Owen Wilson suicide attempt big news, 948 military deployed and no one cares

Police reports confirm Owen Wilson's suicide attempt
New Zealand Herald - New ZealandPolice have confirmed a call made from Owen Wilson's house was logged as a 'suicide attempt'. Photo / Reuters Owen Wilson did attempt suicide, ...See all stories on this topic

Owen: Suicide Bid Confirmed
Sky News - United KingdomIt was widely reported that the Oscar-nominated comedian had carried out a suicide attempt, after several media reports carried quotes from sources close to ...See all stories on this topic

Owen Wilson's Future Projects In Doubt After Apparent Suicide Attempt
MTV.com - USAIn the few days since Owen Wilson was hospitalized for an apparent suicide attempt on August 26, many are already speculating what this means for the comedy ...See all stories on this topic

Coverage of Owen Wilson suicide attempt vastly different from last ...Pegasus News - Dallas,TX,USAOn Monday night I saw stories floating on the web that Owen Wilson had allegedly tried to commit suicide on Sunday. Comparisons to the coverage of Wilson's ...See all stories on this topic

Did Owen Seek Salvation Before Suicide Attempt?
By TMZ Staff Filed under: Let's Get This Party Started. TMZ.com: Just a couple of days before his brother Luke apparently saved his life, Owen Wilson may have tried to save his soul in a Santa Monica church.Us reports that a "depressed" Wilson went ...TMZ.com - http://www.tmz.com

Owen Wilson Suicide Attempt: Suicide Reports Depressing Accurate
By Stuart Heritage Owen Wilson suicide attempt 911 log book kate hudson There's still been no official confirmation from the Wilson family that Owen Wilson tried to kill himself by taking an overdose of pills and slashing his wrist on Saturday, ...Hecklerspray - http://www.hecklerspray.com


Yet in the New York Times, this was ignored by the majority of the country.

The report said that the 99 confirmed suicides by active-duty soldiers compared with 87 in 2005 and that it was the highest raw number since 102 suicides were reported in 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War.
Investigations are pending on two other deaths.
Officials reported 948 suicide attempts, but there were no comparisons for previous years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/us/17suicide.html?ex=1188619200&en=91030c6fb2a2951f&ei=5070

It was also ignored what the VA said about suicides in their system of 1,000 per year and another 5,000 out of their system per year. This means that although there were 99 confirmed suicides in active military and another two suspected, another 948 attempts, another 1,000 veterans succeeded along with 5,000 more, they only ones the media latched hold of were the 99.

Lesson learned: Movie stars attempt suicide and world pays attention. Our troops and veterans attempt suicide and no one cares. Maybe it's because they think the military are willing to risk their lives anyway so it's no big deal, but a movie star has so much to live for it really is a shame.

Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Study: 1 in 8 Ground Zero workers had post-traumatic stress

Study: 1 in 8 Ground Zero workers had post-traumatic stress
BY CARL MACGOWAN carl.macgowan@newsday.com
7:27 PM EDT, August 29, 2007

One in eight recovery and rescue workers who helped with the months-long cleanup at the World Trade Center showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a study has found.Workers with little or no prior experience with disasters showed the highest frequency of PTSD, said the study, published Wednesday in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The data come from the World Trade Center Health Registry's survey of 28,000 workers in 2003 and 2004.The survey found that 12.4 percent of workers likely had PTSD, an anxiety disorder caused by traumatic events such as war, terrorism or assault. Nationally, about 4 percent of the population has PTSD, the report said.

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PTSD wounded minds and tortured souls

The three great religions of the world claim the same God as their own. All claim kinship with Abraham. All worship in Jerusalem. All of these humans, all calling out to the same God. Why? Because there is hope. Hope that a divine Someone, creator of heaven and earth, is so powerful, He can care about even them.

When traumatic events happen, they call out in anguish "why" as they witness the horrors committed by other humans or the wrath of nature's fury. They look toward heaven questioning every belief they ever had including the very existence of God. We all question it. Even Mother Teresa did as it has just been released. For some, faith is restored soon after the event ends.

For me, it came with the loss of twins I was carrying. Four and a half months of joy and expectation followed by a miscarriage. I questioned my faith that up until then had been as natural to me as breathing. For the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to be abandoned by God. It only lasted a few days before I was standing at the office door, just as the sun was beginning to rise. The sky turned purple. In that moment, as I looked at the magnificent dawn, I knew I had not been abandoned, but had let go of the Hand I had always held, just when I needed it the most. In a lifetime of tragedies and trials, I have seen only moments of the effects a traumatic experience can have. Even now as I do what I do and have to see the pictures, hear the stories and read the accounts, they are only glimpses of what others are living with. They haunt me some nights and I get very depressed from time to time when I think I've just heard enough, but those dark times pass.

For those with PTSD, those dark days do not pass. There is no spectacular message delivered. There is the sense of abandonment that does not go away. This I've heard from more than 80% of those I am in contact with. It is one of the most reported events within the traumatic event. How can a human not question God when they witness the devastation of the land and everything they owned? How can they not question the existence of a loving God when they see what he allows humans to do to other humans without stopping them? How can they not question their faith and everything they believed in when within seconds, it was all violently challenged?

For combat veterans, they are not just witnesses to carnage, they are participants. No matter how noble the belief that what they are doing is right, they will blame themselves. A soldier forced to kill a child because that child was sent as an assassin. A Marine forced to kill a woman because she was also wearing a bomb vest. A young soldier too frightened to be cool with a loaded machine gun opens fire and kills an innocent driver because he did not follow the warning directions in a language he did not understand. They blame themselves when a friend dies as well. They wonder why they were able to survive but their friend didn't. All this causes them to feel guilty, judged and abandoned. Some will believe they deserved to be abandoned, while others will begin to wonder if what they understood God to be had been totally wrong.

At the same time their emotions were assaulted, their faith was equally assaulted by the trauma.

When the psychiatric community and the spiritual community join forces, the recovery is stronger. This I found out by accident. With the backlog of claims and many veterans unable to get into the treatment they need, I resorted to advising them to seek out their clergy. Knowing they were trained in psychology, they seemed to be the logical choice. Given the fact most of clergy training is underutilized, as well as knowing the urgent need to get the veteran into some kind of therapy as soon as possible, there was no other option. I couldn't tell them to just wait to get to see someone at the VA.

There is also the issue of careers involved. There are some worried about security clearances for example and they cannot even see a government psychologist. There are some who have been discharged under the "personality disorder" tag and they can't see a VA psychologist while also dealing with financial problems.

The veterans turning to the clergy end up beginning to reconnect with God. For Christians, they rediscover the same loving God they knew in their childhood who loved the world so much He sent Jesus. For Jewish and Muslim believers they too find that same connection they had with the God of their faith. There is a spiritual hunger in each of us that some will fill with whatever comes their way but while most seek a bonding with God.

For the veterans with PTSD there is an urgency right now all across the country. Especially for the National Guard. The latest reported figure places National Guardsman at 50% PTSD and they do not have the resources to find the community support they need as they return to their lives, jobs and pressures of normal civilian life. I think the answer is for the religious teachers across the country to minister to the most needy in their community. When you help to heal a wounded veteran, you are also healing the family and friends they love. Isn't that what God would expect out of you? Heal their wounded souls while the psychological community heals their minds and you will move mountains. You will help hold families together until they can get the medical care they need. I've seen it enough times already when a veteran begins to reconnect with God, they heal faster and better, families are reconnected to each other and forgiveness is possible. The clergy need to step up and provide the dawn of a new day for our wounded.


Kathie Costos

Namguardianangel@aol.com

www.Namguardianangel.org

www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com

www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Extending Tours, Stressing Troops

Features > August 29, 2007
Extending Tours, Stressing Troops
By Sarah Olson
Exhausted members of Bravo Company, 1st Armored Division, 6th Infantry Regiment, relax after a long patrol in Mahmuydiyah, Irag. On the wall behind them are messages of support from children in the United States.
Share Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine Justin Thompson, 23, proposed to Erin underneath the Eiffel Tower last February. The photos of the two on her MySpace page have the hallmarks of a young couple in love. Thompson can’t wait to get back to Lacey, Wash., to get married, and go to college. There’s one problem: Thompson is in Baghdad, serving his second deployment as a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and he is losing hope that he’ll ever be allowed to leave.

Sgt. Thompson, assigned to the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the Second Infantry Division, was first deployed to Iraq in November 2003. When his unit returned to the United States one year later, he immediately started hearing rumors of redeployment and stop-loss—the military’s age-old policy that compels soldiers to continue serving during wartime, even after their contract expires. Four months later, the rumors were confirmed and Thompson was stop-lossed. Despite exhibiting signs of combat-related depression—uncontrolled anger and heavy drinking, for which he was repeatedly disciplined—Thompson redeployed to Iraq on June 28, 2006, exactly one day after his contract with the Army expired.

This April, while stationed in Baghdad, Thompson received another surprise. This second, involuntary tour would be extended by three months, as part of the Pentagon’s new policy that the Army’s standard tour of duty would be extended from 12 to 15 months. The news was devastating.

“I felt that I’d given everything I had to give,” Thompson says. “I felt that I’d pushed myself to the brink of insanity and back and that still wasn’t enough. I fought in a war I didn’t agree with, but I’d taken an oath saying that I would serve, so I did. I felt used up.”

The Pentagon made this decision in spite of a growing body of medical research—all of which was available before the policy change—that shows longer tours are a primary cause of combat-related stress. Research also shows longer tours increase the psychological impact of traumatic experiences on soldiers, correlate to an increase in combat ethics violations, and put intense strains on military families. In short, increasing the length of deployment puts American soldiers, their families and Iraqis in danger.

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Traumatic brain injury: Common wound of war

Traumatic brain injury: Common wound of war

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Aug 29, 2007 5:42:03 EDT

Sitting in a fast-food restaurant near Fort Belvoir, Va., Army Master Sgt. Jose Santiago, his knee bouncing up and down, asked to switch to another table.

“Since I got back, I don’t like to be around dirty things,” he said, wiping a wet spot from the new table with a napkin.

He then settled in for a five-hour conversation that looped back over things he had already covered, stalled when he couldn’t remember a word he wanted to use and stopped when he tried to talk about how the first day of the Iraq war damaged his family.

“Did I already tell you that?” he asked, dozens of times, wincing when he feared he had.

Santiago, a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear operations specialist, said he’s always been “a fast-tracker.”

He spent most of his school years in classes for gifted kids, made E-7 in nine years, and was picked for a special team assigned to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Now, he leaves for medical appointments three hours early — even if he knows the office is only 45 minutes away — because he gets lost easily. An alarm reminds him to take his eight medications. Worse, he forgets he already swallowed his pain or anti-depression pills, and gulps down another handful.

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Hidden Battle Wounds: Local veteran struggles with PTSD

Hidden Battle Wounds: Local veteran struggles with PTSD

Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007 - 09:39 PM

By Rusty Ray
E-mail Biography
Barry Brown says he wrecked his car in Orangeburg a couple years ago.

He swerved to miss what he thought was a roadside bomb, and hit a delivery truck.

Little things take him instantly back to combat in Iraq, where he spent several months in the early stages of the war in 2003.

"The things you see on TV, movies, and documentaries, don't come close as far as a real person being there."

Brown says ever since he's been back here, his life has been a wreck because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"It's really hard for me to remember things, and try to concentrate,” Brown said. “My mind is on Iraq.”

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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be sneaky

Runnin' Scared
This Is Your Brain On 9/11
Feeling jumpy? Could be that building you watched fall
by Karen A. Frenkel
August 28th, 2007 6:57 PM

If you witnessed the attacks on 9/11 up close and then continually had bad dreams, felt jumpy, kept thinking about what you saw, and avoided the site even several years later, chances are that parts of your brain were altered in subtle ways. According to scientists, such lingering symptoms and physical changes reflect an undiagnosed and long-term toll on mental health resulting from the attacks.

Recent studies at New York University and the New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center show enduring psychological and neurological repercussions in adult witnesses near the World Trade Center that day, and in children who lost a parent in the tragedy.

According to the researchers, adults who appeared hardy and functional—and who weren't diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after 9/11—nevertheless do show some symptoms of PTSD and may be vulnerable to mental disorders in the future.

People afflicted with full-blown PTSD relive their terrifying ordeal through nightmares, flashbacks, and upsetting thoughts, and lose interest in activities that were once important to them. They also feel alone, are unable to relax, and remain on guard. click post title for the rest

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be sneaky. Some can have mild PTSD symptoms for many years. What is not talked about often enough, is that mild PTSD can and does spiral out of control when another traumatic event happens. It's almost as if people just accept the changes in them, adapt to those changes and function adequately enough to get by.

They will go on for years with stings of marriages and countless jobs while not seeing any need to seek help, usually because they don't know what caused the change in them. Then, suddenly, another traumatic event happens. This secondary stressor hits them hard once they have already been wounded.

The secondary stressor hits fast and furiously. It happened to my husband. It happened to a lot of Vietnam vets. Within the last ten years, veterans of the Gulf War, Korea and even WWII, have been showing up at VA hospitals and clinics around the world suddenly finding they cannot cope with what is happening to them.

Max Cleland, reached being a senator and head of the VA. He had been treated for depression since Vietnam cost him his legs and arm but having PTSD was the furthest thing from his mind. It turns out that when the carnage of Iraq made it into the news, Max discovered he really had problems much larger than he thought. He was not able to cope with the changes within him. He was then diagnosed with PTSD. It just snuck up on him without warning.

If we understand what PTSD is and get it into the category of a normal reaction to trauma for some people, then no one will ever dismiss the symptoms of it again. Treatment can begin early and stop PTSD before it becomes an insurgent waiting for the opportunity of a secondary stressor to hit before it attacks from within.



Kathie Costos

Namguardianangel@aol.com

www.Namguardianangel.org

www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com

www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Fort Carson still does not get it

Jodi Rave: Saving Private Ryan LeCompte, Lakota
Monday, August 27, 2007
Filed Under: Opinion

"It's been hell trying to save Private Ryan.

Pfc. Ryan LeCompte, an Army scout, has been diagnosed by military and private doctors with post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury after serving two tours in Iraq with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

He came home with a wounded mind and a broken body.

Now senior officers want to get rid of him.

The 27-year-old Lakota warrior from Lower Brule, S.D., was a standout soldier, earning accolades for working “tirelessly, without complaint, despite the long hours and harsh conditions he faced,” according to a December 2003 award recommendation.

He participated in more than 160 combat missions.

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Fort Carson still does not get what PTSD is. For starters, decision making is another injured part of the warrior. Short term memory loss is another. Mood swings with outbursts of anger along with sadness is another. Most get symptoms of obsessive compulsive actions where they will latch hold of something and are unable to let it go. Usually this is extreme worry. While treatment and medication will help, a great number of them will still seek their own self medicating by drinking and doing drugs. If they drink while in therapy, or do drugs, they are making a bad situation worse. They also have to deal with the fact that as each individual comes with a different chemistry, some medications can make their PTSD worse. It takes a long time to find the right medication along with the right dose to discover the right one for that individual.

If they are a problem in this process and want to stay in the military, then the military has to figure out a way to keep them in the military without placing them into greater jeopardy along with their comrades. Once they are in recovery, therapy and medication working, most of the side effects of PTSD calm down. They can still be an effective soldier, just not in the same way. The military is made up of a lot of different duties and not all of them involve combat roles. Discharging or "getting rid" of them, does not make sense and it also sends a message to the rest of the military that the wounded are no longer welcome among their ranks.

It takes a rare person to find it within them to enter into the military. It is an even rarer person who goes into combat. Ryan LeCompte had a history of being a rare breed. He didn't suddenly change into something less because he was wounded. He just needs help to return to wellness. The military can spend money and time to train them to go into combat. They need to remember that they also have to spend time to heal them when they come back. If they are willing to stay in the military, then the military has an obligation to provide them with the tools to do it.

Kathie Costos

Namguardianangel@aol.com

www.Namguardianangel.org

www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com

www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Understanding and Treating Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Understanding and Treating Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Produced by: University of Washington
February 28, 2006
Description: Psychological disorders following exposure to trauma include personal suffering, decreased productivity, occupational and social dysfunction, medical disorders and demands on health services. In this talk, Drs. Zoellner and Bryant review current research associated with the persistence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the variety of viable options that exist for treatment. Speakers also explore treatment options and focus on the effectiveness of both therapies and medications.
Speaker(s):Lori Zoellner, associate professor, department of Psychology, University of Washington Richard Bryant, professor, University of New South Wales
Runtime:01:28:30

go here to hear PTSD explained in plain English but with a accent.

http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=4773

Raising GIs' mental health care discussed

Raising GIs' mental health care discussed


Web Posted: 08/25/2007 09:53 PM CDT

Abe Levy
Express-News

Fueled by growing public support for better resources for soldiers wounded in Iraq, a local partnership of military and civilian mental health agencies has formed to expand the fight against post-traumatic stress disorder — not only for military personnel, but their spouses and children.

And federal lawmakers appear supportive, proposing billions in new funding toward the cause and vowing to beef up mental health care services at military hospitals and clean up subpar standards at Veterans Affairs hospitals.

They're also supporting a plan to fund civilian contracts for health care services that includes help for military families, a move many say recognizes the link between post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and depression, spousal and child abuse, and suicide.

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