Over 300,000 Less Than Honorable Discharges Since 2001?

Veterans Seek Greater Emphasis on PTSD in Bids to Upgrade Discharges 
New York Times
By DAVE PHILIPPS
FEB. 19, 2016

Since 2001, more than 300,000 people, about 13 percent of all troops, have been forced out of the military with less-than-honorable discharges.

Mr. Goldsmith, center, and other veterans met with Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, right, in January to discuss the military’s discharge process. “I’ve been fighting for eight years, and I can’t get anywhere,” Mr. Goldsmith said. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Kristofer Goldsmith was discharged from the Army at the height of the Iraq war because he was not on a plane to Baghdad for his second deployment. Instead, he was in a hospital after attempting suicide the night before.

On the sergeant’s first deployment, his duties often required him to photograph mutilated corpses. After coming home, he was stalked by nightmares and despair. In 2007, he overdosed on pills, and his platoon found him passed out in a grove of trees at Fort Stewart, Ga., that had been planted to honor soldiers killed in combat.

Instead of screening Mr. Goldsmith for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, records show that the Army wrote him up for missing his flight, then forced him out of the military with a less-than-honorable discharge. When he petitioned the Army to upgrade his discharge, arguing that he missed his flight because of undiagnosed PTSD, it rejected his appeal.
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Rocky Bleier, Army Vietnam Veteran 4 Time Super Bowl Champ

Vietnam Veteran overcomes war injuries to win four Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers

Department of Veterans Affairs

Melissa Heintz

February 19, 2016

Secretary Bob McDonald invited Rocky Bleier, Army Vietnam Veteran, Pittsburgh Steelers star and four-time Super Bowl Champion, to the VA to share his gripping story of courage on the battlefields of Vietnam and his time on America’s football fields.

A year after his 1968 rookie season with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bleier was drafted for the second time; he entered the U.S. Army in December 1968 during the Vietnam War. Bleier was a squad grenadier and operated a 40mm M79 grenade launcher with the 196th Light Infantry Brigade.

He was in Vietnam for only three months when he was wounded on a patrol when his platoon was ambushed in a rice paddy near Heip Duc. He took a bullet in his left thigh moments before a grenade sent shrapnel through his right leg, removing part of his right foot. Bleier was evacuated to an aid station in Da Nang, Vietnam, to recover from his injuries before being transferred to Tokyo then back to the United States. His doctors told him that he would never play football again.

It was at the field aid station in Da Nang where he met a Veteran that changed his perspective on life. Across from him was a young soldier, a triple amputee who lost his left arm and both legs. Every day before that soldier left for therapy, he’d stop at each bed in the ward, including Bleier’s, to give them words of encouragement.

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PTSD: It's What Happened To You

PTSD: Through the eyes of a door gunner

• Lu Ann Franklin Times Correspondent
 
• Updated 1 hr ago
 

GARY — Post-traumatic stress disorder “isn’t what’s wrong with you. It’s what happened to you," decorated Vietnam War veteran Jim Chancellor told an assembly Thursday.

"War knows no boundary. We (veterans of all wars) are sewn together with the same fabric, the same thread.”

Chancellor, 66, shared that message Thursday during his presentation “PTSD: Through the Eyes of a Door Gunner” at Indiana University Northwest.

His presentation kicked off the latest exploration of veterans’ issues sponsored by the university as part of yearlong “One Book, One Community” effort. Throughout the 2015-16 academic year, IUN and its surrounding community are exploring the themes of the book Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families.

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Grab Them And Save Them

How many times have you wondered why someone didn't ask for help or let you know they needed you?  How many times have you wished that you let them know you were there for them no matter what they needed?

Sometimes people just can't find the words.  Other times they can think of what to say but their buddy just didn't ask.

Remind them that in combat, not asking for help or all the support they could get, ended up getting buddies killed.  Asking for help now is no different and they mean no less to you now than back then.

Send these or upload onto Facebook if you think one of your buddies needs help and you don't know how to offer it. Make sure you put your contact information in it and when they can get a hold of you.

If you have a non-profit and think of using these to raise funds or awareness for yourself, don't try it. These are for veterans to use for their buddies, not for you to use to make money off them.

UPDATE February 18, 2020
add these to them

Military Lacks Ability to Treat PTSD? Dah

Study: Military falls short in treating new cases of war-related stress 
USA TODAY 
Gregg Zoroya 
February 18, 2016

About 70% of those studied were in the Army, more than 90% of those who had PTSD had been deployed and the average deployment was 20 months. The average profile of a patient in the military with PTSD or depression was a soldier 34 years old or younger, white and married.

The U.S. military is struggling to provide adequate therapy sessions for thousands of active-duty troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, a massive study released Thursday concludes. 

The RAND Corp. study of 40,000 cases, the largest ever, found that only a third of troops with PTSD and less than a quarter who are clinically depressed receive the minimum number of therapy sessions after being diagnosed. 

A RAND review of U.S. military and Department of Veterans Affairs treatment guidelines concluded that troops diagnosed with PTSD should receive at least four therapy sessions within eight weeks or at least two sessions to manage newly prescribed medications. read more here