Boston VA Error Delayed Florida Veteran's Burial

VA error delays Palmetto veteran’s funeral, angers family
Tampa Tribune
Howard Altman
Tribune Staff
February 11, 2015

When the family of Korean War veteran Willie Mitchell Jr, went to bury the Palmetto man, who died Jan. 25 at age 81, their sorrow was compounded by shocking news.

Mitchell could not be laid to rest at Sarasota National Cemetery as planned, because when the family tried to schedule a burial they were told he died more than six years ago.

The error, it turned out, was the result of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee at the Boston regional office inputting the wrong Social Security number, giving a man who died in 2008 the same number as Mitchell, according to Michael Nacincik, spokesman for the VA’s National Cemetery Administration, which oversees burials at national cemeteries.

Mitchell, who served in the Army, is now scheduled to be buried at 10:30 a.m. Friday at the Sarasota cemetery, but his family is upset over the ordeal.

“We are angry that we have to go through this all over again,” Brian Mitchell, of Tampa, said about having to rearrange his father’s funeral. The family is also upset that it took a call from a reporter to get a straight answer.

“No one contacted us to tell us what happened,” Brian Mitchell said.

Nacincik, in an email to The Tampa Tribune, apologized “for the inconvenience and additional stress to the family caused by extended time it took for us to determine burial eligibility. We are thankful for Mr. Mitchell’s service to our nation and are honored to provide him the burial he deserves this Friday at Sarasota National Cemetery in Florida.”
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Fort Carson "Strong Star" Suicide Study Weak

Short-term cognitive behavioral therapy reduces suicide attempts among at-risk soldiers
News Medical
Published on February 16, 2015

Short-term cognitive behavioral therapy dramatically reduces suicide attempts among at-risk military personnel, according to findings from a research study that included investigators from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The two-year study, funded by the Army's Military Operational Medicine Research Program, was conducted at Fort Carson, Colo. It involved 152 active-duty soldiers who had either attempted suicide or had been determined to be at high risk for suicide, and evaluated the effectiveness of a brief cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in preventing future suicide attempts.

The study found that soldiers receiving CBT were 60 percent less likely to make a suicide attempt during the 24-month follow-up than those receiving standard treatment. The results were published online Friday, Feb. 13, by The American Journal of Psychiatry. The article is available online at http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/.

The findings are particularly encouraging, given that rates of active-duty service members receiving psychiatric diagnoses increased by more than 60 percent during a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rates of suicides and suicide attempts rose in comparable numbers.

"The significant increase in military suicides over the past decade is a national tragedy," said Alan Peterson, Ph.D., a co-investigator on the study who is a professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio and director of the military-focused STRONG STAR Consortium. "The Department of Defense has responded by investing significant resources into military suicide research, and the findings from this study may be the most important and most hopeful to date. To see a 60 percent reduction in suicide attempts among at-risk active-duty soldiers after a brief intervention is truly exciting," Dr. Peterson said.
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Great selling job on what the military has invested and on the study, however, considering the study came after over a decade of funds producing increased suicides, not much more than a bunch of words. And this is what they didn't tell you from the article

Brief Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Effects on Post-Treatment Suicide Attempts in a Military Sample: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial With 2-Year Follow-Up

Objective:
The authors evaluated the effectiveness of brief cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for the prevention of suicide attempts in military personnel.

Method:
In a randomized controlled trial, active-duty Army soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo., who either attempted suicide or experienced suicidal ideation with intent, were randomly assigned to treatment as usual (N=76) or treatment as usual plus brief CBT (N=76). Assessment of incidence of suicide attempts during the follow-up period was conducted with the Suicide Attempt Self-Injury Interview. Inclusion criteria were the presence of suicidal ideation with intent to die during the past week and/or a suicide attempt within the past month. Soldiers were excluded if they had a medical or psychiatric condition that would prevent informed consent or participation in outpatient treatment, such as active psychosis or mania. To determine treatment efficacy with regard to incidence and time to suicide attempt, survival curve analyses were conducted. Differences in psychiatric symptoms were evaluated using longitudinal random-effects models.

Results:
From baseline to the 24-month follow-up assessment, eight participants in brief CBT (13.8%) and 18 participants in treatment as usual (40.2%) made at least one suicide attempt (hazard ratio=0.38, 95% CI=0.16–0.87, number needed to treat=3.88), suggesting that soldiers in brief CBT were approximately 60% less likely to make a suicide attempt during follow-up than soldiers in treatment as usual. There were no between-group differences in severity of psychiatric symptoms.

Conclusions:
Brief CBT was effective in preventing follow-up suicide attempts among active-duty military service members with current suicidal ideation and/or a recent suicide attempt.

Plus this means they had 152 soldiers attempt suicide at least once at Fort Carson 2 years ago. How many of them had been in the Warrior Transition Units reported to have been mistreating them? All of them would have had Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, which has been known to increase the stigma of seeking help. The other factor is that while the study is small, the follow up assessment is important but the military admitted they do not do post deployment screenings.

Then if we add in how the VA and the DOD invested billions in research on PTSD associated with combat going back generations, they forgot lessons learned.

Marine Airlifted to Hospital After 100 MPH Crash

Friday accident temporarily closes Neuse River Bridge 
New Bern North Carolina
By Crystal Garrett, Sun Journal Staff
Published: Saturday, February 14, 2015

Andrew Bolden, 21, a Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, had to be airlifted to Vidant Medical Center on Friday night after his motorcycle crashed into a minivan, whose occupants included a mother and three small children.

Bolden’s Suzuki sports bike was traveling at an estimated speed of 100 mph when he was first spotted by Trooper M.C. Eure with the N.C. Highway Patrol. read more here

Only 9% of West Virginians Veterans Yet 23% of Suicides

Suicide rate higher among veterans in West Virginia
West Virginia Gazette
by Erin Beck, Staff writer
February 15, 2015

In 2011, the rate of suicide among users of Veterans Health Administration services in West Virginia was 32.0 per 100,000, according to Kerry Meeker, a spokeswoman for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The rate among the general population in the state was 17.4.

Tara Abdalla loved ballet, drawing, writing poems and serving her country.

Richard Abdalla, Tara’s father, said she was friendly and outgoing. She didn’t show any outward signs of suffering in her phone conversations with him, while she was stationed at Hill Air Force Base, in Utah.

But on June 3, 2006, 23-year-old Tara took her own life.

As of the end of September, about 9 percent of West Virginians were military veterans, according to U.S. Census data. But veterans made up about 23 percent of state suicides from 2000-2013, according to the Department of Health and Human Resources’ Health Statistics Center.

Looking back now, Abdalla says he sees that several of Tara’s experiences contributed to her emotional struggle. Tara was not allowed to deploy because of her last name, even though the family is not Muslim. He said there were incidents of American soldiers attacking other American soldiers who had Arabic last names.

“The whole reason she joined was to go over there,” Abdalla said. “She was really upset that she couldn’t go. She understood why, but she didn’t like it.”

She was also dealing with thyroid problems, which ultimately resulted in her being released from the Air Force.

She stayed in Utah, to try to work things out with a boyfriend with whom she was having problems. She became pregnant, then had a miscarriage. She also found out that her grandmother, with whom she was very close, had Alzheimer’s disease.

Figures from the DHHR’s Health Statistics Center show that, from 2000 to 2013, 983 veteran deaths were documented as suicides. Of those, 881 were people 35 or older, and 413 were people over age 65.
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After 45 Years, Florida National Guardsman Retires

Retiring Guard general sees lean times ahead for Florida units 
Distinguished units
St. Augustine News
By Clifford Davis
February 14, 2015

Master Sgt. Thomas Kielbasa
Adjutant General of Florida Maj. Gen. Emmett Titshaw Jr. prepares for his final ride in an F-15 Eagle at the 125th Fighter Wing in Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 29, 2015. The 45-minute flight in the back seat of the Florida Air National Guard's tactical jet ended more than four decades in the air for Titshaw, who has been flying military and commercial aircraft since the early '70s. He will retire in March. (Photo by Master Sgt. Thomas Kielbasa)

The U.S. Army faces tough times.

With the end of operations in Iraq and the shrinking number of combat soldiers in Afghanistan, the Army and Army National Guard see increasingly sharp cuts in soldiers and funding.

To Maj. Gen. Emmett Titshaw, however, this is nothing new.

“I’ve read this book twice already,” he said speaking of the drawdowns after Vietnam and again at the end of the Cold War. “The difference is, this time the threats are still out there.”

In the twilight of a 45-year military career, Titshaw sat at a table in his office at St. Francis Barracks in St. Augustine and shared his thoughts on the future of the citizen soldier.

The Jacksonville native, Ribault alum and former fighter pilot joined the Florida Air National Guard in 1970 and steps down as the state’s adjutant general next month.

The cuts would be salt in the wound to Florida’s National Guard, which, in spite of being among the most disaster-prone states in the country, ranks 53rd out of 54 (50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia) in Guardsman-to-civilian ratio.

“There are a lot of threats possible to Florida: We have three combatant commands, nuclear power plants, a huge tourist industry centered in Orlando,” he said. “If a terrorist wants to do something to make a statement, where are they going to do it?
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