Showing posts sorted by date for query Battlemind. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Battlemind. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Congress funded deadly PTSD program

Blame Congress for Deaths at Pathway House
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 10, 2018

Last night, the trigger was pulled at Pathway House. Three women, who dedicated their lives to help veterans recover from PTSD, were dead. A veteran, who dedicated part of his life to the Army, is dead and will be remembered as a murderer. 

Afghanistan veteran Albert Wong, will not be remembered for his service. He will not be remembered for seeking help for PTSD. No one will remember that he had not just been trained to use weapons, he was also trained, in what he was told, would make him "resilient" against what combat could do to him. How do I know? Because every member of the military has been told the same thing.

May 29, 2009 post was titled "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness will make it worse" along with this predication,
"If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them."
In this case, as with most of the deadly outcomes, I'm sick to my stomach knowing I was right. All the people in charge of this clusterfuck have been wrong all along.

By 2012 I knew I had to figure out why this was still going on. Why was it still being funded? Why was it being pushed on every member of the military? 

I tracked down reports on who was benefitting from it and laid it all out in The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War and the money was in the billions.

This so-called "resilience" training was not a proven program before the military bought it. It was a research project created to try to figure out how to give school aged children a better sense of self-worth. Yes, you read that right!

By 2013 RAND Corp, along with a lot of others, figured out that it was not working and offered warnings of their own.

In 2014 NBC News reported this 
Military Uses Unproven Mental Health Programs, Report FindsNBC NewsBY MAGGIE FOX
Veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars, as well as other service members and their families, have high rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders, yet the U.S. military isn’t using tested screening methods to help prevent them, a team of experts said Thursday. 
And despite extensive research, the panel of experts couldn’t find any proven Department of Defense programs to prevent domestic abuse. Programs to battle sexual assault — another documented problem — aren’t being assessed to see if they actually work, the Institute of Medicine panel reported. 
“A fundamental finding of the committee is that, with some notable exceptions, few of DOD’s prevention interventions are theory- or evidence-based,” wrote Kenneth E. Warner, a public health expert at the University of Michigan who headed the panel. 
One obvious example of an unproven and controversial approach is the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program, which includes a mandatory online training program developed with the American Psychological Association, the report finds.

Last night, I was trying to get updates on the Pathway House shooting, but the 24-7 national news stations were too busy on political topics. It seems they have also been too busy reporting on politicians than doing any investigations into the outcomes of what they do.

Three women are dead, a veteran survived risking his life in Afghanistan, but ended up committing suicide after killing the women who tried to help him. 

Where are the conspiracy researchers on this? Where are the investigative reporters on this? Where are the Congressional hearings on this? What excuses do the Joint Chiefs offer when military suicides are still averaging 500 a year?


Is anyone being held accountable for any of this? 

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Stronger Together...not in all cases

Yet again, let down by something I thought would be wonderful.  Couple of things bug me about this news of a movie with a great title, "We Are Stronger" because hey, been using that myself for over 3 decades. 

Anyway, then I read it was about faith, and I thought, great someone decided to address how important faith was when trying to heal PTSD. 

Problems popped up right away after that. 

The "writer/director" had no experience with veterans or PTSD. Then, what made that news worse was where she got her "knowledge" from.


C: What kind of research did you do for this project?

RM: I read Lt. Col. [Dave] Grossman’s book On Combat. He teaches resiliency courses with the military. It was a very good resource for me. Also, I read Rev. Chris Adsit’s book The Combat Trauma Healing Manual, which walks people through a group study. I worked through the manual myself. It has a lot of firsthand accounts and actual journal entries from people dealing with [PTSD]. Working through that manual, I got a good picture of what it looked like. Also, I watched a documentary on PTSD, [The War Comes Home], which was [hosted] by Soledad O’Brien on CNN. That gave me some great ideas of what to write in the script.
Hep! That guy who is part of the reason the troops have been hearing the PTSD is because they were mentally weak and didn't train right because of "resilience training" and "Battlemind" which also did more harm than good.

When the DOD decided to say that the troops could train their brains to be mentally tough and prevent suicides, they heard they were weak and didn't train right. Not much inspiration to go and talk to a buddy about needing help after they heard that.

Anyway, you can read the article here
We Are Stronger Makes Pitch for Faith to Play Role in Treating Veterans with PTSD

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Stop Raising Awareness Without Learning First

Everyone Claims to Care, Few Actually Care Enough

Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 15, 2017

A few days before Veterans Day I wrote to the Washington Post. Monday they finally replied saying it would not be published. Since they are not interested in getting the truth out there, this is what I wrote.

Too Many Veterans End Day By Suicide 
In a few days, people will show up for veterans. Some will watch a parade in their town. Some will go to a cemetery to put flowers near the name of someone they remember. For others, this day will hit especially hard. It is the day a veteran decided to die. 
Some talk about “22 a day” as if no other veteran committed suicide on any given day. Some use “20” as if those numbers are some sort of magical term, but while they may have good intensions, they didn’t bother with investing time to learn the facts.How can anyone expect to change something they do not understand? How can they ask for money to talk about a subject as serious as suicide, when it wasn’t even important enough to read the reports? 
The VA Suicide report from 2012 with “22 a day” was an average from death certificates collected from just 21 states. The follow up in 2016 with “20” a day, complied from more data, including the CDC, also used death certificates. The report did include a shocking detail that should have proven efforts have produced the opposite result. 
In 1999 there were 20 veterans committing suicide a day. The truth is there were over 5 million more veterans living in this country at the time.With over 400,000 charities claiming to be helping veterans, Veterans Courts, the VA Crisis Line, and “awareness” folks in every state talking about a number, they are not even close to the truth. None of these new groups ever mention that 65% of the veterans committing suicide are over the age of 50, or explain why they will not even discuss them. 
Most states have been reporting veterans commit suicide twice the civilian rate. In some states it is triple. Using the CDC data for Americans committing suicide per year, it is closer to 26,000 veterans committing suicide or over 70 per day. 
The reports did not mention was that states like California and Illinois do not have sections for military service. Bills were passed this year to correct that, however, if the veteran was not in the VA system, service was not on the death certificates, they were not counted. 
Then there are the thousands of veterans with PTSD or TBI discharged under “less than honorable” excluding them from benefits, help, and above all, being able to claim they served. Between 2011 and 2015, there were “91,764 service members that were separated for misconduct,” according to the GAO. Most states have the clause that the discharge had to be under “honorable” conditions. No one is counting their suicides. 
Veterans face off with law enforcement all over the country and no one is counting them as suicide even if officers responded to a mental health crisis call. 
The VA overview of data showed since 2001 veteran suicides have increased 32.2%, and those are just the ones they do know about. The military has seen the number of enlisted personnel decrease, yet over a decade after “prevention” and “resilience training” began, the average remains at over 1 service member per day ending their own life. 
Congress insists on writing and funding Bills that repeat proven failures. Researchers repeat studies done over the last 40 years. If everyone is doing everything, when do we get a chance to help these veterans live? 
That is the ugly truth of this. The beautiful thing is, with the right help, these veterans can heal, no matter how old they are! 
The Disabled American Veterans began that effort in 1976 with the Forgotten Warrior Project. Seems like a good time for the rest of the forgotten to be remembered by the rest of us.
It had to be under 700 words and I got it done in about an hour. Sure, it could have been better, but I wasn't hoping so much they'd publish it, as I was hoping they'd do something about it.

No questions asked, just the rejection email. You'd think someone would want to know where all that information came from. Then again, you'd think they'd put facts ahead of whatever everyone has been saying.

The truth is, while we have so many running around the country claiming to be raising awareness, it has only gotten worse for the veterans.

I am plugging in the links before I post this, so you can discover what the Washington Post didn't want to know. 

If you want further proof of what I've been saying since the VA released the reports, here you go with some recent articles on the outcome of all this awareness. And then for an extra knowledge bonus, some recent news reports of folks running around the country wanting you to think they are doing anything more than talking about a problem they get paid to talk about, but didn't manage to read any of the reports or do a fucking thing to change the outcome.

Am I pissed? I don't have to answer that question since you already know. I thought of all the newspapers I could send it to, the Washington Post would at least wonder what I was talking about since they have been investigating all this going back to 2006. They published the Army report stating clearly that redeployments increased the risk of PTSD by 50%.  
"The report also found a doubling of suicides among soldiers serving in the Iraq war from 2004 to 2005, the latest period for which data are available. Twenty-two soldiers took their own lives in Iraq and Kuwait in 2005, compared with 11 in 2004 and 25 in 2003, Army officials said."

Since that was the beginning of the increase we started seeing years ago, why isn't anyone looking at that? Why isn't anyone looking at the "resilience training" the DoD has been doing for over a decade?
Why is this important to the Army?
Enhanced resilience, achieved by a combination of specific training and improved fitness in the five domains of health, can decrease post-traumatic stress, decrease the incidence of undesirable and destructive behaviors, and lead to a greater likelihood for post-adversity growth and success. It ensures continuity of effort among the disparate organizations which currently provide education and training, intervention, or treatment programs to Soldiers and their Families.

The CSF will ensure Soldiers and Family members have the opportunity to enhance their resilience throughout their careers. The CSF program will maximize available training time, by equipping Soldiers with the skills to become more self-aware, fit, balanced, confident, and competent. Soldiers with these attributes will be better prepared to meet ambiguous and unpredictable challenges and help restore balance to the Army.
At least that is what they claimed back in 2009 after Battlemind failed to deliver on the training to keep them alive.

These are the results they have not been living with.

Nearly 300 veterans in Arizona committed suicide in 2016, report finds

According to the university, 277 veterans in Arizona committed suicide in 2016, an average of two suicides every three days.In comparison, there were 877 suicides across the state in 2016, the ASU Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety found.The center determined the death rates based off the number of suicides per 100,000 people. According to the U.S. Census, there were about 505,000 veterans living in Arizona last year.

From USA Today

Veterans in Arizona committed suicide at a rate of 55 per 100,000 last year while non-veterans did so at a rate of 14 per 100,000, according to the report from Arizona State University's Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety.
That reflects a 391% difference.
Yet a VA report last year said U.S. veterans are 22% more likely to commit suicide than civilians.

Maine's Veteran Suicide Rate Far Outpaces the Nation's

In 2014, 55 Maine veterans committed suicide.At a rate of 48.3 suicides per 100,000 vets, Maine's rate far outpaces the nation's which is 38.4 per 100,000.
 
Veteran suicide numbers in NC soar above national average
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recorded 249 veteran suicide deaths in North Carolina in 2014, more than double the number of veteran suicides reported in the same year in neighboring South Carolina...In North Carolina, the veteran suicide rate was 37 per 100,000 in 2014, according to the report, versus a national suicide average of 17 per 100,000 people.
New Mexico and Nevada 
According to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs data from 2014, the latest nationwide data available, New Mexico tied Nevada for having the third-highest rate of veteran suicide, at about 60 deaths per 100,000 veterans, just behind Utah and Montana.The national veteran suicide rate that year was 38.4 deaths per 100,000 veterans, according to the VA — far higher than the overall U.S. suicide rate of 13 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Quick check of recent headlines found these;

Operation 22: Call to Action INTERNITY
As Alyssa Thurlow shows us, their goal is to bring awareness to the high number of suicides in the veteran population.22... that's the number of veterans and active military members who take their own lives every day.
Silhouette Project and Maine Veterans Project 
This year, LaJoie started the Silhouette Project to raise awareness about veteran suicide. She displays silhouette cutouts of soldiers who have lost their lives to suicide. It represents the number of veterans who die by suicide each day nationwide...Another organization aimed at helping struggling veterans is the Maine Veterans Project. Shawn Goodwin is the founder, and a veteran himself. Goodwin also sits on Congressman Poliquin's newly created Veterans Advisory Panel.
These are just from the first page of the 379,000 Google results.


Hiking 2600 miles for veteran suicide awareness

ABC10-Nov 13, 2017
Seling set off on the 2,600-mile journey on March 28, raising awareness and funds aimed to help prevent veteran suicide. 

Oshkosh police to issue veterans challenge coins to raise suicide ...

Fox11online.com-10 hours ago
The Oshkosh Police Department will begin handing out challenge coins to veterans to hep raise awareness on veteran suicide, November 14, .

Be There: Campaign to raise awareness of veteran suicide

St. Helens Chronicle-1 hour ago
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), in partnership with Johnson & Johnson, announced a new public service announcement,

Vets walk across America to honor fallen brothers and raise suicide ...

Fox News-Nov 13, 2017
Eleven states and 2,670 miles later, the “Walk of Life” raised awareness about veteran suicide, and it gave the men a chance to heal old

Annual Veteran Suicide Awareness Rucksack March

Fox11online.com-Nov 11, 2017
The 5th annual Veteran suicide awareness march will take place in the ... or 2.0 miles to remember the 20 Veteran lives lost a day to suicide.

NWTC hosts veteran suicide awareness and prevention walk

Fox11online.com-Nov 8, 2017
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College hosted a suicide awareness and prevention walk in honor of veterans, November 8, 2017. (WLUK).

Veterans Day 2017: Suicide awareness effort highlights local ...

Southernminn.com-Nov 11, 2017
Veterans Day speaker Jeremiah Miller speaks of programs bringing attention to the realities of suicide among veterans and active military ...


Green Beret running across Va. to raise awareness of veteran suicide

WTOP-Nov 4, 2017
“I'm doing an awareness campaign for the 22 veterans that die by suicide daily,” Raiklin said. “Each mile represents one of our lost brothers ...


Local groups raise awareness for veteran suicide and substance ...

WDRB-Nov 11, 2017
BARDSTOWN, Ky. (WDRB) – On this Veteran's Day, our country's heroes were honored in a different kind of way in Nelson County by raising ...

Monday, October 9, 2017

Troops Can't Count on Us Counting Them?

Troops Can't Count on Us Counting Them?
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos

October 9, 2017




In 2013 I posted a question, "Who is responsible for military suicides now?" I am still waiting for an answer. As we keep reading about more and more, who put the lives of others ahead of their own, taking their own life, no one seems accountable.

We are now on the 3rd President in the chair of Commander-in-Chief since the War on Terror began. As the number of suicides went up, so did spending on "prevention" attempts. 

Members of Congress kept writing, passing and funding Bills because the chatter was about "one suicide is one too many" but no one seemed to be able to explain exactly what that was supposed to mean.

This is what Congress should have been seeing within the suicide numbers all along but they didn't bother to look.


  • 2012 Active Duty 321 Reserve 204 Total 525
DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,388,028)

Killed in Afghanistan 310 Killed in Iraq 1 Total 311

  • 2013 Active Duty 256 Reserve 220 Total 476
DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,370,329)

-17,699 from previous year

Killed in Afghanistan 127 Killed in Iraq 0 Total 127

  • 2014 Active Duty 274 Reserve 170 Total 444
DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,326,273)

-44,056 from previous year

Killed in Afghanistan 55 Killed in Iraq 3 Total 58

  • 2015 Active Duty 266 Reserve 212 Total 478
DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,301,443)

-24,830 from previous year

Killed in Afghanistan 22 Killed in Iraq 6 Total 28

Total reduction in Active Duty -86,585

  • 2016 Active Duty 276 Reserve 203 Total 479
Killed in Afghanistan 14 Killed in Iraq 17 Total 31


The 4th Quarter of 2017 has already begun, however, the DOD has not released the 2nd Quarter Suicide Report. If it has, I have not found it. 

With that, this is the breakdown with 1st Quarter reports going back to 2013.

First Quarter 
2017 
Active Duty 71
Reserve 51
Total 122

2016
Active Duty 62
Reserve 56
Total 118

2015
Active Duty 60
Reserve 42
Total 102

2014
Active Duty 73
Reserve 46
Total 119

2013
Active Duty 61
Reserve 56
Total 117

Enlisted
Overview of Military Personnel The total number of military personnel is over 3.6 million strong, including DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,388,028); DHS’s Active Duty Coast Guard members (41,849); DoD Ready Reserve and DHS Coast Guard Reserve members (1,086,447); members of the Retired Reserve (212,314) and Standby Reserve (16,327); and DoD appropriated and non-appropriated fund civilian personnel (907,121). DoD’s Active Duty and DHS’s Coast Guard Active Duty members comprise the largest portion of the military force (39.2%), followed by Ready Reserve members (29.7%) and DoD civilian personnel (24.8%). 

Overview of Military Personnel The total number of military personnel is over 3.6 million strong, including DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,370,329); DHS’s Active Duty Coast Guard members (40,420); DoD Ready Reserve and DHS Coast Guard Reserve members (1,102,419); members of the Retired Reserve (214,938) and Standby Reserve (14,408); and DoD appropriated and non-appropriated fund civilian personnel (874,054). DoD’s Active Duty and DHS’s Coast Guard Active Duty members comprise the largest portion of the military force (39.0%), followed by Ready Reserve members (30.5%) and DoD civilian personnel (24.2%). 

Overview of Military Personnel The total number of military personnel is over 3.5 million strong, including DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,326,273); DHS’s Active Duty Coast Guard members (39,454); DoD Ready Reserve and DHS Coast Guard Reserve members (1,101,939); members of the Retired Reserve (214,784) and Standby Reserve (13,700); and DoD appropriated and non-appropriated fund civilian personnel (856,484). DoD’s Active Duty and DHS’s Coast Guard Active Duty members comprise the largest portion of the military force (38.4%), followed by Ready Reserve members (31.0%) and DoD civilian personnel (24.1%)

Overview of Military Personnel The total number of military personnel is over 3.5 million strong, including DoD Active Duty military personnel (1,301,443); DHS’s Active Duty Coast Guard members (39,090); DoD Ready Reserve and DHS Coast Guard Reserve members (1,101,353); members of the Retired Reserve (216,370) and Standby Reserve (9,899); and DoD Appropriated and Non-Appropriated Funds civilian personnel (865,019). DoD’s Active Duty and DHS’s Coast Guard Active Duty members comprise the largest portion of the military force (37.9%), followed by Ready Reserve members (31.2%) and DoD civilian personnel (24.5%).


By Oct. 1, the Army must hit its target of 476,000 active duty soldiers, up from the previous goal of 460,000. Increased recruiting along with retention of more soldiers will make up the gap. President Trump has said he wants an even larger force — as many as 60,000 more soldiers.
The Air Force and Navy also are boosting their ranks. The Air Force plans to recruit and retain more airmen to meet its goal of 321,000 service members by Oct. 1, up 4,000 from its current total of 317,000, said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman. The Navy plans to add 2,200 recruits this fiscal year, according to Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a spokesman. The Navy has a target of 323,900 sailors for this year. The Marine Corps could add nearly 800 Marines this year to hit its target of 185,000, said Yvonne Carlock, a Marine spokeswoman.
Now you see the numbers for yourself. The number of enlisted went down, as suicides increased or remained fairly level.

The numbers are what they are but for all the "awareness" being talked about, no one thought about those who committed suicide while serving this country.

Now you see it, but, what do you plan on doing about it?

Here is the info on the Armed Forces Committees








UPDATE
Here are few more things you should know. First, every member of the military is trained in "prevention" but the DOD points out most suicides happen to "non deployed" but never seem to explain why this prevention did not work for them. If it wasn't good enough for non-deployed, how did they expect it to work on those sent back multiple times?


2008 Army created suicide prevention board 
Battlemind Bullshit

2010 900 Suicide prevention programs across 400 military installations

2012 Wounded Times Told You Resiliency Doesn't Work

2013 List of Resiliency Programs Review by Rand Corp

Saturday, July 8, 2017

The Brains Behind Battle Mind

The Brains Behind Battle Mind
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 8, 2017

A friend sent me a link to someone that has not been written about lately and that link (seen below about Pulitzer Prize) took me on a 4 hour hunt. What you will read, hopefully, will open your eyes to some very important details. The first one is, just because someone get attention, it does not mean they deserve it. It just means they know how to get as much as possible for themselves.

The "brains" behind the lost battle for minds caused this landmine for our service members and first responders. There is another way to put it but I'd end up with an "adults only" rating if I used what I am thinking.

Valvincent Reyes and Dave Grossman are among the "brains" responsible for telling the most courageous among us that they must be weak minded if they end up with PTSD or think of suicide.
Demographic characteristics and their associations with suicide A total of 255 active duty soldiers committed suicide in 2007 and 2008 (115 in 2007 and 140 in 2008). Table 2 presents the distribution of demographic characteristics for this group of individuals. Suicides were predominantly male (95%), 18e24 years old (45%) and Caucasian (73%), married at the time of death (59%) and lower enlisted (54%). Almost 69% had been deployed at least once to combat theatre.

"Battlemind training before they deploy." 
"As soon as they are approved medically and psychologically, they are sent to war."


Published on Sep 9, 2010 Lt. Colonel Valvincent Reyes, Clinical Assistant Professor at the USC School of Social Work, delivers a lecture at the San Diego Academic Center on November 24th, 2009 about Battlemind, the army's current model for mental health care, with an emphasis on its application before deployment. Lt. Col Reyes illustrates the discussion with his recent experiences debriefing victims and family members of victims in the aftermath of the shooting at Fort Hood.

But this training does not work. The rise in the number of suicides within the military and veterans community prove that one.

While the number of reported veteran suicides is in dispute, the percentages are not. 65% of the veteran suicides are over the age of 50. That is a reflection of the Veteran demographics with the majority of US veterans are in fact, over the age of 50. 

What is even more troubling is that those older veterans did not receive "preventative" training before deployment, nor did they receive any of the "efforts" people like Grossman were pushing.

Every service member has been "trained" yet the results in the OEF and OIF veterans as well as those currently in the military have proven beyond a shadow of doubt, this is not only not working, it has had the opposite result.

The rate of OEF and OIF veterans are triple their peer rate. For female veterans, suicides are six times higher than other females. Training, like Battlemind, followed by the stupidity of Comprehensive Solider Fitness, actually prevents them from seeking help as soon as they acknowledge they need it. How? Because they were all told they were training their brain to be tough enough to take whatever they face. In other words, if they need help, they were weak minded or did not train right. Thus, prevented from opening up to the others they served with so that no one would see them as weak.

In 2009, I had a prediction of this disastrous outcome.

Then again, Grossman does not seem to even get the functioning of the human body. While no human can take a bathroom break during combat, but the body does what it has to even though it is not convenient, Grossman took the opportunity to disparage even that aspect of combat.


Warrior Mindset: Mental Toughness, Skills for a Nation's Peacekeepers."If we look only at the individuals at the tip of the spear and factor out those who didn't experience intense combat, we can estimate that approximately 50 percent of those who did experience it admitted they had wet their pants and nearly 25 percent admitted they had mess themselves."


Ok, sure he must expect them to be able to say "hold your fire I need to take a leak" and then walk away from the action. So why point out something like than unless you figure it matches what you already assume they are? 

Back to the video, Reyes called them "maladaptive" and that is defined as this,
adjective1. of, relating to, or characterized by maladaptation or incomplete, inadequate, or faulty adaptation:
Back to the facts, these are the numbers after they pushed this training. As you look at the numbers remember the size of the military had gone down year after year. Less enlisted equals higher suicide rates.



As you have just seen, the "training" did not work and when the DOD points out that the "majority have never deployed" proves it even more. Think about this training not preventing the "non deployed" from killing themselves, then wonder how they expected it to work on those with multiple deployments. Any reasonable "expert" would have understood this calamity and ended it, but they turned around and planned on just pushing it harder.  

It also seems that Grossman did more than push this training. It seems he has also tried to sell himself as a "Pulitzer Prize Nominee" and was pointed out clearly on thetruthaboutsocnetlies
I’ll leave it to the reader to determine the whys of someone that sells books and training for a living to likely fudge the difference between paying $50 and filling out a form to being an actual Pulitzer Prize nominee. My opinion is if, like John Giduck, Mr. Grossman is knowing lying about his background to sell you books and seminars, what else is he lying about?  See the links below to learn more about the circle around that mutually promote and defend each other.
I still laugh about how cops pay a guy that never killed anyone for advice about killing.  How dumb is that? You may as well be sitting in a Grossman lecture about menstrual cramps. 
That article is from 2014 but his claim goes back even further.
Pulitzer-Nominated Author to Keynote TREXPO West 2007   LOS ANGELES – Campus Safety Magazine and the organizers of TREXPO announce that Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, one of law enforcement’s most in-demand speakers and trainers, will be one of the charismatic keynote speakers at TREXPO West 2007, March 19-22, in Long Beach, Calif.Grossman has been featured on TV and radio talk shows, in documentaries and in newspaper stories across the United States, Australia and Canada. Wherever Col. Grossman speaks, he draws enormous crowds and standing ovations. The way he energizes and captivates his audience is legendary!Grossman will deliver the opening keynote address on Tuesday, March 20, discussing a sensitive topic he has studied extensively: violent behavior and the ways law enforcement and communities can prevent fatalities. He is the founder of Killology Research Group, a police and military consultancy, and the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated On Combat and On Killing, which is required reading at the FBI Academy and some of the nation’s top military schools.This talented speaker and trainer combined his experiences as a West Point psychology professor, a professor of military science and an Army Ranger to become the founder of a new field of scientific endeavor, which has been termed “killology.” In this new field the impressive Grossman has made revolutionary new contributions to our understanding of war and violence in our society. 
And yet these "brains" do not seem to be able to explain how the bravest of the brave have not only proven their courage in combat, they have received the Medal of Honor. Many of them talk about their own battles with PTSD as well as how heroes like Dakota Meyer have attempted suicide.
"But triumphant times led to terrible times, with Meyer attempting to kill himself:  "So, I pulled over to the side of the road and I just pulled one of my guns out and I just put it to my head and squeezed the trigger.  And...there wasn't a round in it.  I don't know.  I have no idea, but, obviously somebody had taken it out...and it sobered me up. And it was like, at that point in time, I told myself, I have to figure this out. I have to figure this out because if I would have killed myself, that was the most, you know, selfish thing that I could ever do.""
Maybe folks should stop listening to the "brains" that have contributed to the stigma of PTSD and start listening to the folks actually trying to do something to change the outcome?

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Rise in Military Suicides Predicted in 2009 On Wounded Times

The following is from San Antonio Express Hood Army Suicides Hit Record Mark on January 2011.
The Pentagon has launched mental health and suicide-prevention programs and created an Army task force in hopes of turning the tide. In 2008, the Army began a five-year study with the National Institute of Mental Health. That research effort examines risk and resilience factors associated with suicides. A new military research consortium will test and develop interventions

Chiarelli told reporters that he believes the programs instituted by the Army in recent years have saved lives, but Col. Carl Castro, director of the medicine research program that established the suicide consortium, said no one is sure of their effectiveness.
“We think they’re effective,” he told the Express-News, “but we haven’t done the research to demonstrate that they may in fact be effective.” 
Chiarelli pointed to the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, which offers screening tests for soldiers, family members and Army civilian workers, as one successful effort. He said research comparing soldiers who committed suicide against a control group showed that, “broadly speaking, resilient soldiers do not complete suicide.” 
Yet the increase in suicides was predicted in 2009 once this "attempt" began.  It did not come from the Pentagon.  It did not come from highly educated military brass.  It did not come from members of Congress. The prediction of more dying from their own hands came from me. 


"If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them."

I have written about Comprehensive Soldier Fitness making it worse for them to the point where I have lost all hope anyone with the power to stop this would actually take action instead of supporting this.

So the suicides in the military went up and they didn't notice this was part of the reason.  Suicides within the Veterans Community went up and they did not even care anymore because the DOD did not have to account for any who received this training.

Congress came up with bills without ever once considering this as the biggest part of the problem and they kept paying for it financially while the soldiers paid for it with their lives.

So while I continue to comfort the men and women believing PTSD is their fault instead of the DOD telling them they are mentally weak instead of emotionally strong so they feel it all more, I also have to comfort families when it is too late to remove the stigma the military has actually paid billions to inflict on them.

And now the latest report comes from USA Today Experts worry high military suicide rates are new normal


Seven years after the rate of suicides by soldiers more than doubled, the Army has failed to reduce the tragic pace of self-destruction, and experts worry the problem is a "new normal."
"It's very clear that nothing that the Army has done has resulted in the suicide rates coming down," said Carl Castro, a psychologist who retired from the Army in 2013, when he was a colonel overseeing behavioral health research programs.
The sharp rise in the Army's suicide rate from 2004 through 2009 coincided with unusually heavy demands on the nation's all-volunteer military, as hundreds of thousands of troops, most of them in the Army, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The vast majority have since come home, but suicide rates remain stubbornly high.
The Army's suicide rate for active-duty soldiers averaged nearly 11-per-100-000 from Sept. 11, 2001, until shortly after the Iraq invasion in 2004. It more than doubled over the next five years, and, with the exception of a spike in 2012, has remained largely constant at 24-to-25-per-100,000, roughly 20% to 25 higher than a civilian population of the same age and gender makeup as the military.
This is the best example of how this has failed.

"Scientists still don't know exactly why suicides increased so dramatically in the military. Major studies have shown no direct link between the deaths and being deployed overseas, and suicide increased even among soldiers who did not deploy."




If it did not work for the non-deployed, then how the hell did they expect it to work on those with multiple deployments?