of weapons.

The other factor is, the American people are paying for the weapons, thus paying for the verses to be on the sites and we should be asking exactly how much money we were billed for to cover Trijicon doing this. It's an easy guess that it would be a lot cheaper for them to not do this.

Marine Corps considers ending contract with Trijicon
New York Daily News

The Marine Corps is reconsidering its contract with a Michigan company that has engraved hundreds of thousands of rifle sights with Bible inscriptions, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"We are aware of the issue and are concerned with how this may be perceived," USMC spokeswoman Capt. Geraldine Carey told ABC News. "We will meet with the vendor to discuss future sight procurements."

Trijicon, based in Wixom, Mich., has been making the rifle scopes for the Marines since 2005 - and carving references to Bible passages next to the scope's serial number.

U.S. military rules prohibit any service member from proselytizing while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, which are primarily Muslim nations.
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Reporters Become Part of the Story in Haiti

Reporters Become Part of the Story in Haiti
Updated: 1 hour 29 minutes ago
Steve Pendlebury
Editor
(Jan. 19) -- As a rule, journalists try to avoid getting personally involved in the stories they cover. But in the midst of such a monumental tragedy as the Haiti earthquake, professional detachment is sometimes put aside -- especially when the reporter is also a physician.

Case in point: CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who's spent a week treating quake victims in between filing compelling reports about the medical catastrophe in Haiti. Gupta -- a neurosurgeon who turned down President Barack Obama's offer to become surgeon general -- has played this dual role before, in 2004 after the tsunami in Southeast Asia and the next year after the earthquake in Pakistan. While reporting on a team of Navy doctors in 2003, he was called on to perform emergency brain surgery on a wounded boy in Iraq. A few days ago, the Navy paged Dr. Gupta again. He went to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson to operate on a Haitian girl who suffered a severe head injury in the quake.
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Reporters Become Part of the Story in Haiti