More Central Texas Veterans Seeking Help for PTSD

VA stats show increase in number of Central Texas veterans receiving mental health treatment for PTSD
Killeen Daily Herald
Jacob Brooks
Herald staff writer
February 7, 2016

Statistics from the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System show an increasing number of veterans are seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

In five years, the number grew 38 percent to 5,780 at the system’s three Department of Veterans Affairs medical locations in Temple, Waco and Austin.

A similar increase was seen in the overall number of mental health patients, whose afflictions can range from anxiety to depression to severe PTSD.

In 2015, the three VA locations treated 30,336 patients for mental health, up from 22,411, a 35 percent increase in five years.

The numbers were given to the Herald after a request to the VA.

The Temple VA hospital saw the biggest increases: 3,877 PTSD patients last year, compared to 2,485 in 2010. In 2015, the hospital had 15,827 mental health patients, up from 11,853 in 2010, according to the VA.
read more here

Veterans Widow Shocked "Candy Man" Doctor Starting Practice

Fired 'Candy Man' Tomah VA chief of staff to start own practice
WTMJ Exclusive
Michelle Richards
Feb 3, 2016

TOMAH - The wife of a veteran who died from an overdose at the Tomah VA was shocked to learn the former chief of staff, whom veterans nicknamed "Candy Man," may soon be prescribing drugs to others.

Dr. David Houlihan was fired last fall after an investigation into over-prescribing painkillers at the VA Medical Center.

WTMJ has learned Houlihan is soliciting new patients in LaCrosse while also being considered for a job at a practice in Minnesota.

"I am shocked," Heather Simcakoski told WTMJ. Simcakoski's husband, Jason, died from an overdose in 2014. "I am just shocked to know he would be able to open a practice."

Houlihan has not been charged. Calls to his practice were redirected to another practice in Minnesota.
read more here

UK Veteran Sleeps In Car, Syrian Refugees Get Housing?

Awesome update to this story
Kind-hearted former soldier offers war hero home after he was left living in car for 6 MONTHS

War veteran homeless and sleeping in car
Coventry Telegraph
By Mike Lockley
7 FEB 2016

The father of three, who joined the Irish Guards at the tender age of 16, has served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosova, twice in Iraq – and three times in Afghanistan.

Veteran of two wars Richard Storer who says he is homeless and being forced to sleep in his car

A veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been living in his car for six weeks after being made homeless.

Richard Storer, from Solihull , tormented by the horrors he witnessed during a 21-year army career, burrows deep into a sleeping bag on the back seat of his battered VW Golf each night.

Occasionally, if he is lucky, he is able to doss down on a friend’s sofa but that is the exception to the rule.

The 41-year-old, wrapped tight against winter’s bite, has become a familiar sight in Lea Village, on the outskirts of Chelmsley Wood.

The ex-corporal, invalided out of the Army with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder last June, says his country has forgotten him.

“I don’t expect special treatment,” he said. “I don’t expect special treatment because I fought for this country, I just want what’s right.

“But I recently saw a programme about Syrian refugees, and it said 80 per cent of those shown had been given homes.
read more here

Give Disabled Veterans Power To Change

Give Disabled Veterans Power To Change

The truth only has power when it is known. Support the facts and give them the ability to fight for their lives.

http://www.combatptsdwoundedtimes.org/ Covers the real news and government reports to arm veterans with information they need to know. Congress has jurisdiction over how our veterans are treated yet have failed for decades. National news used to consider what was happening to our veterans as important yet somehow managed to forget that awesome responsibility replacing their stories with politicians using them for votes. 

Since 2007 Wounded Times has covered over 25,000 stories, filmed over 200 videos and broke over 2.5 million page views.  

This proved veterans and families like mine have a hunger to know what is going on all over the country. No politics, no popular claims without facts to back them up but above all, dedicated to defeating PTSD.  I've been doing this work since 1982 when I had to go to the library to understand what combat does to our veterans beyond the wounds you can see with your own eyes.

Another fundraise for a disabled veteran coming up for Orlando Rocks and another escort for the Wall in Wickham Park. Camera is wearing out but I'm not.

Orlando Rocks 2015 Orlando Rocks 2014 Orlando Rocks 2013

Veteran Suicides, The Stories of Their Lives Lost

Reporting on Veteran Suicides Easier Than Living With The Stories
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 7, 2016

The reporters at San Diego Union Tribune did a fabulous job reporting on suicides. You really should read their stories and of those from the families left behind.

This report is on the simple fact it is hard to cover these stories for reporters but even harder if you have a personal connection to them. Families talk about their suffering, not for someone to feel sorry for them, but more for the sake they don't want others to know that level of pain they wished someone had stopped them from feeling.

Going on 34 years of doing this I remember what that felt like.  First I wanted to understand my husband.  He's a Vietnam veteran.  After growing up surrounded by veterans, I needed to know why he as so different and experiencing what my Dad called "shell shock." After all these years, he's living a good quality of life and we proved that no one is stuck suffering. Marriages don't have to end.  

I started to research it to understand him, then to help save him and his friends. Along the years I understood myself as well.  What I didn't understand was I couldn't save everyone.  I couldn't save my husband's nephew, who was also a Vietnam veteran.

I knew it all! I knew what he needed to know and how to explain it so that he wouldn't think it was his fault anymore than what happened to him after service was his fault alone.  The trouble is, I didn't know how to get him to listen.  He committed suicide and ever since then, every time I read about another suicide, it is like a dagger to my heart and I run through all the "what if" questions that never seem to be answered.

Back then, no one was talking about veterans surviving combat only to lose their lives by their own hands years afterwards.  I hoped someday they would stop suffering in silence and families would no longer feel shame for something that was not their fault.

Now they are talking and to me, these families are heroes.  Reporters finding value in telling their stories are vital in all of this.  With that said, there is still a lot of misinformation out there that never really seems to get corrected.

First is the number "22 a day" when that number is wrong. It freaks me out to hear it repeated by a charity taking care of the families as much as it nauseates me to read a politician using that number. They should know better.  As long as reporters do not learn the facts ahead of time, veterans will go on questioning the other information in the report. If they can't get that number right, what else are they getting wrong?

The CDC reports over 40,000 Americans commit suicide every year.  Every state has reported veteran suicides double the civilian population rate. That means there are over 26,000 a year ending the lives that survived military service.

Reporters do not remind folks that the vast majority of these veterans are over the age of 50 any more than they cover the simple fact that those are the veterans all the new charities won't care about.

Are all veterans equal? Our generation thought so but that was only after Vietnam veterans decided to fight for all generations despite how they were treated by older veterans.

Reporting on suicides is hard but telling the truth is harder when the majority are taking the easy way out repeating a number that is just easy to remember.

None of this is easy for the veterans and nothing is easy on the families they leave behind. PTSD does not have to win or defeat survivors of combat.

SUICIDES: TOUGH BUT NECESSARY REPORTING
The San Diego Union-Tribune
By Jeanette Steele
Feb. 5, 2016

For journalists, writing about suicide is walking a knife’s edge.

On one hand, it’s a major issue that deserves attention.

“We have an ethical commitment to tell the truth about a public health problem,” said Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.

If you don’t report on suicides, he said, “You might as well not cover the dangers of smoking.”

On the other hand, he and other experts said news coverage that makes suicide seem inevitable, or like a legitimate solution, could lead to more people taking their lives.

News stories also should not disclose information that might prompt people in despair to copycat the event, such as writing about a particular train platform where people have jumped to their deaths.

For this project about younger U.S. military veterans, perhaps the biggest issue is whether the life challenges they face are presented as hopeless and unsolvable.

But the hurdles can certainly be overcome, according to those who specialize in the topic.

“There’s no need to suffer, there’s no need to end a life by suicide. It’s a health problem that has solutions,” said Kim Ruocco, a spokeswoman for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, a nonprofit group that helps military families deal with grief.

“You can show that, yes, we have some cracks in our system that need to be repaired, but there are lots of places where you can get hope,” said Ruocco, whose late husband, a Marine Corps officer, died by suicide in 2005.
read more here