Study Looks at Suicide in Veterans?

In the study, Kara Zivin, a psychiatric researcher at the University of Michigan and the veterans’ agency, led a research team that evaluated records for 807,694 veterans treated in the system between April 1999 and September 2004. The group included men and women who had served in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan, though the researchers did not do separate analysis for each conflict.


The study did not evaluate the methods used in the suicides, which could also account from some differences between veterans and nonveterans. In the study among veterans living in the community published last summer, which was led by Dr. Kaplan, more than 80 percent of the suicides were committed with a gun. The rate in non-nveterans was 55 percent.
The study, a joint effort between the University of Michigan and the veterans’ agency that included detailed records from more than 800,000 veterans, is the largest and most comprehensive in this group of patients and the first to include troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Study Looks at Suicide in Veterans

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: October 30, 2007
Veterans receiving treatment for depression are no more likely to take their own lives than civilian patients, according to a large Veterans Affairs study published this afternoon.

So what did they include? Which veterans were tested and studied? First off no one can take this seriously simply because they did not bother to check records from every newspaper across the country to see how many veterans committed suicide. That would have been a great place to start simply because most of them never saw a single VA doctor, either because they didn't know what PTSD was, or because they didn't trust them at all. Given the fact so many claims are still trapped in the system, you also need to look at how many applied for a disability connected to PTSD and were denied, never to darken the door to a VA hospital or clinic again. They need to look at what the DOD has found from veterans within their own files. Those committing suicide back home on bases across the country as well as those committing suicide "in country" under their command.

In cities and towns across this country, there are many veterans in the obituary pages dying at a fairly young age. Some die because of Agent Orange, other chemical exposures, but when you read the words, "suddenly" alarm bells should sound, but not necessarily connected to PTSD and suicide.

Let's put this in terms people like me can understand without having to read reports like this several times before they can understand it. Unless they can manage to take a study seriously, by separating them by branch of service, combat or none combat duty, then none of their studies will add up to the paper they are printed on.

You could have a Marine, never setting foot in Iraq or Afghanistan, included in a study like this. You could end up not taking into consideration someone from the Air Force, who was in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are too many open ends to this. In WWII there were survivors of kamikaze pilots hitting ships. You wouldn't think off hand someone who had never set foot in battle developing PTSD, but a sailor on one of these ships would develop PTSD.

In Vietnam, it was not just the grunts, but the helicopter pilots who were favorite targets of the VC. Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are not as many being shot down but they are being shot at.

Did this study include veterans who knew or saw someone blown apart? Did they include veterans who were shot at or even near an IED? Did they include people working in the motor pool who had to retrieve body parts along with burnt out vehicles?

When they look at the suicide rates of civilians, they also need to take into consideration if the person was involved in a traumatic event. When they look at events, like 9-11 and Katrina for examples, the rates of suicide are much higher. They need to look at everything when they are trying to study the aftermath of trauma and all traumas for comparison. These are not random suicides over a broken heart, bad grades or no friends. PTSD suicides are born from trauma. The rest of the population seeking suicide are a blended mix of environment, mental illnesses, support systems, education and faith. Suicide comes with the lack of hope. In PTSD wounded most of the suicides come from the lack of knowledge which offers hope.

This is my opinion but I'm going to wait until experts take a look at this study. It's happened before and the studies in the past have been proven wrong. This one just doesn't seem to have all the dots connected.

Marines in Iraq look to pastor for answers to tough questions

"They don't think their dead comrade should be awarded the honor of a marine killed in action. But asked if the unit should refuse any memorial at all, their heads snap up. "He deserves something," the tall one says adamantly. His mate nods in agreement."

PART 1: US Navy Chaplain Michael Baker ( Read the full series )
Military chaplain: Marines in Iraq look to pastor for answers to tough questions
From a buddy's suicide to a religious ritual, young troops count on Lt. Michael Baker.
By Lee Lawrence Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 30, 2007 edition

Habbaniyah, Iraq - Under a sun-blanched desert sky, Navy Chaplain Michael Baker and Marine Sgt. Bill Hudson Gross bounce in the back of a truck as it rumbles across Camp Habbaniyah. Clad in helmets and body armor in the 110-degree F. June heat, they're on a mission: to baptize Sergeant Gross.

"I am going to try to talk him out of it," confesses Chaplain Baker, a tall, lanky Methodist minister whose formal Mississippi-tinged speech and posture mask an often goofy sense of humor.

It's not the baptism itself; it's just the part where Gross wants Baker to immerse him in the Euphrates, one of four rivers that the Bible describes as flowing from the Garden of Eden. For Gross, an infantry platoon leader who just weeks before saw two of his men wounded by shrapnel, the river has a personal connection. Two years ago he deployed to a small base on the river, where he turned his back on religion after learning of his father's death back home. Now that he has rediscovered his faith, he feels it fitting to be baptized in a river where, he says, "a lot of people gave up hope."

Baker enumerates the problems with Gross's plan: "There is the issue of water pollution and the issue of security," he says. By stepping into the Euphrates, they would technically be leaving the confines of the camp, home to the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. Safer to wear their 25-pound body armor and risk drowning, he wonders? Or better to stand in the river without it and risk being shot? His laugh at the predicament is loud and staccato.

For military chaplains in war zones, even very routine requests can prove challenging – as Baker has discovered, it is not always easy to satisfy basic emotional and spiritual needs of individual troops within the hard-edged, mission-oriented goals and guidelines of the command.

go here for the rest
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1030/p20s01-usmi.html?page=1

What's it going to take for Marines and the rest of the units with people in combat zones to understand this came from a combat wound? What makes them think it is any less worthy, noble or heroic than being cut down by a bullet from the enemy or a bomb? They all need to understand that although there were other options, this is in fact a war wound that claimed a life. The bullet may have come from the Marine's own finger pulling the trigger, but the wound was caused from combat.


PTSD is an insidious killer.

Main Entry: in·sid·i·ousFunction: adjectivePronunciation: in-'si-de-&sEtymology: Latin insidiosus, from insidiae ambush, from insidere to sit in, sit on, from in- + sedere to sit -- more at SIT 1 a : awaiting a chance to entrap : TREACHEROUS b : harmful but enticing : SEDUCTIVE 2 a : having a gradual and cumulative effect : SUBTLE b of a disease : developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent

It is far more dangerous than a bullet fired at random or a bomb just waiting to claim another life. This one kills slowly with more far reaching victims. It takes buddies. It takes families. It takes friends. With normal combat deaths, the grief is answered with the knowledge of what happened and when. With PTSD and suicides, there are no clear answers. Everyone is left to wonder what they could have done to save the life. Everyone is left to wonder when it got so bad that there was no hope left to want to live. Everyone is left to wonder when it all started.

When they have PTSD, which is a wound from trauma, there is a golden window of opportunity to treat the wound before it infects the casualty. Left alone it eats away more of the character until there is nothing left. This is not something that should ever be treated as less worthy of honoring the life. It should always be more worthy of saving a life than it is. Until we all get it into our brain that this is a wound as surely as a bullet cuts into the skin, we will lose more by their own finger on the trigger, their own hand on a noose, their own hand on a bottle of pills.

These Marines in this article spoke of the code. The code also says never leave anyone behind. If they do not take action helping those wounded by trauma, they are in fact leaving them behind to be taken by the enemy. The enemy they can no longer see, but the one suffering from the ghosts does. kc

'Soldier's Heart' has heartbreaking relevance

'Soldier's Heart' has heartbreaking relevance
By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Fresh out of Harvard and Yale, Elizabeth Samet began teaching English at West Point a decade ago, when life there was peaceful — "there's no other word for it," she writes. Then came 9/11.
Samet and her students — future second lieutenants — found new meaning in works such as Tolstoy's War and Peace and Randall Jarrell's poem, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.
Samet's account of teaching and learning, Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, is absolutely fascinating. Never has Tolstoy or Homer seemed more relevant.
Her book explores serious issues — moral questions about courage and obedience — but with graceful writing and flashes of humor.
She is an outsider: a civilian and a woman in a military culture of, in Virginia Woolf's phrase, "unmitigated masculinity."
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No stigma in getting post-combat stress help

Caregivers emphasize: No stigma in getting post-combat stress help
By Erik Slavin, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Tuesday, October 30, 2007

CAMP CASEY, South Korea — A perception that seeking help for post-combat stress could harm a servicemember’s career is preventing many from dealing with problems that could balloon into greater ones.

But care providers throughout the Pacific say that seeking treatment alone will not jeopardize a security clearance — and therefore military jobs.

Most say they can keep treatment confidential and out of service records, with exceptions possible when serious harm to self or others is involved.

Capt. Christopher Perry, Area I support psychiatrist at Camp Casey, South Korea, has managed medications and conducted psychotherapy for several hundred returning vets.

Senior NCOs and junior officers do perceive a stigma with getting treatment, he said. But that stigma doesn’t exist, Perry said: “You don’t lose your clearance because of seeking help [for combat-related stress].”
go here for the rest
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49875

Iraqi war veteran heals trauma through pastels at UMSL

Iraqi war veteran heals trauma through pastels at UMSL
By Aisha Sultan
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
10/29/2007
NORMANDY — Randy Johnson remembers standing at the edge of a bridge waiting for a train to pass so he could jump and kill himself. Johnson, 23, waited for hours, but no train came by.The next day, the former Iraq war veteran checked himself into a Veterans Affairs hospital in Sheridan, Wyo. During his four-month stay earlier this year at the facility, he learned that he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder."I thought I was stronger than that," Johnson said. "I thought I could handle it."
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Canadian soldiers suffering mental-health problems after Afghanistan

It's not clear how many serving members are being treated for mental-health issues, but an official with Veterans Affairs said that since the Afghan mission began five years ago, the number of clients receiving care for PTSD at the department's clinics has risen to 6,500 from 1,800.

Cdn soldiers suffering mental-health problems after Afghanistan

By Alison Auld, THE CANADIAN PRESS

HALIFAX - Hundreds of Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan are suffering from a range of mental-health problems linked to their deployment, according to new data.

But even with this latest information, the military admits it still has little understanding of how many troops might be affected by the rigours of war and operational stress over the long haul.

About 28 per cent of the 2,700 Canadian Forces soldiers who were screened after serving in the war-torn country were found to have symptoms of one or more mental-health problems, including depression, panic disorders and suicidal tendencies.
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http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/10/28/4612584-cp.html
Linked from

http://www.icasualties.org/oef/

Memories of lost friends follow soldier through therapy

Memories of lost friends follow soldier through therapy
By Erik Slavin, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Monday, October 29, 2007

CAMP CASEY, South Korea — “John” didn’t really notice how much he had changed until five months after he watched his first friend die in Iraq.

On Dec. 26, 2005, John and others in the 5th Engineer Battalion were looking for roadside bombs near Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade caromed off a Humvee turret and ended Sgt. Dominic Coles’ life.

“I didn’t even know how to react to what I saw,” John said. “But I knew what to do. I stood up on the gun.”

John still sees Coles in his dreams. Sometimes he looks as healthy as when they played spades together in their barracks.

Other times, Coles and two other dead friends look as they did when they died; sometimes they slowly disintegrate in front of him. One dream was so bad John pushed himself off his bed and cracked his ribs on a chair.

The nightmares began in Iraq, before he arrived home in May 2006 for his mid-tour leave. At the airport, most welcomed him and other troops home. But one man began shouting at the servicemembers, calling them baby-killers.

“That didn’t make me feel too happy,” John said during a recent interview at Camp Casey.
go here for the rest
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49858

Before you go to the link to read the rest, I still have no clue what gets into people when they say things like "baby killers" as if those things don't happen in combat. In Iraq, babies get killed, kids get killed, so do mothers and fathers and grandparents. Innocent people die. They end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Iraq, it is the civil war causing more innocents to die that even the contractors. It is not as if the troops target innocent people. One the rare times when it does happen, they go on trial. Pig headed people call them "baby killers" just like pig headed people join Westborough Baptist Church and protest at the funerals of the fallen. Taking out anything against the troops does not make sense at all. They are not the ones making the choices. Bush is. The generals are. The congress is.

N.J. center to aid assaulted female vets

N.J. center to aid assaulted female vets
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (UPI) -- A Veterans Administration treatment center is set to open in Bernards Township, N.J., to help female veterans who have been sexually assaulted.

The Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger said Sunday that with the number of assault and harassment cases involving female soldiers increasing dramatically, the new center will provide treatment to those suffering from a condition known as military sexual trauma.

The healthcare facility, which opens its doors in December, will be the first residential VA center that focuses on the increasingly prevalent condition.

The center was created following the findings of an ongoing VA screening process that found 20 percent of female soldiers leaving the military encountered a form of sexual trauma during their service, the report said.
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From Africa to America with trauma and after

Double Life: The Public Face and Private Pain of Torture Victims in Minnesota
by: Abdi Aynte
Sat Oct 27, 2007 at 5:44:46 PM

Like many other torture victims, Iftu has a dual identity: In public, she's a happy and hard-working immigrant whose gregarious outlook doesn't give a hint of the horrors she suffered in her native Ethiopia. In private, she's a rape victim and a patient at a local psychological treatment center.

"It's getting harder and harder to keep up with my two identities," said Iftu, who didn't want to give her last name.

She's one of an estimated half million torture victims in the United States. Minnesota has an estimated 30,000. That number is too high for the state because of higher immigration rate per capita, said Rosa Garcia-Peltoniemi, a senior consulting clinician with The Center for Victims of Torture, or CVT. The Minneapolis-based center is a national leader in the field.

Speaking at an immigrant roundtable Friday, Garcia-Peltoniemi said "the stigma associated with torture is a barrier to treatment," but is common.
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Back from Iraq:Mental scars of war still fresh 2 years later

"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is no longer a rare diagnosis for combat veterans, but it is almost never discussed publicly. Why is that? Amputees are commonly seen in the media, as are family members and friends of soldiers who have died. It is hard to imagine that mental scars can be as difficult to deal with as physical ones, but they can be. The biggest difference between the two is that physical injuries are more noticeable, often even obvious. PTSD leaves no marks, nothing that signifies trauma to the naked eye."

Guest Columnist: Mental scars of war still fresh 2 years later
Two incidents with IEDs while vet was in Iraq, have taken a toll on her life, her dreams and her psyche.

Elizabeth Ricci

Last update: October 27, 2007 – 4:19 PM
When people talk about the war in Iraq, discussion almost always focuses on topics related to the physical survival of soldiers. As a veteran of this war, I believe more attention needs to be paid to the mental scars soldiers are suffering.

Homemade bombs called IEDs -- improvised explosive devices -- are what have claimed the most lives in Iraq, by far. These devices can range in force from causing mild annoyance to instantaneous death. Early in my deployment, I had my first of several personal encounters with an IED.
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http://www.startribune.com/10240/story/1501645.html

There is more outrage among veterans right now on the web over the speeches people can give in the flag folding ceremony at a military funeral. You would think there would be more outrage over the veterans like Ricci, but there isn't. They come home as they have done from all other wars, carrying the combat with them and the horrors they see. What causes the outrage? A flag folding ceremony for the fallen.

Yesterday I attended one of the protest marches across the country. It was raining in Orlando but still they came to voice their outrage over Bush's delusion in Iraq. No one protested being in Afghanistan, which has all but been forgotten. Swarms of peace marchers walked in front of a small group of pro-war people. Sitting across the street so that I could get a good film of it, as I waited for them to come, it stuck me that both groups were taking a stand for the same reason. Both groups care deeply about the soldiers in Iraq but they cannot come together on the right way to support them.

How can they? Those who have researched how and why the troops ended up in Iraq blame Bush for what he is doing to the military and the people of Iraq. The other side sees it as their duty to support Bush because he is the Commander-in-Chief. They feel it is a betrayal to the men and women in Iraq to go against Bush. Their commonality is the passion they feel for those serving. Both groups feel outrage. Where is the outrage for the wounded coming back? Bush and those who support him have turned those who support just the troops and not him, into the enemy of pro-war groups. Why can't they see that no one is protesting the action taken in Afghanistan?

Still, as I read what outrages people, when apathy does not have them focusing on trivial nonsense, I can't help but wonder who is behind all of this. The bloggers go nuts when someone on the other side says something they can sharpen their teeth on. I'm guilty of that too. Yet I also sharpen my teeth when I see more outrage over trivial than I do over what matters in the lives of the men and women coming back from what we fight over. I care deeply about how they were sent into Iraq and how no one in Washington has done their job while expecting the military to pull off all of it, but I care more about the state of their lives when they come home to live with what they survived.

Go and read the rest of what Ricci wrote and then ask yourself why you can't be so moved as you were yesterday across the country for the sake of the wounded. They need all of us to help them today, not when the occupation is over. The sooner the better, but until it is over, we will have more wounded needing help today. Can't both groups at least come together on this for them?





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