Words can hurt or heal PTSD

I love the "did you know" Geico commercials but my favorite is "Did you know words can hurt" commercial with a cowboy saying, "I'm a loner" as he rides off into The End.
There are words that can actually hurt. Sadly, the words troops heard and veterans hang onto came from the military leaders telling them they could train their brains to be mentally tough. While the words may seem as if they are helpful, they are more harmful than anything else they could ever say.

"The U.S. Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program is a preventive program that seeks to enhance psychological resilience among all members of the Army community. It helps those who are psychologically healthy face life's adversities, including the stressors of combat and prolonged separation from family."

This sounds harmless, Building spiritual fitness in the Army: An innovative approach to a vital aspect of human development.

This article describes the development of the spiritual fitness component of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program. Spirituality is defined in the human sense as the journey people take to discover and realize their essential selves and higher order aspirations. Several theoretically and empirically based reasons are articulated for why spirituality is a necessary component of the CSF program: Human spirituality is a significant motivating force, spirituality is a vital resource for human development, and spirituality is a source of struggle that can lead to growth or decline. A conceptual model developed by Sweeney, Hannah, and Snider (2007) is used to identify several psychological structures and processes that facilitate the development of the human spirit. From this model, an educational, computer-based program has been developed to promote spiritual resilience. This program consists of three tiers: (a) building awareness of the self and the human spirit, (b) building awareness of resources to cultivate the human spirit, and (c) building awareness of the human spirit of others. Further research will be needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this innovative and potentially important program.

It sounds harmless until you actually talk to veterans after they have had this training. Their spiritual burdens are causing them more harm than they should ever have to endure. They have no idea how to forgive themselves or others any more than they have a clue about how to see themselves. When their minds are focused on who they lost, what they did and didn't do, what they saw, they are unable to see what is really there and has been there all the time. The simple fact that they joined to save lives. Not to take them.

They could be trained to push their bodies beyond what humans should be able to do. Push their minds to be on alert even in their sleep. Push their courage over and over again. They can also push them into believing they were mentally weak and ended up with PTSD because they didn't train right. After all, the military gave them a weapon and was told it would work. When it didn't too many died because they believed the military wouldn't give them something that would endanger their lives.

Take a good look at the latest news release on military suicides being up again this year.

A current incidence rate was not included in the 2014 year-to-date suicide report. The figure is challenging to calculate, since it is based on the number of troops on active duty as well as the number of mobilized Guard and reserve troops — numbers that fluctuate as service members train and move between active and reserve status.

Of the 162 confirmed or suspected suicides to date this year for both the active and reserve components, the service breakdown is Army, 71; Air Force, 34; Marine Corps, 21; and Navy, 36.

This time last year, the figures were Army, 85; Air Force, 25; Marine Corps, 26; and Navy, 24.

The Navy is well ahead of its pace at this time last year and in fact is already closing in on its total of 43 for all of 2013.

This is after the DOD came out with CSF way back in 2009. These numbers are only part of the story of how these words did more harm than good because OEF and OIF veterans had this same training. What we see is the suicides went up, attempted suicides went up and veterans facing off with police and SWAT Teams from coast to coast.

The other part of the story is there are less serving this year than in 2012 and less serving in 2012 than in 2009.

This all came after the worst message was delivered. It wasn't the experiences of combat causing PTSD but "personality disorders" causing the suffering and it was being delivered in 2007.

The new diagnostic label sends the message: This suffering is your fault, not a result of the war. On one level, it's hard not to see this as another example of the government falling short on its care for Iraq war veterans. Yet there's another, more insidious, bit of sophistry at work. The implication is that a healthy person would be resistant to the psychological pressures of war. Someone who succumbs to the flashbacks, panic, and anger that haunt many former soldiers must have something inherently wrong with him. It's the psychological side of warrior macho: If you're tough, you can take it. Of course, we know this is not true. Wars forever change the lives of those who fight them and can leave deep scars.

Another important development would be a cultural shift within the military that both recognizes and destigmatizes the need for psychiatric care. This way soldiers and veterans would not be afraid to seek help in a timely manner – or be punished for having psychological complaints.

It hasn't stopped no matter how much contrary evidence has been released and reviewed. By 2009 before CSF was pushed full force, these were the numbers they were worried about. DOD leaders seek clues to Army suicides

The Army, which has borne the brunt of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, announced seven confirmed suicides in January, and as many as 24 soldiers may have killed themselves. The Army also reported a 25 percent increase in suicides in 2008 over the previous year. Last year was the fourth consecutive year that the number of Army suicides rose.

Why would the government spend billions a year on military suicides and PTSD if it was more about "personality disorders" than PTSD? They wouldn't. Why would the military claim that most of the suicides happened with no link to deployments? They can't admit that their own efforts have produced devastation. In the process, they end up pointing to their own mental health screenings failing to catch psychological issues before they allow recruits to join. In other words, when those not deployed took part in "resilience" training still ended up committing suicide, the DOD expected it to work on those deployed multiple times? Ok, but this made sense to them.

It made so much sense that the DOD and VA have been spending billions every year on this.

How did they expect words to heal PTSD when they were delivering the other side of the message that in the end, the hard landing just didn't matter?

Was Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Designed to Fail?

UPDATE Keep in mind that I have no inside information but managed to report the same findings.  Not just yesterday but last year when I wrote my book and since 2009 when I warned about this program would in fact increase military suicides. I have only been proven right because I paid attention!

Report: Military efforts to prevent mental illness ineffective
FROM USA TODAY
Gregg Zoroya
February 20, 2014

There's little evidence that the military's efforts to prevent mental illness among troops are effective, a panel of scientists has concluded.

The military has produced dozens of programs aimed at preventing mental illness among troops during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there's little evidence that most of them work, a blue-ribbon panel of scientists said in a report released Thursday.

The findings by a committee of 13 experts appointed by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies come as about 1,000 Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans are being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder each week, according to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"There's no substantive indication of effectiveness (in the military prevention programs) and most importantly, there's no evidence of an enduring impact," said panelist David Rudd, provost at the University of Memphis and an authority on suicide in the military.
read more here

Was Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Designed to Fail?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 19, 2014

Veterans and their families have been paying attention and wondering if the military efforts to address wide ranging issues was designed to fail on purpose or not. No one can blame them considering what the result have been while every branch of the military has been pushing the same spiel for years no matter what happened afterwards. The thoughts turned from hope that the military finally understood what the men and women were going thru into thoughts of being pushed into suffering and suicide.

This was the "news" on Valentines Day

Pentagon data provided to Military Times show 296 suicides among active-duty troops and reserve or National Guard members on active duty in 2013, down 15.7 percent from the 2012 total of 351.

It followed the worst year for suicides on record. It also followed what amounted to thousands of servicemen and women dishonorably discharged. According to the AP report, Misconduct Forces More Soldiers Out put together with the report on the number of suicides, it is obvious what the military is doing is not working.

Army 2012 351 2013 296=55 less suicides. 11,000 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013
Navy 2012 59 2013 46=7 less suicides. 3,700 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013
Air Force 2012 59 2013 55=4 less suicides. 2,900 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013
Marines 48-45=3 less suicides. 3,000 discharged for "misconduct" in 2013

Yes, that is a Power Point slide show but it should be called, "powerless point" since no one learned much from it. They actually make fun of it. Take a look at this group among the empty chairs. They are bored.

The military can claim these were all behavioral problems but what they cannot do it prove it. Considering the military does do psychological testing and checks backgrounds, they have also claimed to be addressing problems from substance and sexual abuses, yet they still continue.

Since early 2006 the Substance Abuse Rehabilitation Program (SARP) has been integrated into the Behavioral Services Department. In the case of sexual abuse they have been "addressing" that for many years including this report from what happened in 2009

Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2009 Annual Report on Sexual Assaults in the Military

"In 2005, the Department enacted the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Program to encourage increased reporting of the crime, facilitate improved access to victim care, better organize response resources, and promote prevention. The Department‘s vision is to enable military readiness by establishing a culture free of sexual assault. The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) within the Office of the Secretary of Defense is responsible for the policy that supports this program and oversight activities that ensure its effectiveness. The Department of Defense (DoD) policy requires each Military Service to maintain its own SAPR program, investigate Unrestricted Reports of sexual assaults, and hold subjects appropriately accountable."

Suicides, PTSD, misconduct and everything else going wrong can be summed up in one terrible approach that began in 2008.

Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness (CSF2) is designed to build resilience and enhance performance of the Army Family — Soldiers, their Families, and Army Civilians. CSF2 does this by providing hands-on training and self-development tools so that members of the Army Family are better able to cope with adversity, perform better in stressful situations, and thrive in life.

CSF2 has Training Centers located across the United States. These Training Centers provide Resilience and Performance Enhancement Training where it is needed most – at Army installations (unit level). CSF2 is an integral part of the Army’s Ready and Resilient Campaign ; a campaign that promotes physical and psychological fitness and encourages personal and professional growth. Resilient Soldiers, Family members and Army Civilians perform better, which results in improved unit readiness and better lives.

Nice slogan but not worth more than the lives lost while they continued to push it.

FIVE DIMENSIONS OF STRENGTH but the outcome has been proven to be a failure. It isn't as if no one warned about any of this.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University

“This report reads more like propaganda than a serious scientific study,” he said in an email after reviewing the Army study results. “The big question, though, has not yet been addressed: Does this intervention make combat soldiers more resilient and prevent PTSD and somatization [a condition in which a person has many physical symptoms but no physical cause that can be detected]?

Anything else we try to do will fail until we can undo the damage done by this.

When we see the outcome spread past the military life and into the lives of our veterans, the whole nation should have screamed instead of just yawning. How could the military push something that experts have been complaining about for years? How could they just ignore the results?

If you want to know how much we knew and how much was spent to produce these deplorable results, read THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR Everything in this book was complied from news reports along with military documents. Nothing in it was hidden but most of it was forgotten.

Psychologist who inspired CIA's Torture Program behind spiritual test?

How did this happen? Torture is anti-spiritual but the same person came up with a test to measure the spiritual aspects of soldiers? Did they have a clue when they were paid if this would work or not? Trauma is Greek meaning wound and trauma is an assault on the spirit/soul so it is vital that the spiritual is included in on healing as much as the mind and body but it cannot be forced or it has the opposite result. Just one more thing the military has done that shows not only poor judgement but a total lack of understanding.

Army's "Spiritual Fitness" Test Comes Under Fire
Wednesday 05 January 2011
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

Test Was Designed by Psychologist Who Inspired CIA's Torture Program

An experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative designed by the same psychologist whose work heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration's torture program is under fire by civil rights groups and hundreds of active-duty soldiers. They say it unconstitutionally requires enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" in order to be deemed "spiritually fit" to serve in the Army.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is a $125 million "holistic fitness program" unveiled in late 2009 and aimed at reducing the number of suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases, which have reached epidemic proportions over the past year due to multiple deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the substandard care soldiers have received when they return from combat. The Army states that it can accomplish its goal by teaching its service members how to be psychologically resilient and resist "catastrophizing" traumatic events. Defense Department documents obtained by Truthout state CSF is Army Chief of Staff George Casey's "third highest priority."

CSF is comprised of the Soldier Fitness Tracker and Global Assessment Tool, which measures soldiers' "resilience" in five core areas: emotional, physical, family, social and spiritual. Soldiers fill out an online survey made up of more than 100 questions, and if the results fall into a red area, they are required to participate in remedial courses in a classroom or online setting to strengthen their resilience in the disciplines in which they received low scores. The test is administered every two years. More than 800,000 Army soldiers have taken it thus far.

But for the thousands of "Foxhole Atheists" like 27-year-old Sgt. Justin Griffith, the spiritual component of the test contains questions written predominantly for soldiers who believe in God or another deity, meaning nonbelievers are guaranteed to score poorly and will be forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to "train" soldiers up to a satisfactory level of spirituality.
read more here
Army's Spiritual Fitness Test Comes Under Fire

Will Ferrell Talladega Nights Cougar used in Army Resilience Training?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 6, 2014

The LA Times reported that just before the Fort Hood shooting there was a class on Resilience Training.

Just over an hour after the class was dismissed, sirens went off across the sprawling military installation. A soldier was on a shooting rampage. Authorities say Spc. Ivan Lopez killed three fellow service members with a handgun and wounded 16 others before shooting himself in the head.

What happens during Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Training?

In the course of the day, the students would practice escaping a wrestling hold while being taunted by fellow soldiers. They would balance a dime on the end of an M16 rifle. They would watch a clip from the movie "Talladega Nights" in which Will Ferrell tries to get into a car with a cougar in the front seat. Such exercises, the Army hopes, will build troops who are not just physically tough but psychologically resilient.

Ok, and the Army thought that a situation from a comedy would equal combat?

Hell if they wanted to use a movie they should have use The Robe since that movie is about a Roman soldier involved in the crucifixion of Christ played by Richard Burton in 1953. That movie is about PTSD and even attempted suicide. Burton played Marcellus a Tribune haunted by the Robe Christ wore as He took His last walk on earth. He had nightmares and flashbacks driving people up the wall with the constant question "Were you there?" It was not until Marcellus found a way to heal his spirit that he was able to live again. Ok a bit twisted because he ended up in the end heading to be put to death because he had become a Christian.

It isn't the first time the government has used stupid examples. Gilgamesh was used as a serious example by the VA-DOD.

Yes, Gilgamesh!

Finally a reporter, Alan Zarembo, decided that this "program" needed to extensive coverage.

The training at Ft. Hood is part of a $50-million-a-year program launched in 2009 to do for the mind what physical fitness does for the body. Known as Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness, it trains 900,000 troops a year in 14 skills aimed at preventing psychological disorders, building resilience and improving performance.

He isn't right on the $50 million a year because it isn't just the Army paying for it but all other branches are using the same type of "training" plus other departments funding other programs and congress dolling out millions more in grants, but at least he is a lot closer than other reporters have been.

The resilience program is based on a field known as positive psychology, which emerged in the 1990s. Unlike clinical psychology, which targets mental illness, it focuses on building strengths and helping people flourish.

The best evidence that psychological resilience can be taught comes from studies involving children. Those who received such training were less likely to develop depression.

Is it money well spent? Hell no! Suicides went up after they started it but as you read in the other article, it didn't take a genius to figure out the harm this would do.

The Army has portrayed the program as a success based on anecdotal reports and internal reviews, which found that soldiers saw small improvements on some measures of psychological health.

But last month, the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine issued a report saying those improvements were not clinically meaningful and that the program had never been properly evaluated. It joined a growing number of critics.

While the rest of the press is coming up with headlines that end up slamming the troops and veterans with PTSD, at least this article takes a good hard look at how it got this bad.

Where has all the money gone on Suicide Prevention?

These are just some of the grants going into PTSD and Suicide Prevention.
*editors note: If you are a reporter, I left the links out because I am tired to doing the work for you. If you want to verify them, you just have to find them on this blog.

February 2007

But in 2005 and 2006, despite telling Congress that it was setting aside an additional $300 million for expanding mental-health services, such as PTSD programs, the VA didn't get around to spending $54 million of that, according to the Government Accountability Office.”

Jan. 3, 2008

BATTLEMIND Title:Battlemind Transition Office Role:Prime Contractor Contract Number:VW81XWH-07-D-0011-0001 Contracting Agency:US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity Type:IDIQ Period of Performance: 30-SEP-2007 through 29-SEP-2010 Customer:

News American Forces Press Service ‘Battlemind’ Prepares Soldiers for Combat, Returning Home By Susan Huseman Special to American Forces Press Service STUTTGART, Germany, – Every soldier headed to Iraq and Afghanistan receives “Battlemind” training designed to help them deal with combat experiences, but few know the science behind the program. Consequently, Dr. Amy Adler, a senior research psychologist with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research’s U.S. Army Medical Research Unit Europe, in Heidelberg, Germany, visited Patch Barracks here, breaking down the program, which is a system of support and intervention.

April 2008

By 2008 another $2.7 million was handed over to a contractor to make phone calls. Yep~phone calls! 570,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to be called to find out why they hadn’t gone to the VA.

October 2008

“The Army and the National Institute of Mental Health have begun a five-year, $50 million research program into the factors behind soldier suicides and how to prevent them, Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters at the Pentagon.

April 2009

“The Army's alarming suicide trend continues this year, said David Rudd, the chairman of Tech's psychology department who will head the $1.97 million Defense Department study.

March 23, 2010

Dr. Thomas Insel, director of National Institute of Mental Health gave testimony to congress on March 23, 2010. “In Fiscal Year 2009, NIMH spent over $41 million in 97 grants, in 23 states, dedicated to helping veterans. We are working with DoD, VA, and academic clinicians and researchers to focus on the mental health needs of active duty, National Guard, and Reserve service personnel, as well as veterans and their families.

December 2011

The $125-million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program requires soldiers to undergo the kind of mental pre-deployment tests and training that they have always had to undergo physically. Already, more than 1.1 million have had the mental assessments.

$11 million Department of Defense grant to test two different types of exposure therapy combined with the drug D-Cycloserine (DCS) for the treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).Emory University School of Medicine

March 2012

$3.5 million grant for a research project to more effectively treat post-traumatic stress disorder and ultimately prevent it from occurring.

May 2012

$10 million to outsource PTSD and TBI care. Congressmen Mike Thompson of California and Pete Sessions of Texas announced an amendment to create a five year “pilot program” to allow military patients to from civilian healthcare facilities. “Utilizing an array of leading-edge successful therapies to treat TBI and PTSD for the 2013 budget.

June 4, 2012

“Master Resilience Trainer” is placed into an Army unit after 10 days of training. They were “charged with equipping fellow soldiers with thinking skills and strategies intended to help them more effectively handle the physical and psychological challenges of military life, including, most especially, combat operations.” The analysis added this, “However, the public that has paid over $100 million for the CSF program and, even more, the one million soldiers who are involuntarily subjected to CSF’s resiliency training deserve much better than the misrepresentations of effectiveness aggressively promoted.”

$31 million no-bid contract to Seligman’s positive psychology center at the University of Pennsylvania for CSF development

June 12, 2012

The Pentagon has not spent much of some $8 million Congress has provided for suicide prevention because the funds are allocated only for “in-house,” or hospital, care — not education and outreach programs, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

July 2012

Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is a $125 million program that seeks to make troops as psychologically fit as possible. But a group of psychologists says there’s no proof that the program — or similar resilience-building efforts in the other services — works.

August 18, 2012

Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act Signed Authorization of Appropriations.--For the purpose of carrying out this section, there are authorized to be appropriated $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2005, $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2006, and $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2007.''. 108th Congress Public Law 355 The US Army has awarded a scientist at the Indiana University School of Medicine $3 million to develop a nasal spray that eclipses suicidal thoughts. Dr. Michael Kubek and his research team will have three years to ascertain whether the nasal spray is a safe and effective method of preventing suicides. US Army grants $3 million for anti-suicide nasal spray research

August 2012

UCLA School of Dentistry, has received a $3.8 million research grant to develop a salivary-biomarker approach for identifying individuals at future risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression following a traumatic event.

Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center a five-year grant of $4.1 million to establish an Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention (ICRC-S).

$2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to study the effect of the Transcendental Meditation

Sept. 2012

VA, DOD to Fund $100 Million PTSD and TBI Study From a Department of Veterans Affairs News Release WASHINGTON, – The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense today announced they are investing more than $100 million in research to improve diagnosis and treatment of mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. This year, approximately 3,400 researchers will work on more than 2,300 projects with nearly $1.9 billion in funding. Specific information on the consortia, including the full description of each award, eligibility, and submission deadlines, and general application instructions, are posted on the Grants.gov and CDMRP websites.

Fort Detrick is receiving $100 million in federal grants to fund research into post-traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury.

$7.7 million grant from the Department of Defense (DoD) to study the most effective way to implement Prolonged Exposure therapy, an effective and efficient treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among mental health practitioners who treat soldiers suffering from this disorder.

October 31, 2012

Department of Defense Military Suicide Research Consortium decided they had $677,000 laying around and thought it would be good to spend in on finding out how 100 military families felt after the suicide loss of someone they loved and it would be worth the two years it would take thee the University of Kentucky to do it.

Soldiers nothing more than lab rats for research project

They used to shoot soldiers for being cowards, now they just push them so they do it themselves. This is what Comprehensive Soldier Fitness was based on.

“They had schoolchildren, each night, write down three positive things about themselves. And then they noticed in a follow-up study that those children felt better about themselves.

But to go from that to saying that we can have a soldier in a foxhole who says positive things about himself and follows the precepts of this program, is going to watch his buddy blown to smithereens and spend four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and come out feeling better about himself, there is a shallowness to the assessment that, from my vantage point, I find abhorrent.”

“Recently, the Army released an evaluation of the program, which said, in part, "There is now sound scientific evidence that Comprehensive Soldier Fitness improves the resilience and psychological health of soldiers.” But there is disagreement over that statement in psychiatric circles from doctors and Ph.D.s who say the evaluation is flawed and doesn't prove anything. Meanwhile, the Air Force is in the process of implementing its own version of the program.” (Army Program Aims to Build Troops Mental resilience to Stress, PBS News Hour, Judy Woodruff, December 14, 2011)

Soldiers nothing more than lab rats for research project
De-Tour Combat PTSD Survivors Guide
Kathie Costos
October 1, 2013


Well Suicide Awareness Month is over and so far we have not learned much. At least nothing that is good or hopeful. We do know the answers are out there, just as they have been for the last 40 years but with the way most reporters act, it is almost as if nothing has been learned.

First you need to know that it is not your fault. PTSD goes all the way back to the Old Testament and if you ever read the Psalms of David, you'd see it in his words and his heartbreak. That depth of pain few find the words to express come pouring out of him. It isn't new.

There was a news report released today about WWI soldiers in what was most likely PTSD cases.

The historians' report, commissioned by the government, called for the cases of 650 men shot during the war to be reconsidered.

read more here

DOD message has been PTSD is your fault

DOD message has been PTSD is your fault 
by Chaplain Kathie

The Department of Defense has been unknowingly delivering a message to the troops that PTSD is their fault while expecting a different result. Why? Because they still don't understand what causes PTSD in the first place or the best way to heal it.

This is one of those moments I am grateful I am not a "military Chaplain" instead of a Chaplain working with veterans. I don't have to worry about being divided between holding the DOD line and taking care of the men and women serving in it.

Their attitude has been that servicemen and women can "train" brains to prevent it. They point to soldiers that have come through the training and have been able to prevent PTSD. Did it ever once occur to them these men and women wouldn't have ended up with PTSD in the first place? 

The rate is normally one out of three. That means two will walk away from a traumatic event with just memories and not much more than that. One will walk away with it embedded in their soul changing how they think and feel about everything.

When they tell this group they can become mentally tough before combat it delivers a message to them they are weak and didn't train their brains right if they end up with PTSD after combat.

The reluctance to seek help stems from this. Do they think that a tough Marine will admit they have PTSD when they were told weak minds end up PTSD? Do they think they will seek help when they've seen what it did to the careers of others? If the "two out of three" also believe the notion the others were just too weak, do you think for a second they will treat the PTSD soldier the same way afterwards?

When the report came out about another 125 million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness no one in congress has bothered to ask if it works or not. The reports coming out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord prove it doesn't work.

"At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, described by the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes last year as "the most troubled base in the military," all of these factors have crystallized into what some see as a community-wide crisis. A local veterans group calls it a "base on the brink."

It has been advertised as some kind of new program but is based on Battlemind nonsense that the troops can train their brains to prevent PTSD leaving them with the impression if they do end up with PTSD, they were weak and didn't train their brains right.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program aims to equip troops mentally Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum of Gulf War fame has been deployed to lead the military's new program to prepare soldiers for the psychic trauma of war and its aftermath.

"Aims to equip troops mentally" is something they've been trying to do since the Revolution. Bootcamp is supposed to be about training them to be ready for combat mentally as well as physically. The claim of "new program" is also false since it has been tried since 2008 under a bunch of different names so the public will have the impression the military is doing all they can to stop the suicides and suffering from PTSD. Brig. General Cornum earned bragging rights with the trauma she survived but that should not translate into running a program without showing results. She is not alone on this.

The notion of training the minds has been around since the reports of suicides going up began to make the news. The truth is, they cannot become more mentally tough. How much tougher can you get than to be willing to die for someone else, ready to endure all kinds of physical and mental hardships than they are when they enlist? The thing is, they can train their brains to heal from where they've been. The key word is "heal" because there isn't a cure anymore than anyone can "cure" their own past. We can learn from experiences, grow from them, become a better person, enjoy simple pleasures more, but we cannot change what happened. On the flip side, we can also be destroyed by the events, especially the ones we had no control over, become so filled with regret we hate everything and everyone, be brought down so low that we find no hope in a better day and nothing reaches our hearts. We can push people away, feel as if we don't deserve to be happy or forgiven and even regret feeling loved.

Here's some numbers for you now.

The military answer has been to medicate the ones they want to keep and kick out the ones they don't want. They send them back into combat medicated and expect them to be able to function? Therapy must be for only for veterans then since the VA does offer it along with medications. As for spiritual healing, you can forget that one too. Reports came out regarding the attitude of 60% of military Chaplains more about getting converts to their own denomination than it has been about saving lives and healing them. Suffering servicemen and women are told that if they do not convert, they'll go to hell.

 This is why the numbers are so high but the most infuriating part of all of this is that none of it had to happen. This all needs to stop but it won't until congress demands accountability and stops funding what has been one failure after another.

UPDATE

If you think this is "new" news, here are a couple of reports from 2008 and 2009 most people have forgotten about. These links are still active and they show what was known back then and how lessons learned did not cause changes needed.

February 11, 2009 3:05 PM

The Military's Showdown Over PTSD
By Kimberly Dozier

(CBS) Twenty-two year old combat medic Jonathan Norrell volunteered for every mission during his year in Iraq.

He was bombed, ambushed, treating wounded under fire - and the memories still haunt him, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports.

"The things that affected me the most weren't the IEDs, which I went through six or seven of, and all the firefights, and all the combat," Norrell said. "It was the psychological stuff, the people I failed to help."

By the time he came off his tour of duty he was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: anxiety, sleeplessness, flashbacks. Military doctors recommended immediate discharge and treatment but the command refused.

Instead they forced him into combat training exercises. He turned to drugs and alcohol.

"I just lost it," Norrell said. "I didn't wanna do it anymore."

So the Army he served so well in Iraq threatened to expel him without medical benefits.

Norrell's case reveals the showdown inside the military, between the new school and old school view on how to handle PTSD - one of the signature injuries of the Afghan and Iraq wars.

And experts warn there's a storm coming: a generation of soldiers coming home with PTSD.
read more here

Antidepressant Use Soars Among Deployed

Stars and Stripes
June 12, 2008
For the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report in Time Magazine.
In its June 16 cover story, the magazine reports that the medicines are intended not only to help troops keep their cool but also to enable the already strapped Army to preserve its most precious resource: soldiers on the front lines.

Citing the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report, using an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, Time wrote that about 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq and 17 percent of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope.

Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials told Time.

The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants -- largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft -- and those taking prescription sleeping pills such as Ambien, Time wrote.

UPDATE
Editorial Board wrong on Joint Bast Lewis-McChord was an attempt to defend what the military has been doing but as the above points out, the results show a different story.

What infuriates me the most is that reporters have a responsibility to report facts, not just what they are told at the moment. That is exactly what has been happening leaving the impression the military has been "learning" on the job instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

When you read the link to my response here are some more facts you may find interesting.

Suicide Prevention
Suicide and Public Policy
• 1997-U.S. Congress -S.Res 84 and H.Res 212
• 1999-Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Suicide
• 2001-National Strategy for Suicide Prevention
• 2002-Institute of Medicine Report-Reducing Suicide: A National Imperative
• 2003-President’s New Freedom Commission
• 2004-Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act
• 2005-Federal Action Agenda
• 2006-Establishment of Federal Working Group on Suicide Prevention
• 2007-Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act

Outcomes of Hotline Referral
1,771 Admissions
143 Enrolled
5,902 Referrals to other services
506 Immediate evaluations

This all happened well after the "training" of their brains to become "mentally tough" enough.

Yet this was happening in 2010

Suicide Rivals The Battlefield In Toll On U.S. Military
by JAMIE TARABAY
June 17, 2010
Nearly as many American troops at home and abroad have committed suicide this year as have been killed in combat in Afghanistan. Alarmed at the growing rate of soldiers taking their own lives, the Army has begun investigating its mental health and suicide prevention programs.

But the tougher challenge is changing a culture that is very much about "manning up" when things get difficult.

This is the first in an occasional series of stories on the problem of suicides in the military.


Stephen Colley, 22, killed himself in May 2007, six months after returning from a tour in Iraq.
The Case Of Stephen Colley

Military veteran Edward Colley served in the Air Force and the Army. Three of his children also served in the military, and his son-in-law was awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq.

Colley, 53, and his wife, who live in Los Angeles, also have three other kids, but the tradition of military service is on hold. "Mom prohibits the younger ones from joining the military now," he says. "You might understand the prohibition in our house."

The mother's ban was imposed after their son Stephen killed himself in May 2007, six months after returning from a tour in Iraq. Stephen, 22, had suffered depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and his young marriage was in trouble.
read more here

When you read anything, remember, it is based on what is known at the time but all too often, they never bother to look back to see what was known before it.

Five pillars of fitness

Wounded veteran shares stories of resilience

DVIDS

“The fact is we have the right ingredients to sustain us in times of great difficulty,” said Roever, a Fort Worth, Texas, native.

While this may have worked for some veterans, there is not telling how many it helped any more than it answers how many it didn't help.

Whenever I hear about any program being pushed now, my first question is usually "How long have they been doing this?" Followed by "Has it worked." Judging by the fact the suicide numbers have gone up over the last couple of years, I don't hold out much hope on what the military is doing. It looks like this program has been up for about a year now but the results are a higher suicide rate across the military. It all depends on how much this program is being used but if it is wide spread, that is not a good result at all.


I have hopes that this may be close to where it needs to be because it does address the mind-body-spirit connection that has to be addressed. It does try to include families in on the healing. That's all good but the questions it asks trying to figure out if a soldier is in need of help are much like the kind of test you'd answer for a job. The open ended questions leave too much room to answer what they think the right answer should be instead of an honest one.

Much like the question "Have you thought of harming yourself or anyone else today does not factor in what the thoughts were yesterday or that they may come on later today, this leaves way too much room to play with the answers.

Here are a couple of links so that you can take a look at this yourself.

Herald Union - News
Five pillars of fitness


Oct 8, 2009 ... The Army has come out with the Comprehensive Fitness Campaign. ... It's about total wellness and fitness, building strength and resiliency in our Soldiers, families

Microsoft PowerPoint
Cornum CSF Overview Brief 23SEP09

Oct 26, 2009 ... COMPREHENSIVE SOLDIER FITNESS: STRONG MINDS, STRONG BODIES. \. BG Rhonda Cornum. UNCLASS/FOUO. DAMO-CSF

Can it work? Yes but it all depends on what they put into it. If they say they include the family in on healing then how do they do it? Do they tell the family what they need to know or do they gloss over it?

All of us need to take a good look at programs they are putting out and ask some hard questions because the answers involve life or death issues. So far, no program has been a real success since the numbers have kept on going up. The Montana National Guard's program, which I thouht was the best a few years ago, may still be the best one out there but I have not seen new data released from them lately.

Fort Hood Between 11,000 to 13,000 Wait for Counselors Each Month!

This is the most telling part of all of this proving beyond a doubt that Comprehensive Soldier Fitness does not work! It is something I tried to warn folks about back in 2009 when I wrote Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Will Make It Worse.

"Demand for care is not letting up. Records show counselors at Fort Hood are still handling between 11,000 to 13,000 appointments each month. That’s down only slightly from four years ago when they were seeing 13,000 to 16,000 a month."

The number of suicides in the military went up even as less were serving. The number of veterans committing suicide went up after all the "training" the DOD continued to push no matter what harm was being done.

Here is the rest of the report from NBC on Warrior Transition Units. If you haven't heard about all this before, there are links to the other reports done over the last year.

Soldiers Waited Days, Weeks for Counseling at Fort Hood: Investigation
Army says it’s understaffed, but that soldiers are getting the help they need when they need it
NBC 5 News
By Scott Friedman
Sep 7, 2015

But records show some soldiers still wait an average of 21 days for routine follow-up appointments. That’s longer than the Army’s target goal of seven days.

New Army records obtained by NBC 5 Investigates show active duty soldiers including those returning from combat have had to wait days or even weeks to make appointments with mental health counselors at Fort Hood.

Even as combat slowed down, the number of soldiers needing mental health care at Fort Hood has remained high. Thousands of soldiers still see counselors every week and records show that for more than six years the Army has struggled to hire enough psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to help recovering soldiers.

A 2011 Army PowerPoint presentation obtained by NBC 5 Investigates shows the average wait time for soldiers to see a psychiatrist reached 49 days and the average wait to a psychologist was 53 days. The presentation said Fort Hood has faced “unprecedented demand for behavioral health services,”that were “…coupled with ongoing staffing challenges…”
read more here

Reminder there are thousand less in the military now so these numbers are truly deplorable.

What have we learned during Suicide Awareness Month?

What have we learned during Suicide Awareness Month?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 26, 2013

Twenty-six days into this month when we were supposed to be made aware of what is going on has left many of us worse than feeling empty. It feels as if all these years were just a waste of time. It sure has been a waste of money since apparently the Army thinks "Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations." Topped off with they lack a loving family like Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told David Wood of the Huffington Post in an interview.

If that is the case then Odierno should have alerted the Pentagon and Congress they didn't need all the funds to pay for stuff since it was the fault of the soldiers they died by their own hands. Bet the people responsible for the over 900 suicides prevention programs taking in billions a year got a big chuckle out of ripping off the treasury for something they didn't need to do. After all, they really got a kick out of it when they kept getting the money even after the suicides and attempted suicides went up.

I am not sure if it is more sickening than frightening right now.

Imagine being one of the survivors of military suicide and reading what Odierno thinks about them. Imagine being one of the family members already dealing with all the questions left behind while blaming themselves because someone they loved didn't want to stay alive anymore. After all, that happens more than 55 times a day without even counting the active duty forces or the Army National Guards and Army Reservists that keep being left out of the totals the press uses.

The Army has not released the August report for Army, Army National Guards and Army Reservists suicides as of today. What bothers most more is the fact the Department of Defense hasn't even bothered to release the full report for 2012 for all branches yet. We don't know how many committed suicide or how many attempted it. There were over 900 attempts in 2011.

While more and more people do care about this more and more are under some kind of grand delusion the military gets it. How could they? How could they even begin to understand what they have been claiming to fight against since 2008 when someone like Odierno comes out with that kind of crap they used to use during the Civil war when traumatized troops were shot for being cowards.

Where is common sense in all of this? Programs don't work so they push the programs that already failed. They tell the troops asking for help is not a sign of weakness but then Odierno says it is.

I hope all of this sinks in enough so all of us know when it comes to taking care of the men and women risking their lives for each other every day, the military really doesn't care. If they did, Odierno would be forced to resign and take all the others with him. His record sucks on paying attention but his record as a leader has been vandalized by his ignorance.

All the hacks out there pushing Comprehensive Soldier Fitness and what the military has been doing are also responsible for this deadly outcome.

Every time you read what one of them has to say, just look up the record of what they are getting away with claiming and know there is much more to what they say than the saving lives.

As for me, well, I am only more aware that one thing Odierno got right is the fact the suicides won't go down just because the war in Afghanistan will end. After all, the war on suicides was lost back when they started pushing a program still in research stages designed for school kids to give them more self esteem. Don't take my word for it but you can read at least this for yourself. The Dark Side of “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness”

Here is a taste of what experts I track have been talking about.

Also problematic, the CSF program is adapted primarily from the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP) where interventions were focused on dramatically different, non-military populations. Even with these groups, a 2009 meta-analysis of 17 controlled studies reveals that the PRP program has been only modestly and inconsistently effective. PRP produced small reductions in mild self-reported depressive symptoms, but it did so only in children already identified as at high risk for depression and not for those from the general population. Nor did PRP interventions reduce symptoms more than comparison prevention programs based on other principles, raising questions as to whether PRP's effects are related to the "resilience" theory undergirding the program. Further, like many experimental programs, PRP had better outcomes when administered by highly trained research staff than when given by staff recruited from the community. This raises doubts as to how effectively the CSF program will be administered by non-commissioned officers who are required to serve as "Master Resilience Trainers."

So they die because the military used a research project for school kids, inflicted it on our troops, and then blamed them for what the result was. That is what we learned this month.

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."

The Warrior Saw, Suicides After War by Kathie Costos

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

Dark Side of Military "Prevention" Efforts

Dark Side of Military "Prevention" Efforts
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 9, 2013

Suicide Prevention results on efforts prove we've been snookered addresses how much money has been spent on "prevention" efforts but the worst one shows that with all these years of this "training" we are at a point where Veterans seeking death over life is at least 55 a day. That number came from the report of 1,000 veterans a month attempting suicided tied into the deaths of 22 veterans a day. I left out the totals for attempted military suicides since the 2012 Suicide Event Report with the numbers in it have not been released yet (plus the report has the latest data on all branches including the Army National Guards and Army Reserves) so while I showed the numbers that have been released, it is focusing more on the attempted suicides they admit to. The truth is we'll never really know how high these numbers are but we do have a baseline. We also know what is behind the rise in veterans wanting to die.

This was written in 2011 and what happened in 2012 proved them right and the military wrong.

The Dark Side of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

Also problematic, the CSF program is adapted primarily from the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP) where interventions were focused on dramatically different, non-military populations.

Even with these groups, a 2009 meta-analysis of 17 controlled studies reveals that the PRP program has been only modestly and inconsistently effective. PRP produced small reductions in mild self-reported depressive symptoms, but it did so only in children already identified as at high risk for depression and not for those from the general population.

Nor did PRP interventions reduce symptoms more than comparison prevention programs based on other principles, raising questions as to whether PRP's effects are related to the "resilience" theory undergirding the program.

Further, like many experimental programs, PRP had better outcomes when administered by highly trained research staff than when given by staff recruited from the community. This raises doubts as to how effectively the CSF program will be administered by non-commissioned officers who are required to serve as "Master Resilience Trainers."

It is also important to note here two controversial aspects of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program that have already received attention from investigative journalists.

First, Mark Benjamin has raised provocative questions, not yet fully answered, about the circumstances surrounding the huge, $31 million no-bid contract awarded to Seligman ("whose work formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration's torture program") by the Department of Defense for his team's CSF involvement.

Benjamin notes that the government allows sole-source contracts only under very limited conditions. The Army contract documents note that "there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements." But as we have detailed above, public claims about the effectiveness of the Penn Resiliency Program and its superiority to alternative prevention programs are significantly overstated, casting doubt upon the rationale for awarding the sole-source contract.

They took a program designed to treat kids with very little evidence it worked, then decided to force it onto the troops expecting it to work? Huh? Really?

Why would they give a contract to save lives to the same man they went to for how to torture others?
Considering this came out while we ended up with the highest suicide rate on record in 2012, someone should have been paying attention.

Army strong
August 20, 2009
Training soldiers for battle, and emotional resiliency
The Army has worked diligently to stem the tragic swell of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among soldiers burdened by physical and psychic wounds of repeated deployments. It is no quantum leap, then, that the Army would take a proactive stand and require some 1.1 million active-duty troops, reservists and National Guard members to begin "emotional resiliency" training that arms soldiers with coping skills in all kinds of situations. The hope is to stem the tide of PTSD, which plagues up to a fifth of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and head off other mental-health problems.

Let's take a look at another claim made focused on divorces

The Huffington Post has an article Military Divorce Risk Increases with Lengthy Deployments This included a link to a USA Today story Military divorce rate at highest level since 1999.

The military divorce rate reached its highest level since 1999, as nearly 30,000 marriages ended in fiscal 2011, raising the prospect that troop withdrawals may lead to more divorce, according to interviews and Pentagon data released Tuesday.

While that sounds really bad, the American Forces Press Service reported this way back in 2005.

Recognizing the stresses military life and multiple deployments put on families, the services are stepping up their efforts to help their members strengthen their family relationships and avoid the divorce courts.

A full range of outreach programs - from support groups for spouses of deployed troops to weekend retreats for military couples - aims to help military families endure the hardships that military life often imposes.

Specific service-by-service statistics about divorce rates within the military weren't available, but the rates for the Army give a snapshot of what are believed to be a militarywide trend.

Army officials reported 10,477 divorces among the active-duty force in fiscal 2004, a number that's climbed steadily over the past five years. In fiscal 2003, the Army reported fewer than 7,500 divorces; in 2002, just over 7,000, and in 2001, about 5,600.

During the past two years, the divorce rate has been higher among Army officers than their enlisted counterparts, reversing the previous trend, officials said. In fiscal 2003, the Army reported almost 1,900 divorces among its 56,000 married officers. The following year, that number jumped to more than 3,300 - an increase of almost 1,500.

Bad numbers going up should have proven this does not work.

Veteran Suicide Awareness Not Even Close To Being Aware

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 26, 2014

I have grown weary of reading about suicides and PTSD tied to military service. Few have gotten it right. It seems as if everyone has become an instant expert popping up on Facebook and writing opinions with very little based on facts. Veterans end up with information overload not knowing what is opinion and what is truth.

The truth is, most awareness being raised is not even close to what is needed to be known and it is inexcusable!

I was reading an opinion piece on Triblive and my head exploded to the point where I had to leave a comment. I hate to leave comments because it takes too much time considering I read up to 50 articles a day and would be impossible to leave comments on all of them. I have to be emotionally tied to it before I type the first word.

This is the comment I left.

On the suicides tied to military service, it is worse than you may know. When President Obama was a Senator, he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee and was very aware of suicides. So much so, he escaped the national press in 2008 while running for office to go to the Montana National Guards after the suicide of Spec. Chris Dana.

He knew about them then yet when suicides went up he held no one accountable. As congress continued to spend more and more money on failed programs, he let them instead of demanding accountability. Combat PTSD has been researched for 40 years, yet the outcome is worse than ever. When do we hold politicians accountable to the men and women they send into combat?

Obama got an earful while in Montana.

Before speaking, the candidate met for several minutes with the family of Spec. Chris Dana, a Montana National Guard veteran suffering from PTSD who committed suicide in March 2007, several months after returning from Iraq. Dana's stepbrother, Matt Kuntz, became a vocal advocate for better treatment of PTSD after Dana's death.

Jess Bahr, a Vietnam veteran, drove more than 200 miles from Great Falls to hear Obama. Before being bused to the event with a veteran-heavy crowd, Bahr said the number of homeless U.S. veterans was inexcusable and that the needs of retired warriors across the country were being ignored by communities.

“In Great Falls, they're building a $6.5 million animal shelter and we don't have a shelter for veterans. What does that tell you about priorities?” asked Bahr, a 1967 Army draftee who survived the Tet Offensive, a nine-month series of battles that resulted in more than 6,000 deaths and 24,000 injuries among American and allied troops during the Vietnam War.

Then Senator Obama made a promise that if he became President he would expand what the Montana National Guards started on screenings for PTSD.

The Montana National Guard has developed a program to check its soldiers and airmen for signs of post-traumatic stress disorder every six months for the first two years after returning from combat, then once a year thereafter. The program exceeds national standards set by the U.S. Department of Defense.

He kept that promise however when the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified they were not doing all the screenings they were supposed to be doing during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, no one was held accountable.

There is no doubt in my mind that President Obama is very aware of military suicides and PTSD as well as the dysfunctional congressional politicians inability to actually learn what works instead of writing checks supporting what has failed. After the repugnant Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program was instituted based on a research project to give school aged children a better sense of self-worth was pushed on our servicemen and women, suicides went up.

This farce of teaching soldiers to be "resilient" with this program increased suicides. It isn't that all of this was not predicted far ahead of thousands of graves being filled. Even I saw it coming back in 2009 when I stated this.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Will Make It Worse

"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."

We let them get away with it! It isn't as if they didn't know what was going on. So what is their excuse for all of this now?

White House callous toward American lives
Trib Live
By Diana West
Friday, Oct. 24, 2014

At a time when our military has been at war for 13 years, suicide is at an all-time high, (post-traumatic stress disorder) is out of control and families are being destroyed as a result of 13 years of war, the last thing the president should be doing is sending people into West Africa to fight Ebola.”

Do you get the feeling that the United States government is trying to get us all killed?

OK, not all of us. Some of us.

I almost don't know how else to interpret the headlines, whether the issue is the 167,000 convicted criminal aliens who, despite deportation orders, remain “currently at large” or the U.S. consulates in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea that are still issuing travel visas to citizens from these Ebola-stricken nations at a rate of 100 a day.

The White House refusal to exercise elementary precautions to prevent an Ebola outbreak in the United States has become another notorious hallmark of the Obama years. I refer to the administration's failure to prohibit travel from the Ebola-stricken region into our formerly Ebola-free nation for the duration of the horrific epidemic.

Even now, the Obama administration continues to permit 150 travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to land every day, their unimpeded ease of movement our government's top priority. The rest of us take our chances. To date, we are looking at “only” two infected nurses. From the globalist perspective, this mean Obama's policies are working. The golf course beckons.
read more here

How about we stop talking about suicide awareness, since they have increased faster than when we were not talking about them and start talking about raising awareness on how to live on after combat and heal? How about we give these veterans and military folks some actual weapons to defeat PTSD and stop trying to find excuses for not doing it? How about we raise awareness that most veterans with PTSD do not commit suicide? How about we talk about how they heal better and faster when they stop trying to fit back in with people who can't understand but start to join other groups of veterans who do understand?

We've been at this for far too long to accept any excuses for the good that works to be ignored and the bad to be allowed to continue.

George W. Bush is too late on PTSD

George W. Bush is too late on PTSD
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 27, 2014

When I read about President Bush wanting to get involved in veterans coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq, I wanted to just ignore "Bush wants change in how PTSD is handled"

There were a lot of reasons. He had a history of ignoring them when he had the power to really make a difference in their lives.

There are always going to be news reports pulling readers in one direction over another. Unless the reader has paid close attention to everything else behind the story, they never really know what is believable so they just assume it is the truth. All of us want to believe we take care of our veterans in this country.

What the veterans talk about is never the same as what the press tells average folks.

There was a letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News summing up what most of the veterans think about all of this.

George W. Bush caused vets' PTSD in the first place
Re: “Easing stigma for vets — Former president calls for shift in approach to PTSD, dropping ‘disorder’ from name,” Thursday news story.

Sickened. Repulsed. Utterly disgusted. Close but not nearly strong enough descriptions of how I felt when I saw George W. Bush weighing in on the problems faced by veterans suffering with PTSD. He wants “disorder” dropped from the term to make these veterans more appealing to employers. He intones that veterans with post-traumatic stress are “people who got hurt defending our country and are now overcoming wounds.”

In 2005 a report came out that the troops were getting contaminated water in Iraq. The VA was warned about troops with PTSD.

The Associated Press reported Feb. 17 that the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) has raised concerns in a new report about the ability of the Veterans Administration (VA) to cope with an expected flood of PTSD cases among returning vets.The VA says it has already treated 6,400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars for PTSD, but GAO noted that less than half of those using VA health services are screened for PTSD. Without access to PTSD services, "many mental-health experts believe that the chance may be missed ... to lessen the severity of symptoms and improve the overall quality of life" for vets with PTSD, the report said.

If George W. Bush had actually cared about PTSD and the suffering of our troops would he have his Secretary of Veterans Affairs do this?

November 27, 2005
SECRETIVE VA LAUNCHES NEW PTSD REVIEW
By Larry Scott

Just six days after canceling one PTSD review, the VA "sneaks in" another
- Culture of secrecy makes agency designed to help veterans their biggest foe

Over the past year, the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA), led by Secretary Jim Nicholson, has turned a deaf ear to veterans and quietly made numerous decisions designed to strip veterans of benefits and compensation.

Secretary Nicholson came to the VA with no understanding of veterans' advocacy and no experience in the healthcare sector. He had been Chairman of the Republican National Committee and Ambassador to the Vatican. As one pundit put it, "Jim Nicholson can write a good political bumper sticker and knows how to kiss the Pope's ring. That's about it."

But, with Secretary Nicholson at the VA helm, veterans have come to feel isolated from the agency's decision-making processes. And, recent developments have done nothing quell that uneasy feeling.

The latest "unannounced" move by the VA is a new review of PTSD diagnosis, treatment and compensation. The VA's plans came to light on November 16, just six days after they had canceled a review of 72,000 PTSD claims awarded at 100 percent disability. Pressure from veterans' groups and Democrat members of Congress forced the cancellation.

The VA's new PTSD review was not announced by the VA. There was no VA press release. There was no VA press conference. The information was not posted on the VA web site.

Information about the new PTSD review was made public in a press release by Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. The release, in part, said, "The Department of Veterans Affairs announced today that it has contracted with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) on a two-pronged approach to the examination of PTSD."

The VA Budget request was not just too low, but actually cut $13 million from research. Over a million Priority 7 and 8 veterans were cut off while the VA was collecting money for treating veterans. Oh, but we couldn't blog about the real news going on because President Bush had too many defenders while the troops had too few.

Demand for veterans' health care has surged in recent years. During the seven years after the Veterans Healthcare Reform Act was enacted in 1996, enrollment grew 141 percent to 7 million, while funding increased 60 percent, a 2004 report by the Harvard/Cambridge Hospital Study Group said.

Congress in July approved an extra $1.5 billion for veterans' health after the Department of Veterans Affairs revealed a funding shortfall.

About 103,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are currently receiving care from the system, far more than the 23,500 the VA predicted. The surge contributed to about one- quarter of the funding shortfall, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson told Congress in June.

Then there was the fact that over 2 million had their records exposed when a VA employee decided to take the records home.

WASHINGTON (June 7) - Personal data on about 2.2 million active-duty military, Guard and Reserve personnel - not just 50,000 as initially believed - were among those stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee last month, the government said Tuesday.

This report would not end if all that happened while President Bush had the chance to really make a difference. In 2008 suicides started a dramatic increase after the DOD was pushing Battlemind. The next program,

Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness (CSF2) was established in August 2008 by then-Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., under the name Comprehensive Soldier & Family Fitness (CSF2), in an effort to address the challenges being faced due to multiple deployments required by persistent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of focusing only on treatment after the issues arose, Casey wanted to also provide preventative measures to the Soldiers, their Families and Army Civilians to make them stronger on the front end.[1] CSF2 Resilience Training was created to give these individuals the life skills needed to better cope with adversity and bounce back stronger from these challenges. CSF2 (renamed in October 2012), was designed to build resilience and enhance performance of the Army Family—Soldiers, their Families, and Army Civilians. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is not a treatment program in response to adverse psychological conditions. CSF2 has three main components: online self-development, training, and metrics and evaluation.

This program, started and the suicides went up even higher. So if you really want to praise President Bush for pushing to take the "D" out of PTSD then you just didn't know in his case the "D" stands for denial of what he failed to do when he had the chance.