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.
"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?
Want to do something that matters? Combat PTSD Wounded Times Kathie Costos December 11, 2017 If you are a veteran, or member of the military, your awareness is requested to change the outcome. Ready to put up a fight for life instead of pushing how many you think took their own lives today?
The trend is repulsive because of all the wasted years and lost lives. What we have seen proves that for all the "work" being done to prevent service members and veterans from committing suicide, it does not work.
Military Suicide Prevention Does this work?
Since 2009, the Penn Resilience Program has been widely used by the United States Army as part of their Master Resilience Training program for Soldiers, family members of Soldiers, and Department of the Army civilians. In this train-the-trainer program, we have helped train more than 40,000 U.S. Army Soldiers how to teach the resilience skills to hundreds of thousands of Soldiers. This program is run by the Army's Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program under the Army Resilience Directorate
The results 2012 Military Suicides Active 319 Reserves 73 National Guard 130 2013 Military Suicides (same report) Active 259 Reserves 87 National Guard 133 2014 Military Suicides Active 268 Reserves 79 National Guard 87 2015 Military Suicides Active 266 Reserves 88 National Guard 121 2016 Military Suicides Active 275 Reserves 80 National Guard 123 2017 Military Suicides (First Six Months) Active 130 Reserves 48 National Guard 68 Veteran Suicide Awareness and Prevention Does this work?
President Bush Signs H.R. 327 and H.R. 1284 into Law2007White House NewsOn Monday, November 5, 2007, the President signed into law: H.R. 327, the "Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act," which requires VA to develop and implement a comprehensive program to reduce the incidence of suicide among veterans; and H.R. 1284, the "Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2007," which provides a cost-of-living increase for the beneficiaries of veterans' disability compensation and dependency and indemnity compensation.
The Clay Hunt Act: What the President Just Signed BY JENNA BRAYTON FEBRUARY 12, 2015 Today, President Obama signed the Clay Hunt Act into law in the East Room of the White House.
The new suicide prevention law is named in honor of Clay Hunt, an extraordinary young Texan and decorated Marine who served with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like too many of our veterans, Clay struggled with depression and post-traumatic stress after he came home. Sadly, Clay’s life ended much too soon when he tragically committed suicide in 2011 at the age of only 28.
The Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans (SAV) Act is a testament to the type of man that Clay Hunt was — even after his death, his legacy of helping veterans lives on.
In America, our veterans and troops are still struggling. As a country, we must do more to help our veterans deal with injuries like post-traumatic stress and depression.
The results Hell NO! Stop raising awareness without learning first! Exactly when do reporters do the research to stop feeding the frenzy of awareness? Fight back and hit the hacks with facts!
Love saying I told you so, but hate the results when people with the power to change the outcome didn't do anything about it. Military Suicide Conversation Between Dick and Frank Combat PTSD Wounded Times Kathie Costos July 25, 2017
Oath of Exit has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard in a long time, and trust me, I've heard a lot of them. The thing that keeps getting missed is that it isn't as if any of this is new. After all, warnings came out back in 2009, but some just wouldn't think of the reasons behind it.
JUL142017 Mast’s Bill to Combat Veteran Suicide Passes House Oath of Exit Included in National Defense Authorization Act WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Congressman Brian Mast’s (FL-18) “Oath of Exit” passed the U.S. House of Representatives today as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill creates a voluntary separation oath for members of the Armed Forces aimed at reducing veteran suicide. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of 20 veterans commit suicide every day and a veteran’s risk of suicide is 21% higher compared to an adult who has not served in the Armed Forces. “The idea for this bill came from friends of mine who have struggled with suicidal thoughts since leaving the military and great organizations like Spartan Pledge that are working to fight the veteran suicide epidemic. Throughout our lives, the most important commitments we make are spoken—whether its an oath upon joining the military, vows at a wedding or saying the pledge of allegiance,” Rep. Mast said. “Integrity is more than just a word to service members, so I know if we say we’ll look out for each other and ourselves, we’ll do it. This Oath of Exit is a strong step forward in doing anything and everything we can to prevent even one more veteran from harming themselves.” The text of the Oath is below: “I, ________, recognizing that my oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, has involved me and my fellow members in experiences that few persons, other than our peers, can understand, do solemnly swear (or affirm) to continue to be the keeper of my brothers- and sisters-in-arms and protector of the United States and the Constitution; to preserve the values I have learned; to maintain my body and my mind; and to not bring harm to myself without speaking to my fellow veterans first. I take this oath freely and without purpose of evasion, so help me God.”
How about Officers and Politicians take a new oath of obligation? You know, the one they take when they become officers and politicians and promise to care for all they are put in charge of. Oh wait, that's right, they really don't have one. Maybe they think they have that covered by the assumption they would live up to the other stuff that comes with their jobs? Here is the type of conversation that is being played out all across the country. It is between leaders having enough thought for their troops to actually want to do something that will save lives, and those willing to do the same thing or pull stunts like doing pushups. DICK
Well, pushups are attention getters and the videos are shared all over the internet.
FRANK
But we use pushups for exercise and punishment. How is that supposed to help keep them alive?
DICK
It lets them know they are committing suicide.
FRANK
They already know that. They already know how to die but they don't know how to find hope to stay alive long enough to heal.
DICK
Well if they don't know that now after over a decade of training them to stop killing themselves, it isn't our fault they still do it. Plus most of the troops killing themselves never deployed.
FRANK
Over a decade of training but not good enough to prevent non-deployed from killing themselves but we push it and then expect it to work on troops deployed 4, 5, 6, 7 or more times?
DICK
Well the numbers have been holding steady, so I'm good with that.
FRANK
But did we spend billions to hold the numbers steady, especially when the number of enlisted went down? Why bother if this is acceptable?
DICK
It isn't our fault if they don't get the message. Besides, more of them are committing suicide after they leave the military too. Is that supposed to be our fault too?
What is CSF?
WHAT IS COMPREHENSIVE SOLDIER FITNESS?
The program, based on 30-plus years of scientific study and results, uses individual assessments, tailored virtual training, classroom training and embedded resilience experts to provide the critical skills our Soldiers, Family members and Army Civilians need.
FRANK
Good enough for who? It sure wasn't the ones we let down. But, what about this from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine? "Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has implemented several population-based initiatives to enhance psychological resilience and prevent psychological morbidity in troops. The largest of these initiatives is the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program, which has been disseminated to more than 1 million soldiers. However, to date, CSF has not been independently and objectively reviewed, and the degree to which it successfully promotes adaptive outcomes and prevents the development of deployment-related mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is uncertain. This paper critically evaluates the theoretic foundation for and evidence supporting the use of CSF."
DICK
Hey, that's above my pay grade. If they don't train right, it isn't my fault.
FRANK
Then who will stand up and take responsibility for the lives we lost with all we said we did for them instead of what we actually did to them?
So isn't it time you stopped being a Dick and started to be more like, well, Frank?
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."
Deadly Decade Followed Army PTSD Prevention Wounded Times Kathie Costos March 12, 2016 It has been one deadly decade of service members and our veterans but this enemy was allowed to follow them home. For all the talk we keep hearing on raising awareness, far too many veterans are still not aware of the simple fact they survived combat multiple times but were not trained to survive being back home. They were left not understanding what PTSD is or why they have it anymore than they were made aware of the simple fact, the Army knew it all along.
Sergeant Cory Griffin summed up what has been going on in the Army.
"Cory was a leader with the U.S. Army. He served tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Qatar. He says many soldiers come back with PTSD because, 'Every other year we are deploying. There's not really ever a reset time. We train, shoot and deploy.'"
He is facing time in prison, much like far too many veterans left with the stigma of PTSD after a decade of Army prevention programs. So stigmatized he knew he needed help but did not ask for it. In 2006 the Army discovered that redeployments increased the risk of PTSD by 50%.
Repeat Iraq Tours Raise Risk of PTSD, Army Finds Washington Post By Ann Scott Tyson Staff Writer Wednesday, December 20, 2006 U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health.
More than 650,000 soldiers have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 -- including more than 170,000 now in the Army who have served multiple tours -- so the survey's finding of increased risk from repeated exposure to combat has potentially widespread implications for the all-volunteer force. Earlier Army studies have shown that up to 30 percent of troops deployed to Iraq suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the latter accounting for about 10 percent.
The findings reflect the fact that some soldiers -- many of whom are now spending only about a year at home between deployments -- are returning to battle while still suffering from the psychological scars of earlier combat tours, the report said.
Within that same report was this
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.
So the Army decided to start Battlemind to prevent PTSD. Yep, they thought instead of actually stopping these redeployments, their best bet would be to just stop PTSD. We saw how well that worked out when suicides went up. By 2008 when the Army was facing an increase in suicides, they were also looked at the number of attempted suicides.
There were also 935 active-duty suicide attempts, which Col. Elspeth C. Richie, psychiatry consultant to the Army's surgeon general, said includes any self-inflicted injury that leads to hospitalization or evacuation. This number is less than half of the approximately 2,100 attempts reported in 2006.
This was followed by Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, which by 2009 was already sounding warning bells in the veterans community. Telling soldiers they could train their brains to be mentally tough was telling them they were weak and PTSD was their fault.
Years later, after all this training was pushed, soldiers like Griffin were still left not understanding what PTSD was, why they had it or how they could heal. How could he think anything differently when the Army told him they trained him to prevent it? If you want to know why there is such an increase in PTSD and suicides, start with that then have a real conversation with these veterans that may actually do some good.
PTSD defense- a local soldier's story KOAA News By Brie Groves, Investigative Reporter March 11, 2016
A local soldier is going to jail as part of a plea deal he made, after an evening with friends that turned violent.
Sergeant Cory Griffin says Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is to blame for the night he shot another man. He wants to tell his story to shed light on a problem that may be affecting more people in our community.
In November of 2014 Cory and his wife, Jenarae had some friends over to their home. They had been drinking for hours. Jenarae tells us Cory left and didn't return for quite some time. When she found him, he was having a full-blown PTSD episode at the top of the stairs. Jenarae says their friend walked up to the stairs, startling Cory. That's when Cory shifted the gun and shot the victim in the hand.
However, a different story was told to police that night. According to the police report the couple and their friends were indulging in a heavy night of drinking, when Cory confronted his wife of infidelity. That's when he grabbed the handgun and pointed at her. His friend walked up on the situation and Cory shifted his focus. According to police records, that's when Cory shot the victim in the hand.
Cory says, "I felt detached from myself. The anxiety poured in." Cory was a leader with the U.S. Army. He served tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Qatar. He says many soldiers come back with PTSD because, "Every other year we are deploying. There's not really ever a reset time. We train, shoot and deploy." read more here
In the first quarter of 2015, there were 57 suicides among service members in the active component, 15 suicides among service members in the reserve component and 27 suicides among service members in the National Guard.
In the second quarter of 2015, there were 71 suicides among service members in the active component, 20 suicides among service members in the reserve component and 27 suicides among service members in the National Guard.
In the third quarter of 2015, the military Services reported that there were 72 Active Component suicides and 70 Reserve Component suicides with 38 suicides in the Reserves and 32 in the National Guard. Please refer to Figure One for a detailed breakdown of the number of suicides within each Service and component through the third quarter of 2015.
Watched Criminal Minds Because of Wounded Minds
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 13, 2016
Last night when President Obama delivered his final State of the Union, I was watching a rerun of Criminal Minds. I just couldn't watch another speech on what shape this union is in.
Considering this whole bunch of politicians has basically said they cannot fix anything. The worst thing is, with President Obama in his last year in office, he hasn't fixed the one thing I really hoped he would have. Suicides in the military and in the veterans community have gone up. So far, POTUS stands for Pretend Outrage To Up Spending.
For all the billions gone into reducing suicides, they ended up reducing the number of veterans surviving combat but not being home.
Every time I think about all the speeches and claims of making "efforts" to prevent suicides, this bit from Blazing Saddles echoes in my head.
Governor William J. Le Petomane: We've gotta protect our phoney baloney jobs, gentlemen! and that is exactly what all of them have done because they think we're too dumb to have noticed.
Too dumb to notice that this same bunch of folks elected to fix stuff managed to pull off a fake town with a tollgate.
They tell us that the Affordable Care Act is bad and voted too many times to kill it because it wasn't working for the American people, then they turned around saying veterans should go into that mess as well since the VA was not working right. OK, but they never managed to explain how they didn't fix the VA since they had jurisdiction over it since 1946 or how they didn't fix the issues with the ACA.
We paid the bill with taxes and mortuary fees.
This same bunch wrote bills and rules, plus spent money to fund them while they told us the troops and veterans needed help to survive. Knowing we'd never complain about spending money on them, they just repeated the same failed bills they wrote before. Not sure how they didn't end up with writers cramp to go along with their writer's block void of original ideas.
And that takes us back to President Obama and a speech he gave back in 2008. Well, not so much a speech as it was a promise.
Running for the nomination, then Senator Obama found out about Montana National Guardsman Spec. Chris Dana committing suicide.
Chris Dana came home from the war in Iraq in 2005 and slipped into a mental abyss so quietly that neither his family nor the Montana Army National Guard noticed.
He returned to his former life: a job at a Target store, nights in a trailer across the road from his father's house.
When he started to isolate himself, missing family events and football games, his father urged him to get counseling. When the National Guard called his father to say that he'd missed weekend duty, Gary Dana pushed his son to get in touch with his unit.
''I can't go back. I can't do it,'' Chris Dana responded.
Things went downhill from there. He blew though all his money, and last March 4, he shot himself in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. He was 23 years old.
With the press reporting on every move he made, he managed to get away from them for a bit and went to go meet with Dana's stepbrother.
Since Dana’s death, his stepbrother Matt Kuntz has campaigned for more awareness of the costs of untreated post traumatic stress syndrome in Iraq war veterans. Wednesday, he was invited to meet with Sen. Barack Obama to share the message he’s been spreading statewide for more than a year. At a quiet picnic table at Riverfront Park Obama sat across from Kuntz, his wife Sandy and their infant daughter Fiona.
Kuntz was heavy with emotion, but hopeful and eager to share Dana’s story, and tell the senator about his work to ensure other Montana veterans aren’t suffering from the same condition that made his step-brother take his life.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, speaking Wednesday in Billings, faulted Republican leaders for chronically underfunding veteran services for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I have some significant differences with McCain and George Bush about the war in Iraq,” Obama said. “But one thing I thought we'd agree to is when the troops came home, we'd treat them with the honor and respect they deserve.”
Several trends indicate veterans are not getting the health care and other benefits they need to succeed at home, Obama told a group of around 200 people during an invitation-only morning listening session in Riverfront Park.
Followed by this,
After the briefing, Obama spent about 20 minutes telling several hundred veterans and their families that, if elected as president, he will be committed to meeting their needs.
Last week, in releasing the report that showed a record number of suicides in 2008, the Army said it soon will conduct servicewide training to help identify soldiers at risk of suicide.
The program, which will run February 15 through March 15, will include training to recognize behaviors that may lead to suicide and instruction on how to intervene. The Army will follow the training with another teaching program, from March 15 to June 15, focused on suicide prevention at all unit levels.
The 2008 numbers were the highest annual level of suicides among soldiers since the Pentagon began tracking the rate 28 years ago. The Army said 128 soldiers were confirmed to have committed suicide in 2008, and an additional 15 were suspected of having killed themselves. The statistics cover active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves.
The Army's confirmed rate of suicides in 2008 was 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers. The nation's suicide rate was 19.5 per 100,000 people in 2005, the most recent figure available, Army officials said last month.
Suicides for Marines were also up in 2008. There were 41 in 2008, up from 33 in 2007 and 25 in 2006, according to a Marines report.
In addition to the new training, the service has a program called Battlemind, intended to prepare soldiers and their families to cope with the stresses of war before, during and after deployment. It also is intended to help detect mental-health issues before and after deployments.
Battlemind was followed by another miserable failure called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, predicted to so poorly researched it would in fact increase suicides by feeding the stigma at the same time failing to provide any kind of understanding what PTSD is.
It got worse for service members along with veterans at the same time everyone was heading to the feeding trough to get what they could without ever having to explain or account for anything when suicides went up. Heck, they even got away with it when the number of servicemembers went down but suicides didn't follow with the flow out.
Oh, ya, but wait, wait this gets even better. All that training ended up leaving the OEF and OIF veterans triple their peer rate for suicides, yet not one single fine had to be repaid to the tax payers or to the families when they had to pay for funerals every year.
Now maybe you know why I would rather watch a rerun of Criminal Minds instead of spending one more second on yet one more President leaving office without living up to the promises he made running to get into the chair as Commander-in-Chief.
President Obama is leaving office without holding any of the Joint Chiefs accountable for any of this! Hey, heard congress is writing another bill for "prevention" so I bet he'll sign that one too without ever once wondering why nothing has worked in all these years he's had the time to do it.
Lives Jeopardized By Resilient Training
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 9, 2016
How does anyone get away with a decade of claims on suicide prevention when results have proven them wrong time and time again? How do they get away with continuing a program pushed on every servicemember when that same program they point to could not even prevent the suicides of non-deployed members?
It is anyone's guess how they expected it to work for those with multiple deployments into Afghanistan and Iraq. The problem is, no one is even trying to guess what that answer would be.
"It surprises me that it went up because we are working so hard to try to prevent," said Captain Raymond Houk, lead chaplain for the installations in the 20 states which fall under Commander, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic, and, the more than 167,000 active duty and civil servant employees who work there. "But it also occurred to what we don't know. And what we don' know is how many lives we've saved by the interventions that we've done."
What he didn't say was how many lives were lost after all these years of their "efforts" to reduce suicides. Forget about the attempted suicides within the military along with all the veterans no longer being counted by the military after they were also "trained" with the same efforts.
Maybe the greatest question that needs to be answered is this one. "How many lives could have been saved had they actually paid attention to the results and changed what already failed?"
The biggest forgettable regret is the other simple fact. Every branch of the military has seen a reduction in the number of servicemembers by thousands. Less to count actually means there is an even higher percentage of them dying. These charts are from the DOD suicide report for the third quarter of 2015. We still don't know what the actual yearly total will turn out to be.
May 29, 2009 I wrote that if the military promoted Comprehensive Soldier Fitness the way they promoted Battlemind, they would in fact increase suicides.
"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 was right and it breaks my heart that I figured it out as an average person but these "experts" still don't have a clue they are doing more harm than good with all the "resilience training" spread out giving service-members the wrong message.
What is more reprehensible is they do not even feel accountable for for the outcomes. There has been no on held accountable for any of these deadly results. Not the contractors selling their "programs" while they were in fact nothing more than research projects with unproven results. Not the brass pushing these "efforts" when the results proved deadly years ago. Not the politicians serving on the House and Senate Armed Forces Committees or the others voting for bills that fueled the problems while draining much needed funds from actually taking care of the service-members and their families.
Not even the reporters covering these heart-wrenching stories yet so disconnected from the pain they fail to even ask the basic question. "When does someone pay attention so they stop failing so many?"
The depth of their emotional core is what causes them to be willing to die for the sake of others and what allows so much pain in their lives. Resilient? They already were but they think that means they should be impervious. They still misunderstand what PTSD is, what causes it and the simple fact that they can change again to live better lives. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder only happens to survivors of traumatic events yet they think it is their fault for not training right or being mentally weak.
That is the message all this "resiliency training" has delivered since it started.
The truth is the military has placed that love in jeopardy.
Where were you when I needed you?
Well, you could not be found
What can I do? Oh, I believed in you
You're running me around
Well, you can take it as a warning
Or take it any way you like
It's the lightning, not the thunder
You never know when it's going to strike
Our love's in jeopardy, baby
Ooh
Our love's in jeopardy, baby
Ooh
Don't be cute, don't be funny now
It's later than you think
Oh, what's the use? Oh, save your money now
It's hanging on the brink
Don't let go while I'm hanging on
'Cause I've been hanging on so long
It's so hard to be all alone
I know you're not that strong, yeah, yeah Jeopardy Gregg Kihn Band
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that "resilience" does not work. If it did then the number of suicide would have gone down after all these years for service members as well as in the Veterans Community. It seems that the folks at UCLA are still waiting for one since they haven't figured out much at all.
YEP~ Here we go again!
Military families benefit from UCLA-developed resilience program
FOCUS helps participants cope with the many stresses of multiple deployments and combat-related injuries
UCLA Newsroom
Meg Sullivan
December 15, 2015
Across the U.S., families of troops serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Uganda and other hot spots are emailing photos of their holiday feasts to their loved ones overseas — and asking them to respond with pictures of their own holiday celebrations.
The strategy is part of a UCLA-developed program aimed at easing the wear and tear on military families who are grappling with challenges of multiple deployments and combat-related injuries, all of which can stir destructive and difficult-to-control emotions.
“It’s really important to somehow keep the deployed parent salient in the minds of their children, and to incorporate the absent parent into holiday rituals,” said Catherine Mogil, a UCLA child psychologist.
A new study about that program shows that it really does help improve people’s ability to bounce back from challenges. The report will be published in the January issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
A team of 12 researchers from UCLA, Harvard University and the military found that the FOCUS program reduced by one-half the number of troops, spouses and children suffering from the most problematic psychological and emotional symptoms. And the improvements actually increased over time.
“We knew we were doing good work at the military bases because we could feel it, but it’s really exciting to have such strong data demonstrating the power of the program,” said Mogil, a co-author of the study and director of training and intervention development at the Nathanson Family Resilience Center at UCLA. read more here
So in other words, after all the money and time has been lost, expect a repeat of the outcomes. It didn't work in 2009 when this happy horseshit started under "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" was being pushed and oh, by the way, is still being pushed, and it work work now.
The largest of these initiatives is the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program, which has been disseminated to more than 1 million soldiers.
However, to date, CSF has not been independently and objectively reviewed, and the degree to which it successfully promotes adaptive outcomes and prevents the development of deployment-related mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is uncertain. This paper critically evaluates the theoretic foundation for and evidence supporting the use of CSF.
How the Army Killed Off Hope
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 30, 2015
This question came from an article on the New York Times about the 2/7 Battalion. They lost 20 to war but so far 13 more to suicide.
Q. Are multiple combat deployments a contributing factor to suicide?
Dave Philipps: The data suggest there is little or no added suicide risk associated with multiple deployments, but those studies have been unable to address the amount of combat seen. Second, no study has looked at this question after active duty. We simply don’t know. Anecdotally, nine of 13 members of the 2/7 who killed themselves did multiple tours. And I think it is important to note the quick succession of these tours, with less than a year between.
The answer is, redeployments have a lot to do with the suicides and the Army knew it back in 2006
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.
U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health.
Earlier Army studies have shown that up to 30 percent of troops deployed to Iraq suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the latter accounting for about 10 percent.
The findings reflect the fact that some soldiers -- many of whom are now spending only about a year at home between deployments -- are returning to battle while still suffering from the psychological scars of earlier combat tours, the report said.
If you are serious about understanding any of this, I strongly suggest you go and read the whole report that is still active online. All the answers came from what the Army started and the Marines paid for along with the Airmen and Sailors.
How a Marine Unit’s High Suicide Rate Got That Way
New York Times
By DAVE PHILIPPS
OCT. 29, 2015
The funeral for Eduardo Bojorquez, a member of the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, who committed suicide in June. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Since coming back from Afghanistan in 2008, the hard-hit Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment has struggled to adjust. The battalion, known as the 2/7, lost 20 men in war. In the years since, it has lost 13 more to suicide. The battalion now has a suicide rate 14 times that for all Americans.
The New York Times asked Dr. Charles Engel, of the RAND Corporation, and two Marines who served with the battalion in Afghanistan, Arthur Karell and Keith Branch, to answer readers’ questions about the devastating effects of combat and the high suicide rate among veterans. The conversation took place on Facebook in October, moderated by Dave Philipps, a reporter for The Times who covers veterans’ affairs. Here are some of the questions and answers, which have been condensed and edited.
read more here
This is another important piece on the report
A.K.: The events of the past inform the outlook for the future. When the events of the past repeatedly trigger an anguish that doesn’t abate, it may cause a veteran to question what kind of future they have in store. I’ve heard of post-combat stress described as a response to deep moral trauma, as war is just about the most intense and certainly the largest-scale moral trauma humans inflict on one another. For veterans, post-military activities, pursuits and/or careers that involve or embody a shared purpose, go a long way toward recovery from that moral trauma.
That stigma is due to the program that had been sold as the answer to not just to preventing suicides, but in preventing PTSD. It is called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.
OVERVIEW
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.
It didn't take long to understand this program has in fact fed the stigma and should have been ended as soon as suicides increased after its implementation in 2009. Even I knew it would and predicted the inevitable outcome of increasing suicides. Telling them they could take this training to become resilient managed to translate into their thinking that if they ended up with PTSD, they were mentally weak and didn't train right.
Instead of ending this fubar farce, they pushed it harder. It didn't matter it was an unproven research project.
The Dark Side of “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness”
Mandatory "resilience training" program for all U.S. soldiers raises concerns.
Psychology Today
Roy Eidelson Ph.D. Roy Eidelson Ph.D.
Dangerous Ideas
Posted Mar 25, 2011
Although its advocates prefer to describe Comprehensive Soldier Fitness as a training program, it is indisputably a research project of enormous size and scope, one in which a million soldiers are required to participate. Reivich, Seligman, and McBride write in one of the special issue articles, "We hypothesize that these skills will enhance soldiers' ability to handle adversity, prevent depression and anxiety, prevent PTSD, and enhance overall well-being and performance" (p. 26, emphasis added). This is the very core of the entire CSF program, yet it is merely a hypothesis - a tentative explanation or prediction that can only be confirmed through further research.
This is yet another good place to learn some facts because as the Army tends to point toward the high number of non-deployed soldiers committing suicide, they fail to mention this program was so insufficient that it could even keep them alive, refusing to even consider the fact they expected it to work on those with multiple deployments.
Top that off with the other factor of the high number of young veterans receiving this training only to commit suicide stateside after surviving combat overseas and you get the idea they failed to see.
When you hear someone saying they are "raising awareness" make sure they are made aware of this since so far few have a clue of what I knew would happen after listening to them complain about Battlemind, the predecessor to CSF. As for Congress, they just kept paying for it, over and over and over again along with all the other money they have spent over the years to produce more deaths after combat than during it. It should have been called Contagious Stigma Feeder because that is exactly what it did!
The Army managed to explain less about the facts on PTSD. They don't know what PTSD is, why they have it or the simple fact that it does not mean they are stuck suffering the way they are today.
PTSD is set of by trauma, not them. They are not weak. As a matter of fact it is the strength of their emotional core that causes them to feel everything more deeply than others. Feel more love and feel a lot more pain.
They can heal and the sooner they get it the better when it is mild and most can be reversed.
None of this is new and Vietnam veterans pushed for all the research going back to the 70"s.
Report: Pentagon suicide prevention office in disarray
Military Times
By Patricia Kime, Staff writer
October 2, 2015
The Pentagon’s suicide prevention office lacks clear guidance and authority to develop and execute effective programs, leaving a vacuum that the military services filled with their own, often inconsistent programs, a new Defense Department Inspector General report says.
Defense Suicide Prevention Office logo
(Photo: Defense Department)
The Defense Suicide Prevention Office, or DSPO, was established in 2011 to develop and implement suicide prevention policies, programs and surveillance across the force, with any eye toward promoting resilience, mental fitness and suicide awareness and prevention.
But from its inception, the office had a confusing governing structure and alignment of responsibilities under different committees within the office of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, resulting in “less than effective DoD strategic oversight" that hampered implementation of suicide prevention programs, according to the report released Wednesday.
According to Pentagon data, 130 active-duty troops died by suicide from January through June this year, along with 89 reserve members and 56 National Guard members.
Last year, 273 active-duty personnel, 170 reservists and 91 Guardsmen took their own lives.
Military suicides rose steadily from 2006 to 2009 before leveling off for two years. They then increased sharply in 2012, peaking at a high of 321 active-duty, 192 reserve and 130 Guard deaths. read more here
Military suicides remain constant despite Pentagon efforts
Stars and Stripes
By Heath Druzin
Published: October 2, 2015
WASHINGTON — Despite an ongoing Pentagon campaign to combat suicide, the numbers of troops who killed themselves held steady in the first half of 2015, with active duty numbers down and reserve numbers up over the same period last year, according to the most recent Department of Defense statistics.
The Defense Department quarterly statistics, released Wednesday, show 219 troops took their lives in the first half of this year, as compared to 223 in the first half of 2014. Military suicides are down 8 percent from the first half of 2013, when there were 238.
For this year, the number of suicides breaks down to 130 among active duty troops and 89 among the Reserves and National Guard. That represents a 9 percent drop for active duty troops and a 10 percent rise for reserve troops over the same period last year. read more here
I left this comment
Why? How about you start with Comprehensive Soldier Fitness? Suicides went up after this started. How did they expect telling soldiers they could train their brains to be mentally tough would work when that meant they were weak if they suffered? It fed the stigma. Plus add in another fact that there are less serving since 2012 and you'll begin to understand how huge this issue is. Veteran suicides went up for OEF and OIF generation as well. They are triple their civilian peer rate. They were trained to suffer in silence too!
UPDATE
Considering the DOD released their suicide numbers for the second quarter it pretty much proves the point
DoD releases 2nd quarter suicide figures on Army Times
Suicides among active-duty service members rose by 20 percent in the second quarter of this year to 71, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Defense Department.
The Marine Corps had the highest percentage increase, 12 suicides, up from three the previous quarter.
The Army had 28 active-duty suicides, the Air Force, 17, and the Navy, 14, according to the report.
Over the first six months of 2015, 130 active-duty troops took their own lives, along with 89 reserve members and 56 National Guardsmen. In the second quarter, the reserve component experienced 47 suicides and the National Guard, 27.
Trained to Fight, Trained to Suffer in Silence
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 1, 2015
Suicide Prevention month is over and evidently did little good to prevent them.
“You have to be able to ask for help – and it’s okay to ask for help," Frost said. "And that stigma that existed, really a lot in what is that Army tough, Army strong, we’re soldiers, we’re hooah…that has really started to melt away.”
I have over 30 years crammed in my brain but since we're running out of time, and frankly, I ran out of patience long ago, I will be blunt but I mean you no disrespect. I am just tied of all of this getting worse when the reason behind it was predicted back in 2009.
If you promote this (Comprehensive Solider Fitness) 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.
Overwhelmed VA didn't happen overnight but then again if you fail to factor in the obvious crush of younger veterans against the already long line at the VA, this was a predictable catastrophe, or it should have been.
Wounded Times has documented all the ups and downs members of Congress have let happen. While the press seems to forget, veterans remember, especially since it is their lives we're talking about.
Somehow members of Congress have managed to get away with just blaming the person in the Chair of the VA even though you've all held hearings and promised changes only to turn around every time the press reports on another crisis and veterans get more promises.
Here's a blast from the past with Senator Bernie Sanders as he and Senator Daniel Akaka were calling for more funding for the PTSD Center Funding. It came out in 2008, a year after Congress had the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Bill passed and signed into law in 2007.
In recent years, the Center for PTSD has been called on to dramatically expand its mission and conduct research on a larger scale. At the same time, an increasing number of servicemembers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD. However, the Center's budget has increased by less than 10 percent in the past half-decade. Due to limited funding, the Center's capacity to continue its work is severely restricted, and staff levels have been reduced since 1999.
While all of you were blaming Shinseki, veterans noticed this going on,
In a departure from the rhetoric Shinseki has used before Congress, Shinseki said at the American Legion's National Convention that he's not afraid of the claims backlog that has grown to about 600,000 -- a sore point when Senators and Congressmen question him on Capitol Hill.
The VA secretary said he doesn't regret opening the opportunity to issue disability claims to nearly a million veterans of wars going back more than 60 years. He only wishes the decision had been made sooner to give the VA a head start.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will sign an executive order Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand mental health services and suicide prevention efforts.
The president will make the announcement in a speech to troops at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he’ll also hold a roundtable with soldiers and their families.
Much of what's outlined in the executive order are initiatives that were previously announced earlier this summer by the VA.
Obama is instructing the VA to ensure that any veteran with suicidal thoughts is seen by a mental health professional within 24 hours -- a standard already set for the VA, but which the department often fails to meet.
The VA has until June 2013 to figure out how to fix that issue with pay, loan repayment, scholarships and partnerships with community-based providers and training programs. The goal, announced by the VA in June, is to hire 1,900 mental health staffers.
The VA is also being told to increase the veteran crisis hotline capacity by 50 percent by the end of year and to develop a national 12-month suicide prevention campaign that would help connect veterans to mental health services.
The president ordered the Pentagon to review and rank its mental health and substance abuse prevention programs by quality and effectiveness. “By the end of Fiscal Year 2014, existing program resources shall be realigned to ensure that highly ranked programs are implemented across all of the military services and less effective programs are replaced,” the order states.
That forces the Pentagon to take ownership of the programs military-wide instead of allowing each service to decide on its own what programs to use. Reviewing the vast and disparate programs will be a big task and could lead to kickback from the services, which are protective of their programs.
In addition, the president is convening a Military and Veterans Mental Health Interagency Task Force to present him with recommendations in 180 days on how to improve treatment services.
We also knew that the Pentagon hadn't even spent the money they were already given to prevent suicides and that came out during a U.S. House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing a month after President Obama made his announcement.
In July, the McDermott-Boswell amendment that would increase critical funding for suicide prevention for active duty military by $10 million passed with strong support in the House Defense Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2013.
“The Pentagon hasn’t spent the money that it has for suicide prevention for this year – and that money wasn’t nearly enough money to reach all the soldiers who need help. Now we are hearing about bureaucratic technicalities at the Pentagon that are preventing them from acting. This is unconscionable,” said Congressman McDermott. “The Pentagon is funded to help soldiers and needs to do much more on the epidemic of suicides. As we commemorate National Suicide Prevention Week, we are calling on the Pentagon to move much faster.”
So we've been watching and waiting for our elected officials to wake up and change what has been proven to be wrong. We keep reading about this bill and that bill while veterans pay the price for their service as they get speeches. Enough it enough! Before you try another attempt at writing yet one more bill, ask yourself "Why it has gotten worse as Congress has done more than ever before?" and then toss in the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of charities all over the country collecting billions a year after veterans did everything possible to make it home from war alive but cannot survive right here at home.
There seems to be reluctance and inconsistency among the CSF promoters in acknowledging that CSF is "research" and therefore should entail certain protections routinely granted to those who participate in research studies. Seligman explained to the APA's Monitor on Psychology (link is external), "This is the largest study - 1.1 million soldiers - psychology has ever been involved in" (a "study" is a common synonym for "research project"). But when asked during an NPR interview (link is external) whether CSF would be "the largest-ever experiment," Brig. Gen. Cornum, who oversees the program, responded, "Well, we're not describing it as an experiment. We're describing it as training." Despite the fact that CSF is incontrovertibly a research study, standard and important questions about experimental interventions like CSF are neither asked nor answered in the special issue. This neglect is all the more troubling given that the program is so massive and expensive, and the stakes are so high.
Jacqueline Garrick, acting director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon has identified 291 suicides in fiscal 2012 with investigations into another 59 pending. This is up from 160 in 2001. She said the suicide rate for 2012 is expected to increase once death investigations have been completed and a final manner of death determination is issued.
When suicides went up instead of down, it would have been helpful if you guys started to ask why what you already failed before you just did more of it.
The worst thing is none of you seemed to notice that for veterans in general, they are double the civilian population rate, which is really bad, but when they looked at the percentages for younger veterans, the ones who got that "training" their rate was triple their peer rate.
The suicide rate among young male veterans continues to soar: ex-servicemen 24 and younger are now three times more likely than civilian males to take their lives, according to a federal study released Friday.
Former troops in that high-risk age group — who were also enrolled for care at veterans' hospitals — posted a suicide rate of 79.1 per 100,000 during 2011, the latest data available. In contrast, the annual suicide rate for all American males has recently averaged about 25 per 100,000, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports.
During 2009, the suicide rate for veterans 24 and younger was 46.1 per 100,000 — meaning the deadly pace increased by 79 percent during that two-year span.
Seems like one of your staffers should have paid attention to all of this since we did.
Anyone can get PTSD after trauma, but not everyone went into traumatic events willingly. They put their lives on the line for each other but couldn't talk to each other about needing help to heal from it. That is the real problem behind all of it. They were trained that way.
