Soldiers fighting invisible enemy on home turf-TBI

Soldiers fighting invisible enemy on home turf
February 21st, 2011 @ 10:18pm
By Sarah Dallof
SALT LAKE CITY -- An alarming rise in a type of battlefield injury is prompting changes within the military and in how soldiers returning from battle are treated.

Symptoms closely mirror those of post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, the two often operate in a vicious cycle.


Josh Hansen was injured in several blasts similar to these.

Doctors estimate up to 20 percent of soldiers currently deployed will suffer a traumatic brain injury -- something that just a few years ago was often never diagnosed or properly treated. Most will recover with no after affects, but some are changed forever.

When retired Army Sgt. Josh Hansen first saw a modern warfare video posted on YouTube by an insurgent group, it brought back painful memories -- it was one of his missions.

Hansen would suffer eight concussions during two tours of duty from blasts like those shown in the video.

"When we were first getting injured, no one thought of brain injuries. You just pop some aspirin and go back out and do your job," Hansen said.

Concussions occur when an outside force causes the brain to shake in the skull. It's an injury that routinely sidelines professional football and hockey players.

Hansen didn't notice slowdown until his fifth concussion. He says he would be in the middle of a mission when suddenly he had no idea how he'd gotten there.
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Soldiers fighting invisible enemy on home turf

Veteran gets foster home instead of nursing home

Why didn't anyone think of this before? This is such a great idea when you consider there are people in this country taking in homeless dogs. The dogs are cared for until someone adopts them by their foster families. When we were looking for a dog, Save-a-life gave us the option of being a foster family or adopting. We fell in love with our dog, so right away, we adopted him. We were ready to do whatever it took to give him a good home. Veterans in this country have not been so lucky.

Many veterans have no family to help take care of them or even visit them in a nursing home. Doing something like this is an outstanding idea! There was something like this after WWII. My husband's uncle was on a ship that was sunk. He was in the ocean for a few days. When he came home he was sent to live on a farm with a couple dedicated to taking care of veterans. They lived there, were cared about and given something to do with their days. While it gave him a better quality of life even with what was called "Shell-shock" it can only work better now because there is a lot more knowledge of what needs to be done.

Local Veteran is First to Receive One-of-a-Kind Care
Local Veteran is First to Receive One-of-a-Kind Care
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21 2011 18:22 KYLE WARNKE
Kenneth Gaddis is a Korean War veteran who recently found himself a new home, thanks to the help of the V.A. Medical Center of Dublin.
The V.A. Center started a program to put veterans into a foster home instead of a nursing home. The focus is to give veterans one-on-one care in a person's house, rather than being just another patient in a nursing home.
Kenneth Gaddis is the first middle Georgian to take advantage of this program.
Gaddis' foster 'family', is Lisa Akins. She helps by helping Gaddis make his bed, cook his food, and take him to the store.
But Kenneth says he likes helping Lisa around the house, doing things just like he did when he was younger.
"Yeah, I like to help her if I can," Gaddis says. "Do things that I used to...help bring in the groceries, something like that."
But the V.A. Center needs more help from families for more veterans. According to a V.A. Center spokesman, veterans who are in the foster care program see better health results, because they typically get more attention and exercise.
And Lisa says Kenneth is not a patient, he's a part of the family.
"We just hang out as a family," she says. "He goes out with the family and hangs out with us. Like he's a part of the family."
If you are interested in becoming a foster family for a local veteran, or would like more information about the program, you can click here

The Heart-Ship of Loving Veterans with PTSD

It isn't hard to believe that Lily Casura has become an outstanding hero on PTSD. When I think of all the years we've talked and shared, it is hard to remember all the conversations but this one stood out in my mind as well as Lily's. We were talking about the kind of heartache she was heading into working with veterans trying to heal PTSD. First I told her that it was not impossible, but it was almost impossible to get through to them in the beginning. Then I told her that listening to their stories or reading their emails would break her heart but soon she'd see how great these men and women are.

To imagine that depth of pain comes with a person still willing to do it all over again no matter how much they suffered after is a testament to their character. They do not worry as much about themselves as they worry about their families and what this is all doing to them. They tell stories of how they ended up divorced or how they believe they are heading to it. They don't want to hurt anyone and they don't want to hurt anymore. Lily gets it.

Last week she did a post for Valentines Day. I've been out of my mind with classes and trying to keep up but this semester brings killer classes like typography and screenwriting taking up way too many hours a day. I have time to breathe now that several projects due tomorrow are done and wanted to post what she wrote. When she wrote heart-ship, it went right to the point of what love does when it is anything but normal to most, but normal to the world we live in with PTSD getting in the middle.

February 15, 2011

The Heart-Ship of Loving Veterans with PTSD
by
Lily Casura
Valentine's Day -- and coming up next week, five years of writing this site -- are making me think about holding the space of loving veterans with PTSD in my heart, and the "heart-ship" sometimes of doing so.

I was warned early on about this, by none other than Kathie Costos, who I esteem highly to this day. A few years into it, she wrote me in response to some problem I was bringing up, "I told you in the beginning when we first started corresponding that they would break your heart while you did this thankless job but the rewards would be worth millions for your heart. I told you they were magnificent! I am so happy they are starting to tell you how much you mean to them. That's really wonderful and even more important they are opening up. That is a big compliment to your work. They have a hard time opening up to anyone."

Well, open up they have...especially in a forum linked to this, which is the Healing Combat Trauma site on Facebook, and all the different relationships that have come out of that.
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The Heart-Ship of Loving Veterans with PTSD

After Dave Duerson Death Ruled Suicide, Brain To Go To Research

Dave Duerson Death Ruled Suicide, Donating Brain For Concussion Research
DAVE SKRETTA 02/20/11

NEW YORK — The family of former Bears safety Dave Duerson has agreed to donate his brain for research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition linked to athletes who have sustained repeated concussions.

Chris Nowinski at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University School of Medicine told The Associated Press he was contacted by a representative of the NFL Players Association on Friday, then worked with a representative of Duerson's family.

"I can confirm that Mr. Duerson's family has agreed to donate his brain to the CSTE at BU School of Medicine," Nowinski said in an e-mail.

Duerson died Thursday in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. The Miami-Dade medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, Miami-Dade police spokesman Roy Rutland said Sunday. He confirmed that a gun was used but did not specify where Duerson shot himself.

It's unclear why Duerson killed himself, although his company had been forced into receivership several years ago and he had lost his home to foreclosure, former Bears coach Mike Ditka told the AP in a phone interview Sunday.

"I knew he had some problems, I knew he lost the business, I knew all that," said Ditka, whose Gridiron Greats Assistance Fund works to help provide for retired players, which includes funding research into health-related issues such as brain injuries.
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After Suicide, Bears Star's Brain Donated For Concussion Research

Fort Lauderdale police need help after homeless man set on fire

Florida Homeless Man Set on Fire During Fight
Published February 19, 2011
FoxNews.com

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Police in Florida are searching for a man they say set another man on fire during a fight Friday.

Fort Lauderdale police said 58-year-old John Gibbons set 51-year-old William Stouffer on fire early Friday morning while the two were fighting behind a Burger King restaurant.

Stouffer was doused with some kind of accelerant before the other man lit him on fire, Detective Travis Mandell said.

Stouffer's girlfriend told local station WSVN that the men are homeless and both lived in tents near the Burger King.

"All of a sudden, poof, a big ball of fire, and here's Bill screaming like in a big ball of flames," she said.

Stouffer was hospitalized in Miami in critical condition. Police are searching for the man who attacked him.

Police are asking anyone with information on Gibbons's whereabouts to call Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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Florida Homeless Man Set on Fire During Fight

Sally Satel, Something evil this way comes

Sally Satel, Something evil this way comes
February 19, 2011 posted by Chaplain Kathie · Leave a Comment (Edit)
Sally Satel is still at it with the support from American Enterprise Institute. For years she’s been trying to say that PTSD is nothing more than veterans looking for an easy ride. She hasn’t changed and her claims remain that taking care of veterans with PTSD is a waste of money.

PRESS RELEASES
Veterans: What’s Wrong with Current Treatments?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 18, 2011
As the White House proposes a $7.2 billion allocation in its 2012 budget to fund research and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in military veterans, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar and psychiatrist Sally Satel explains the number of problems with current PTSD treatments and proposes methods to optimize the use of PTSD funding.
Among Satel’s key points:
A “culture of clinical diagnosis” allows mental health examiners to diagnose a veteran’s level of disability before veterans have even begun rehab. This convinces the patient that future health is unattainable, and gives individual veterans dismal prospects for meaningful recovery even before a course of therapy.
Disability benefits themselves can sometimes cause inadvertent damage by incentivizing unemployment and dependency and discouraging veterans from returning to the civilian workforce.
Collaboration between the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) needs to improve. The VBA often aims to maximize veteran benefits while giving no attention to improving clinical treatment, while the VHA often focuses solely on treatment without properly assisting veterans with financial hardships.
Sally Satel can be reached at ssatel@aei.org (202.862.7154) or through her assistant at wistar.wilson@aei.org (202.862.4876). For all other media inquiries, please contact Hampton Foushee at hampton.foushee@aei.org (202.862.5806).
AEI’s in-house ReadyCam TV studio–for live and taped interviews–can be booked through VideoLink at 617.340.4300.

Another load of scholarly wisdom shoveled out on veteran’s heads. Guess she never met the veterans waiting for month after month, even years, to have a claim approved only to discover that a disability worthy of 100% will only receive 50% or less making them file an appeal and fight for the rest. This is not even addressing the fact that until they receive the disability rating, there is no income for them to live off of if they cannot work. This the case of PTSD, veterans usually cannot work because of the medications, flashbacks and nightmares and all around reduced quality of life.
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Sally Satel, Something evil this way comes

Female Sgt. told by Chaplain, rape must have been God's will

This so called "chaplain" told a woman that being raped must have been God's will and then told her to go to church more! No person in their right mind would suggest such a thing. Being a victim of a crime is not God's will. How could a Chaplain say such a deplorable thing? Yet this is going on all the time when soldiers turn to Chaplains for spiritual help. Being a member of the "wrong" denomination, or no affiliation at all, will bring condemnation from some Chaplains as they tell the soldier they are going to hell unless they covert. Now we hear that a female soldier is told it was God's will because she didn't go to church enough?

Military chaplain: Soldier’s rape ‘must have been God’s will’

By Sahil Kapur
Friday, February 18th, 2011
WASHINGTON – A lawsuit targeting the Pentagon contains an astonishing anecdote about a retired Sergeant's experience after being sexually assaulted by a colleague during a deployment to Afghanistan.

The lawsuit, available here (PDF), was filed by 17 military women against Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Donald Rumsfeld in Virginia. It assails "the military's repeated failures to take action in rape cases created a culture where violence against women was tolerated, violating the plaintiffs' Constitutional rights."

Sergeant Rebekah Havrilla alleges in the complaint that in 2006, after her military supervisor repeatedly sexually harassed her, she was raped by a colleague she was working with at the time.

"He pulled her into his bed, held her down, and raped her. He also photographed the rape," it reads. Havrilla reported the incident within a month.

In February 2009, she reported for active duty training and, upon seeing her rapist, went into shock.

"She immediately sought the assistance of the military chaplain," the lawsuit reads. "When SGT Havrilla met with the military chaplain, he told her that 'it must have been God's will for her to be raped' and recommended that she attend church more frequently."

The complains adds that "SGT Havrilla suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic depression."
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Soldier’s rape must have been God’s will

Suicidal thoughts plague returned veterans

Denial will not save their lives, marriages or relationships with their kids. Denial is just as deadly when families refuse to understand what PTSD is.

After years of writing on PTSD I had a hard time understanding why spouses of Afghanistan and Iraq troops did not ask questions or show any interest in learning what they needed to know. My answer came from a young wife. She said that while her husband was gone, she had enough to worry about. She had to take care of everything at home alone along with worrying about the car pulling up in the driveway to tell her that her husband was not coming home. She didn't want to have to worry about something that may not happen.

A wound by bullet or bomb in war, may or may not happen. The car with the Chaplain inside may or may not come. The tasks that have to be done and kids that need care, still all need to be taken care of even when they come home. The need to understand what PTSD is ahead of time goes a long way toward getting help right away instead of wondering what came home and blaming them for what is happening inside of them.

Families can either make their negative feelings stronger and feed the turmoil or they can ease their minds and help them heal. It all depends on what they know just as much as how much they care.

Why wait to regret what they did not do? A Vietnam veteran's wife called me the other day. They had been married for 40 years but with retirement, mild PTSD got worse. Recently she became aware of what PTSD is and now lives with the regret of the turmoil in her home and what it all did to her kids growing up. I told her that she did the best she could with what she knew and now has the chance to do better. I reminded her that when our husbands came home, there was nothing for us to help us help them. Then I told her that even knowing what PTSD was and knowing what to do as much as I knew what not to do, it was almost impossible to keep my family together. To hold a family together for 40 years knowing nothing is remarkable.

With all the information available today, knowing spouses want to remain uninformed is heartbreaking. Most of what they have ahead of them can be wonderful if they learn now just as much as if their spouse gets help now instead of years later, it can be a great future. The problem is time is being wasted while PTSD takes a stronger hold and negative emotions are fed.

If they learn now, love still lives later.

War’s other casualty: Suicidal thoughts plague returned veterans
BY BERNARD A. LUBELL
FEB 17, 2011
Suicide among veterans is not a simple discussion. With veterans making more than half the calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline since 2007, does the adage of the “ultimate sacrifice” need to be revisited?

More than 134,000 people made calls to the lifeline last year. Of those callers, 61 percent identified themselves as veterans, while 7 percent identified themselves as a friend or family of a veteran.

This means that nearly three-fourths of calls made to the lifeline were related to veterans’ issues.

“What we don’t really know is the relationship between the people who are really going to kill themselves and the population who calls,” said Dr. Dean Krahn, chief of the mental health service line at the VA in Madison, Wis.

The relationship may not be known, but the need is salient.

The Department of Veteran Affairs partnered with the lifeline in 2007 to provide these services for veterans. By dialing “1” after calling 1-800-273-TALK, veterans are routed to a lifeline that caters to their specific needs.

But the lifeline was only established in 2004, a few decades after Steve Nelson and others like him returned home from Vietnam.

For 35 years, Nelson never spoke about his war experiences. Instead, he found solace with drugs and alcohol to dull the memories magnified by his Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
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Suicidal thoughts plague returned veterans

PTSD "Everything starts to be a trigger."

Some great things come out in this report. First, Vietnam veterans are getting help, even after all these years. Then they are trying to help the newer veterans. Families are stepping up too. Given the fact that older veterans and their families have been there, done that, with basically nothing to lean on, they want to make it easier for the newer families. That's why I do what I do. Back when I started dealing with all of this, there was nothing for me. I was working "without a net" under me or around me the way we have the cyber world at our fingertips ready willing and able to offer the support along with information we hunger for. Wives like me were feeling as if we were totally alone to figure this out all by ourselves. We did. We went through hell to get to the point where we knew enough and most of us remember those dark days. We want to make sure that if we can help avoid extra heartache for newer families, we're there.

For veterans with PTSD, "everything can be a trigger" but when families are aware of what is behind all of it, we can make sure the safety is on. We can either add to the turmoil or we can calm their souls if we are aware.

Vietnam Veteran gets help with PTSD after 40 years of suffering
by Jessica Harthorn
Posted: 02.16.2011 at 11:02 PM

CLIO -- After the Civil War the term "Soldier's Heart" was given to soldiers who suffered intense anxiety because of their experiences.

Today it’s called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Medical experts say hormones released because of stress actually help burn in memories, making it easier for PTSD patients to recall the negative images.

NBC25 found out how its affecting our local soldiers and ways families can spot it.

The cost of PTSD is great. Veterans often lose their families, their jobs, and even their minds.

I talked with one vet who's been living with the disorder for more than 40 years.

Since 1967 Mike Dickinson has suffered intense nightmares.

“You wake up sweating and kicking and trying to get away, and I hit my wife accidently,” said Mike Dickinson, a Vietnam Veteran.

As a Vietnam veteran, Dickinson witnessed many horrific events and thought his anxiety was normal.

“It's one of those man up things you know, nah I’m all right…I found out I wasn’t,” said Dickinson.

Recently Dickinson was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, something clinical social workers say plague 8% of combat soldiers.

“Everything starts to be a trigger, it reminds you of something that was done, or related to something that was done, so you try to avoid that trigger, so you stay away from things and people,” said Robin Fenlon, a clinical social worker.
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Vietnam Veteran gets help with PTSD

Soldier finds mental health stigma still alive in Guard

Soldier finds mental health stigma still alive in Guard
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Feb 15, 2011 18:01:39 EST
First Lt. Steve Philpot received the phone call every married soldier dreads on deployment.

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit by the phone and hope you’re alive. When you get home, get your stuff and get out,” the 28-year-old National Guardsmen heard his ex-wife tell him on the phone in Afghanistan.

Philpot hoped when he came home for his mid-deployment rest and recuperation leave in January 2010 that she would change her mind once she saw him.

She didn’t.

This was a miserable deja vu for Philpot, whose first wife cheated on him while he was away at Officer Training School in 2008. He had yet to turn 27, and the Oklahoma National Guardsman was already twice divorced. This one hurt more, though.

“I couldn’t believe I was going through this again. I hit rock bottom and I knew I needed help,” Philpot said.

The soldier contacted his unit’s rear detachment, which sent a chaplain to his home.

Thus began the long road from soldier needing counseling to Army outcast. Philpot still can’t believe that reaching out for help has further complicated his life.

Philpot is frustrated with the Guard. So frustrated, he regrets asking for help.

“Since I’ve asked the Army for help, I’ve been treated like garbage, like a third-rate soldier,” he said. “I got help at Fort Sill, but coming back to the National Guard it has been nothing but ‘you are a piece of garbage,’” Philpot said.

The Army has gone to great lengths to try to remove the stigma that comes with reporting depression and suicidal thoughts. But Philpot and other soldiers said that while the Army has stood up a suicide prevention task force and instituted programs to deal with depression, more work needs to be done when the soldier leaves a hospital or counselor’s office.
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Soldier finds mental health stigma still alive in Guard