Dean Yates Battle With PTSD After Reporting on War

The Road to Ward 17: My Battle With PTSD
Reuters
By Dean Yates
Filed Nov. 15, 2016

HOMELAND: In the study at my home in Evandale, Tasmania. In the island’s rainforest, touching the ancient trees and gazing at the misty mountains, I thought I’d found the peace I was looking for. REUTERS/Cameron Richardson

Post-traumatic stress disorder isn’t just for soldiers. After years of covering war and tragedy in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for Reuters, it happened to me.

EVANDALE, Australia – When the psychiatrist diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder at the end of our first session early this March, I finally had to accept I was unwell. The flashbacks, the anxiety, my emotional numbness and poor sleep had long worried my wife, Mary. I had played down the symptoms, denied I had a problem. Five months later I’d be in a psychiatric ward.

I covered some big stories as a Reuters journalist. The Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia’s Aceh province in 2004, three stints in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and then a posting to Baghdad as bureau chief from 2007 to 2008. From 2010 to 2012, based in Singapore, I oversaw coverage of the top stories across Asia each day.

Then, after 20 years working in Asia and the Middle East, it was time to settle down. I moved my family in early 2013 to the Tasmanian village of Evandale, population 1,000, to edit stories for Reuters from home.

Rather than relaxing in Tasmania, the beautiful Australian island where my wife was born, I unravelled.

In a letter that was painful for her to write, Mary, a former journalist, outlined her concerns to the psychiatrist ahead of that first session: “When we came home to Tasmania three years ago it was a real ‘tree change’ for Dean and he spent much more time with the family. Very soon I began to notice changes – a loud-noise sensitivity, a quick temper, irritability, impatience, and an atmosphere of what seemed like misery that sat like a pall over the household,” Mary wrote.
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Linked from PBS

Army Medic-War Veteran Comes to Rescue At Walmart

Army vet helps gunshot victim following Friday night shooting
FOX 4 News
LynnAnne Nguyen
December 31, 2016

“Everybody started running towards us screaming they're shooting, they're shooting,” said Semmler.

Police are still looking for the people who shot a man at a Walmart in the Red Bird area of Dallas. The victim is stable, thanks to a Good Samaritan who used his military training to step in and help as they waited for medics to get there.

Rafael Semmler was at the Walmart on Wheatland with his family, Friday night, when they heard gunfire.

Semmler says he made sure his family got out safely, then his military instincts kicked in.

“You don't really think about it, it's just at that time it's kind of like instinct, it's what you've been trained to do,” he said, “and was my first instinct was to go toward it to see if there's anything I could do to help out.

Semmler went straight to the McDonald’s inside the store where most of the commotion was.

“Another gentleman was like, I've been shot, I'm dying. So I immediately went directly to him first.”

Semmler says the man had been shot in the arm and was losing a lot of blood. After eleven years in the military as an infantryman and a medic, Semmler says he’s used to training abroad in places like Kuwait, Iraq and Bosnia, but never thought he’d be using it here at home.
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How Will This Year End for Veterans?

How Will 2017 End?

Combat PTSD Wounded Times

Kathie Costos

January 1, 2017

It may sound like a strange question on this first day of the New Year, but considering how last year ended, it is a reasonable question to ask. There are many uncertainties in life. Instead of recapping a year that has already happened, I am wondering what we will allow to happen this year.

Yesterday ended the year for me with going to my mailbox and finding gifts from my friend Vietnam veteran Gunny. He sent me a patch with my new road name for Semper Fidelis America, "Know Buddy" along with a memorial cross that says "I wear this cross for those who can't."

Then I filmed another friend, Jonnie, a Marine veteran, delivering an inspiring message about living with PTSD and healing so that this New Year could end differently than it ended for too many veterans.

This morning I went to Oviedo Presbyterian Church to listen to my friend, Rev. Karen Estes preach. As always, listening to her, witnessing her love of God and passion, I cried. She told the story of Artaban the 4th Magi arriving late in Bethlehem.

The story is an addition and expansion of the account of the Biblical Magi, recounted in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. It tells about a "fourth" wise man (accepting the tradition that the Magi numbered three), a priest of the Magi named Artaban, one of the Medes from Persia. Like the other Magi, he sees signs in the heavens proclaiming that a King had been born among the Jews. Like them, he sets out to see the newborn ruler, carrying treasures to give as gifts to the child - a sapphire, a ruby, and a "pearl of great price". However, he stops along the way to help a dying man, which makes him late to meet with the caravan of the other three wise men. Because he missed the caravan, and he can't cross the desert with only a horse, he is forced to sell one of his treasures in order to buy the camels and supplies necessary for the trip. He then commences his journey but arrives in Bethlehem too late to see the child, whose parents have fled to Egypt. He saves the life of a child at the price of another of his treasures.

And with the last jewel, he used it to help a woman being sold as a slave in order to pay the debt of her father. While some may look at the story and think about the horrors that happened that dark day when innocent babies were slaughtered, in the midst of all that evil, there were also witnesses to love when one of the many gave his gifts intended for God to help people in need.

As Christians, Rev. Estes reminded us, we are called, to not just witness love, but to respond with love and courage when we see evil, suffering and injustice around us. That is what Christ not only preached but by what He ended His life on earth with. He asked for His Father to forgive those who nailed Him to the Cross along with those who had abandoned Him.

Did you know that soldiers witnessed love in the midst of war? It happens all the time, no matter if they acknowledge it or not. The original idea to join the military came from a deep desire to serve even though they knew the hardships they would encounter. Even though they knew they would have to leave their families to risk their lives with strangers they would call "brother" bonded together by a love so deep they were willing to sacrifice themselves for. Even though they knew that should they come home wounded or scared by slashes to their soul, they were willing. They were willing, even though for decades, witnesses to their suffering without the care they were promised by the government deciding they needed to fight the battles failed to fulfill the promise to take care of them.

Yet they had reached out their hand to help, shed tears for those who had fallen and prayed for those wounded. No matter how much evil in battle they had to participate in, at the end of the day, had the enemy forces laid down their arms, they would have welcomed the end of battle. It was not motivated by evil they risked everything. It was motivated by a courageous love that had no limits.

We, as witnesses to that love, have not stood up against the injustice they face. 

We allow them to fight our nations battles and then fight the nation that sent them to war to have their wounds tended to. 

We allow folks to run around the country talking about how they die by their own hands yet never once utter the words of why they should live after surviving war.

We allow the Congress to avoid their responsibility in all of this when they do have jurisdiction over what the VA does or fails to do. If the VA fails to take care of veterans, the failure falls in the lap of members of Congress, yet it is us, allowing this to continue for decades, because we failed to hold the overseers accountable.

I have witnessed this all my life when my Dad had to fight for what he needed after his service and then, when my husband had to fight for what he needed. I have witnessed this with the over 27,000 posts on this site, countless emails and phone calls over the years, as more and more suffer from our silence.

I have witnessed miracles, great and small as much as I have witnessed innocent lives being destroyed by power-hungry, greedy men, not caring about who has to pay the price as long as they get what they want.

I have witnessed this in the veterans community as more and more wonder what good do push-ups do them as they are pushed away from families? What good does it do any of them for some to take walks when everyone they knew has walked away from them? What good does it do them to pray for hope when they are told that "God only gives us what we can handle" as if God did it to them?

No my friends, I am not the one they need. I've already proven that when after over 3 decades I am still screaming in this empty room with walls full of "accomplishments" yet the results are far worse than even I imaged they would ever become.

I have witnessed unlimited love when folks like Jonnie pushing past his own pain, his own reluctance to speak of this heartache he carries because others do not know the other cross he carries is that of hope and miracles of love that also showed up when he needed them the most.

I have witnessed veterans doing as Artaban did, giving all they had intended for God to be used in God's name because someone needed them. They are by "brothers" in Point Man International Ministries running around the country offering hope, showing veterans how to heal and then standing by their side when everyone else has walked away from them.

I have witnessed veterans on the brink of ending their battle, heal and then reach back to help other veterans out of their own darkness by shining their light.

Last year began with this,

PTSD New Year Take A Cup of Kindness Yet

So here's to a hopeful New Year when you understand PTSD does not mean you are weak but came from the strength of your core, just feeling things more than others. Know that you changed because of what you survived and as a survivor, you can change again to live a happier life.
May 2016 be the year when you remember the past without the bitterness and taste the kindness that is within your power.

Vietnam Veteran Laid To Rest With Honor in Texas

With no family present, Vietnam veteran laid to rest
Killeen Daily Herald
By Justin Mashburn
Herald correspondent
December 30, 2016

“I feel it is our duty to be here and pay our respects to them. There was no one else to ... so why not step up and be the family?” Simons said.

Eric J. Shelton | Herald

Jason Bretado pays his respects during an unaccompanied burial for U.S. Army veteran LeRoy Jacobson Friday at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen.

Vietnam veteran LeRoy Jacobson, 67, was laid to rest Friday with full military honors at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen.

Despite chilly, wet weather, about 75 veterans, civilians and organization members paid respects to a fallen veteran. Jacobson had no family members present, which cemetery officials refer to as an “unaccompanied veteran’s funeral.”

All stood in silence, heads bowed and tears shed, not in remorse, but in respect, as a fellow veteran conducted the funeral services. Jacobson was a former private in the Army, serving from July 1967 to April 1970. Not much else is known about him or his military service, or even how he died.

Taps softly reverberated through the cool, crisp air as all fellow veterans saluted at Jacobson’s casket, and all civilians in attendance placed their hands over their hearts.

No next of kin were named or discovered, other than a brother who lived out of state but could not attend. Though the veteran was not accompanied by blood relatives, there was no shortage of an extended military family.

The flag folded by the honor guard went to Doug Gault, chief on-site representative of the Veterans Land Board and a former command sergeant major.
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Texas Judge Treats Veterans Like More Than Just A Number

Texas judge takes specialized court for veterans on the road
Associated Press
Claudia Lauer
Posted: Dec 31, 2016

"When I was accepted into the veterans' court, it was the first time I was treated like I wasn't just a number in the system," Ress said.

(AP Photo/LM Otero).
In this Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016 photo, U.S. Army Veteran Richard Ress, right,
speaks during a bible group meeting at his rural church in Grayson County, Texas.

ANNA, Texas (AP) - In the Army, Richard Ress survived duty in some of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, but on a July day in 2009, he seemed ready for his life to end in the back of a Texas police car facing his third drunken-driving arrest in less than a year.

According to the arrest report, Ress asked the officer "to shoot him and get it over with." He was struggling with flashbacks and nightmares associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, which went untreated during four months in jail. A few years later, in 2015, he got a fourth DWI.

"I knew I couldn't continue like this because I was going to die," he said.

That's when Ress was flagged for a program that aims to divert certain veterans facing criminal charges into treatment programs instead of sending them through the criminal court system. And rather than requiring veterans to travel to court appearances, this court travels to reach them in five counties near Dallas.

Judge John Roach Jr. said the court is a first of its kind, and he hopes it will be replicated in other rural areas without public transportation, where getting to hearings can be a challenge.

"This is not an easy program. I expect a lot, and I expect commitment. But getting to court, having access to the services, that shouldn't be the issue that prevents a veteran in one county from getting treatment available to a veteran in another county," Roach said.
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