Clueless reporters part of problem with military suicides

A retired Air Force Colonel says she went from having a lot of responsibility in the military to wondering when to vacuum but this reporter thought she'd be worth interviewing on military suicides? What the hell is wrong with reporters? Do they get assigned things they know nothing about? Are they so lazy they can't even take the time to research any of it?

Experts say military suicides are preventable
ABC News
Posted: Feb 19, 2013
By Candace Sweat

Military suicides hit a record high in 2012. Some fear the rate will climb in the coming years as troops return from Afghanistan. One local woman says action can be taken to help those who suffer from the mental stress associated with military life.

"If you were to try to talk about your emotions and things that you're feeling as far as war and things of that nature, very few people understand," said Penny Bailey.

Bailey is a retired Airforce colonel and the wife of an active duty Air Force physician. Unless you are in the military, or part of a military family, Bailey says it's often difficult to fully understand the challenges.

"Whereas we are very proud of our troops we really don't know how to help them or support them," she said.

More than two-thousand service members took their own lives over the last decade. Military suicides happened at a record pace in the year 2012, with an average of one suicide every 25 hours.

"A lot of our young men and women have gone over seas and all of these IEDs have exploded and they've seen their friends lose arms and legs and they're right there trying to save their life," said Bailey.

Combat isn't the only trigger for stress and depression. Bailey says sometimes what civilians consider ordinary, can be a major problem for military families.

She says she went from having a tremendous amount of responsibility in the military, to deciding what time of day to vacuum her house.

Lieutenant Colonel Scott Sonnek, Ph.D. is the Chief of Psychology for the 59th Medical Wing at Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. The facility is located on the grounds of Lackand Air Force Base.
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I read this report and watched this video but counting to "10" didn't help at all. I ended up leaving this comment.

namguardianangel
How much did you get wrong in this article? Here are the real numbers for 2012. 168 Soldiers, 84 National Guardsmen, 42 Army Reservists, 46 Marines, 53 Sailors, 56 Airmen. Then there are the veterans suicides with "at least" which keeps getting left off. The study came from only 21 states and was limited to certificates of death with the word "veteran" on it. The is only one reason people commit suicide. They lose hope tomorrow will be better. Want to really help? First learn how to and then start reporting what does work and then you'll save some lives.

If they do not know how to help, they haven't been paying attention! As for "Chief of Psychology" he should be an expert on trauma and then he may have a clue that PTSD, diagnosed or not, CAUSES RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS! Redeployments added to this and the Army knew it all the way back in 2006 but just kept redeploying them.

There is no excuse for being this inept when so many survive combat but cannot survive afterwards!

Beyond PTSD to “moral injury”

Can I prove Dr. Jonathan Shay is right? Yes, because he proved it to me before this generation went to war. I contacted him back in 2000 after reading his book, Achilles in Vietnam.

After reading about a hundred clinical books on PTSD so that I could understand what made my husband so different from the rest of the veterans in my family and hearing my Dad say "shell shock" it was obvious to me that there was something missing in all of the books. The humanity in the inhumanity of war. In Shay's words, the "moral injury" of the people sent. Shay's book not only helped me to save my marriage, it helped me to save others.

Beyond PTSD to “moral injury”
Filed by KOSU News in Public Insight Network.
February 20, 2013

“I really don’t like the term ‘PTSD,’” Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Shay told PBS’ “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” in 2010. “He says the diagnostic definition of “post-traumatic stress disorder” is a fine description of certain instinctual survival skills that persist into everyday life after a person has been in mortal danger — but the definition doesn’t address the entirety of a person’s injury after the trauma of war.” I view the persistence into civilian life after battle,” he says, “… as the simple or primary injury.”

Shay has his own name for the thing the clinical definition of PTSD leaves out. He calls it “moral injury” — and the term is catching on with both the VA and the Department of Defense.

We’re turning our attention to this idea of moral injury and the limits of the PTSD diagnosis to explore what happens to a person who has experienced combat.

There are no clean lines separating PTSD from moral injury (which is not a diagnosis) — there is no Venn Diagram, as with PTSD and traumatic brain injury – but Shay explains a fundamental difference by using a shrapnel wound as an analogy.

“Whether it breaks the bone or not,” he says, “that wound is the uncomplicated — or primary — injury. That doesn’t kill the soldier; what kills him are the complications — infection or hemorrhage.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder, Shay explains, is the primary injury, the “uncomplicated injury.” Moral injury is the infection; it’s the hemorrhaging.
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I knew my husband was a good man but he started to believe he was evil because of all the things flooding his mind. While I understood the clinical aspects of PTSD, what I was living with was missing from thousands of pages in the 80's. I began to believe I was right about the spiritual aspect of PTSD when I discovered Point Man International Ministries was addressing it since 1984 but I was not aware of them until the 90's when I got online.

Shay's book reenforced the need to heal the soul/spirit first since that was where PTSD began.

It is not a matter of forgetting war but more a matter of making peace with it and all that came with it but first they had to know themselves. What was their original intent? Was it to defend this country? Was it to help the others already fighting the battles? Was it to save lives? All of this is forgotten when they see so much horror and evil during war. They forget that had the enemy surrendered, they would have been very happy to stop fighting. They didn't want to kill anyone but in war, that is what they have to do because other people are trying to kill them. The "moral injury" hits them harder than anyone else other than police officers, because they do not just witness the horror, they participate in it. That is the nature of war. It isn't pretty.

When I work with veterans, I walk them back so they can see the whole event as well as what they were feeling at the time and then help them make peace with it so they see themselves for who they really are inside and most of the time, they were the "givers" ready to help anyone in need. They see that while they endured some evil things, they did not become evil because of them. I help them discover that God was in fact there all along as long as within all the mayhem of war, someone cared about the suffering, reached out to help, cried, mourned for the loss of humanity.

If you ever want to understand what PTSD is, read Shay's book and know that this generation is just as human as all the generations that came before them. When it comes to their suffering, we know better than we did when Vietnam veterans came home but unfortunately, the lessons learned have been forgotten.

Real Marine admits to not really being wounded or even deployed

UPDATE
Ex-Marine pleas guilty

This is infuriating! With so many real combat injured veterans suffering and waiting for help, this faker pulled off a stunt getting what others deserved but may never find.

When a faker ends up swindling the goodwill and funds of others, they tend to think twice about helping anyone else ever again.

Former Marine admits to making up brain injury to defraud charities
Dallas Morning News
By Kevin Krause
February 19, 2013

Michael Campbell, a former U.S. Marine who touched many people with his story of living with a combat-related brain injury, has admitted to making the whole thing up to defraud charities, according to federal court documents.

Campbell, 30, who lived in McKinney as recently as 2010, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of mail fraud, although a judge has yet to approve it. If that happens, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

Campbell served in the Marine Corps from 2000 to 2004 but never left the U.S. and was never injured in combat.

But he began telling people he was a combat veteran who suffered a traumatic brain injury while serving in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He described how he and his unit were on patrol in Fallujah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device went off.

He said members of his unit died in the explosion “and that he awoke from his serious injuries months later stateside at Walter Reed Army Hospital,” court documents state.

Campbell also told people he couldn’t speak and that when his speech returned, he stuttered. He also claimed to have short-term memory loss from this brain injury.

He concocted the story to “get financial help to obtain his dream of playing golf on the PGA Tour,” documents state. He told people one of his doctors suggested he take up golf to help with his rehabilitation. He created a website and used a promotional video as part of his scheme.
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Air Force hospital error removed "cells" and fetus

Pregnancy lost due to Air Force base hospital error, lawsuit alleges
By Elizabeth Simpson
The Virginian-Pilot
Published: February 17, 2013

Heather Fergurson can't help but replay the mental tape of April 18, 2011, over and over in her head.

The Chesapeake woman had walked into Langley Air Force Base Hospital that day for a prenatal visit. Her husband and son were with her, excited by the idea of a new baby by Christmas.

But within hours, Fergurson was told she might instead have a mass of cancerous cells growing in her uterus. She was sent for a procedure called a suction dilation and curettage - typically done after a miscarriage to remove fetal tissue from the womb, or when there's an unwanted mass that needs to be excised.

Fergurson soldiered through the emotionally wrenching experience, believing the surgeon was removing cells that had gone haywire.

Little did she know the worst was to come two days later. That's when officials from the Langley hospital sat at a conference table and informed her that the tissue a surgeon removed had actually been a healthy fetus, about 11 weeks along.

Fergurson, 32, has been unable to conceive again. She often revisits the moments she spent on the operating table that day. And earlier this month, she filed a $1.7 million lawsuit against the federal government alleging malpractice.

She and her husband, Charles Fergurson, want answers.

"I've been deployed four times in combat zones," said Charles, a 56-year-old sergeant major in the Army. "We die in combat, we know that can happen. We accept that."

But he can't accept that his pregnant wife went into a military hospital for a prenatal exam and had a procedure that destroyed a healthy fetus.
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Defense Department set to announce furlough plan Wednesday

Could someone please remind members of Congress IT IS THEIR JOB TO CONTROL THE FUNDS OF THIS COUNTRY AND THIS IS THEIR FAULT?

Defense Department set to announce furlough plan Wednesday
Chris Carroll
Stars and Stripes
Published: February 19, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department intends to notify Congress on Wednesday of a plan to furlough nearly 800,000 civilian employees one day each week beginning in April, a defense official said Tuesday.

Federal law requires the Pentagon to warn Congress of furloughs at least 45 days in advance, and other regulations require direct notification of employees at least 30 days in advance.

Cutting workdays and pay will happen if Congress does not find a way to avert budget cuts known as “sequestration,” which are scheduled to kick in March 1 and cut $500 billion out of the Pentagon budget over the coming decade. Military leaders have warned of constricted operations, reduced weapons buys and eventually, reduced end strength for the services.

For now, however, military troops are spared a direct impact of sequestration on their paychecks, and most civilian workers will be the first to bear the brunt.

Defense officials say the most likely scenario would be 22 days of furlough – one day each week – beginning in the last week of April and running through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
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