Army: PTSD treatable; some diagnosed return to war,,,with meds

By most accounts, Sgt. Robert Bales has PTSD and TBI. If true, then sending him back into combat, more than likely, included medications for both. Is anyone looking into what medications he was on and if they played a role in what happened more than PTSD and TBI? Most medications the troops are given come with clear warnings about side effects. Does this mean everyone will become worse on the same medication? No. What works for one may do harm to another. This is why they need to be monitored by a doctor to make sure the right medication is given to them. If they have no clue about what side effects they need to report to their doctor, they suffer needlessly instead of healing. If there is no doctor for them to talk to, then who is checking on them?

Most Combat PTSD veterans do fine on medications and with proper treatment, begin to heal, so sending them back into combat or employing them in any field is not an issue. For others the medications they are on makes it worse.

Army: PTSD treatable; some diagnosed return to war

BY JULIE WATSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN DIEGO -- It is still not known if the soldier accused of killing 17 Afghans was ever diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder - but even if he had been, that alone would not have prevented him from being sent back to war.

The Army diagnosed 76,176 soldiers with PTSD between 2000 and 2011. Of those, 65,236 soldiers were diagnosed at some stage of their deployment.

Many returned to the battlefield after mental health providers determined their treatment worked and their symptoms had gone into remission, Army officials and mental health professionals who treat troops say. The Army does not track the exact number in combat diagnosed with PTSD nor those who are in combat and taking medicine for PTSD.

The case of Sgt. Robert Bales has sparked debate about whether the Army failed in detecting a soldier's mental instability or pushed him too far. The Army is reviewing all its mental health programs and its screening process in light of the March 11 shooting spree in two slumbering Afghan villages that killed families, including nine children.
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Wounded Warrior Dreams of Home

Wounded Warrior Dreams of Home
Updated: Thursday, 22 Mar 2012
Valerie Calhoun
Memphis, Tn - A mid-south marine needs our help. Munford's Corporal Christian Brown was seriously injured in Afghanistan last December. Today, he remains hospitalized at a military hospital in Maryland.

"I remember just getting hit and just watching the marines take care of me and doing what they were taught," Brown told us by phone.

Corporal Brown's life changed forever when his unit stumbled upon an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) during a combat operation on December 13. He remembers everything.

"When I got back on the bird, I lost consciousness 'til I woke up here."
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Wounded Warrior Dreams of Home: MyFoxMEMPHIS.com

Military's Illegal Personality Disorder Discharge Problem

As Dr. Thomas Berger pointed out in this article, they would have had to talk to family members before making a diagnosis of Personality Disorder. The other factor in all of this is you'd have to believe the DOD tests missed it when they enlisted. All this leads to the DOD is basically telling the troops, they had it before they served so they owe the veteran nothing. Nothing including compensation so they can pay their bills, no jobs because without an honorable discharge, employers don't want them and service organizations only help those with honorable discharges, topped off with the fact that even they have trouble getting jobs. Uncle Sam went to the bowl and washed his hands of these men and women after they served.

U.S. military illegally discharging veterans with personality disorder, report says
POSTED: 03/22/2012
By Mary E. O'Leary
The New Haven (Conn.) Register

Dr. Thomas Berger, VVA executive director for the Veterans Health Council, said to properly diagnose someone with personality disorder, the Department of Defense would have had to consult with the families and he doubted that happened.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The Department of Defense has illegally discharged hundreds of veterans in the past decade by not following their own protocols when making a diagnosis of personality disorder, which denies them certain medical benefits and carries a stigma that hurts re-entry to civilian life.

That conclusion is based on data collected from the Department of Defense as the result of two Freedom of Information suits filed by the Veterans Services Clinic at Yale Law School on behalf of its clients, Vietnam Veterans of America.

The VVA and the Yale clinic Thursday released their report: "Casting Troops Aside: The United States Military's Illegal Personality Disorder Discharge Problem."

A person let go from military service with a diagnosis of personality disorder cannot access retirement disability benefits or severance disability payments and they may not qualify for monthly service connected compensation and timely health care from Veterans Affairs.

Personality disorder is considered a pre-existing condition, as opposed to post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury and usually manifests itself in adolescence.

The Veterans Affairs Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007 accused the Department of Defense of deliberately misusing the personality diagnoses to save some $12.5 billion in health care and compensation.

The law clinic has determined that a total of 31,000 service members from 2001 to 2010 were discharged on the basis of alleged personality disorder, which is nearly 20 percent more than the 26,000 personality disorder discharges estimated by the federal General Accounting Office for 2001 to 2007.
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Gilroy missing mom of Iraq war veteran in murder-suicide found dead

Missing mom of Iraq war veteran in murder-suicide found dead
Published March 22, 2012
Associated Press

GILROY, Calif. – The missing mother of an Iraq war veteran who police say killed his family in a murder-suicide was found dead on Thursday off a rural Northern California road.

Gilroy police and volunteers had been looking for 52-year-old Martha Gutierrez since last week, after the bodies of her children, 27-year-old Abel and 11-year-old Lucero, were found in their apartment.

Investigators believe Abel Gutierrez, a National Guardsman, fatally shot his mother and sister before turning the gun on himself.
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Iraq War veteran likely shot mother before killing sister then self

After Staff Sgt. Bales' arrest, military tried to delete him from the Web

After Bales' arrest, military tried to delete him from the Web
By DAVID GOLDSTEIN AND MATTHEW SCHOFIELD
McClatchy Newspapers
Published: March 21, 2012


WASHINGTON — Besides waiting nearly a week before identifying the Army staff sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers, the U.S. military scrubbed its websites of references to his combat service.

Gone were photographs of the suspect, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, as well as a recounting in his base’s newspaper of a 2007 battle in Iraq involving his unit, a report that quoted him extensively.

But they weren’t really gone.

Given the myriad ways that information remains accessible on the Internet, despite the best efforts to remove it, the material about Bales was still out there and available, such as in cached versions of Web pages. Within minutes of the Pentagon leaking his name Friday evening, news organizations and others found and published his pictures, the account of the battle — which depicts Bales and other soldiers in a glowing light — and excerpts from his wife’s personal blog.

So why did the Pentagon try to scrub Bales from the Internet in the first place?
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Who thought civilians treating soldiers for PTSD was a good idea?

Civilian psych staff doubled since 2007
By Joe Gould - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Mar 22, 2012 11:20:30 EDT
As soldiers have increasingly struggled with post-traumatic stress, suicide and drug abuse, the Army has added thousands of civilian mental health specialists to treat troops and their families.

Army Medical Command reports it has more than doubled its inventory of civilian behavioral health care providers since 2007, with 1,985 hires. In five years, the service’s civilian corps gained 819 social workers, 510 psychologists and 73 psychiatrists, in large part due to an increase in congressional funding after the patient-care scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007.

Amid lengthy deployments and 10 years of war, the Army has seen behavioral health needs rise among troops. Since 2003, more than 70,000 soldiers have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. Last year alone, 278 suicides were reported in the active force, National Guard and Reserve, and more than 24,000 soldiers were referred to the Army Substance Abuse Program.
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YouTube video shows military helicopter crash in Afghanistan

Mar 22, 2012 by AssociatedPress
Video shows a US military helicopter apparently losing control and crashing near a base in Afghanistan. Reports indicate that no one was injured in the crash. The cause of the crash is said to be under investigation. (March 22)

GOP budget, written by Rep. Paul Ryan "budget" does not include veterans

GOP Budget Doesn't Even Say the Word "Veteran"
Jon SoltzCo-Founder of VoteVets.org, Iraq War Veteran
Posted: 03/21/2012


Do Republicans care about keeping our promise to veterans?

Looking at the recently released GOP budget, written by Rep. Paul Ryan, it's hard to see how they do. In fact, looking at the nearly 100 page document, the word "veteran" doesn't appear once. Not once.

Today is the 9th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Last night, I spoke with someone who served with me in Iraq during my first tour. And for the first time in almost nine years, she wanted to talk to me about an incident where she drove through an IED and a soldier was killed. It was a profound moment that shows how war and sacrifice stay with us, always. For those of us who served, in many ways, yesterday is today. And today, we read that the GOP doesn't even talk about veterans in their budget.

But, without saying the word "veteran," the budget tells us a lot about what they think about veterans. The budget calls for across the board spending freezes and cuts. If enacted, the Ryan GOP budget would cut $11 billion from veterans spending, or 13 percent from what President Obama proposes in his own plan.

It's unconscionable that they'd do this at a time when so many Iraq veterans have just come home and rely on veterans care. Over 45,000 US troops were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more will come who will rely on VA services, on top of veterans of other wars and eras who depend on the VA. But, this shortsightedness isn't new.
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Military Wives Rally Around Wife of Accused Afghanistan Shooter Robert Bales

Military Wives Rally Around Wife of Accused Afghanistan Shooter Robert Bales
by Jesse Ellison Mar 22, 2012 5:43 AM EDT

Since the slaying of 16 Afghans allegedly by Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the ‘silent ranks’ of military wives are rallying around one of their own, recognizing they could easily have found themselves in Karilyn Bales’s shoes.

Most of us will, blessedly, never be in Karilyn Bales’s shoes. We will never know what it is like to discover that the person we married, the father of our two young children, has been accused of mass murder. Most of us wouldn’t even be able to begin to imagine how we might feel, or what we might do.

But most of us aren’t married to men in the military. Those who are—the more than one-million-strong ‘milspouses’ who make up the ‘silent ranks’ of the U.S. Armed Forces—can imagine it all too well. In the days after the news broke that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, a 38-year-old father of two from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, had allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians, many veterans and service members hastened to distance themselves from the horrific act, rejecting the notion that PTSD or combat stress could be blamed for the soldier’s actions. But while the men scurried, the women rallied, taking to their blogs and social networks to voice their unconditional support for Bales’s wife, whom many even began to call ‘Kari.’
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Vietnam vet suffers PTSD, murders wife

While watching this last night I was taken back to the time when PTSD was not talked about. It was something families felt they had to keep secret.

The common understanding is that PTSD was not acknowledged until many years after psychiatrists had already termed the condition and that was in the 70's. By 1978 there was a report commissioned by the Disabled American Veterans, stated that there were 500,000 Vietnam veterans with PTSD.

The DAV already set up Veterans Centers to help combat veterans heal by offering support and knowledge. That is how long this has all be going on but as you can see from reports coming out on this generation of veterans, few lessons have been learned.

Tracking reports across the country makes me furious because this pamphlet hangs on the wall behind my computer to remind me of just how lousy of a job we're doing and none of what we see happening to our veterans should be excused. They knew too much 40 years ago to be so far behind.

Vietnam vet suffers PTSD, murders wife
Erin Burnett Out Front
Added on March 21, 2012
CNN's Miguel Marquez talks to veteran Gary Hulsey, a Pacific, Washington City Council member who killed his wife in 1978.

What's the link between PTSD, TBI and violence?

What's the link between PTSD, TBI and violence?
By Dr. Charles Raison, Special to CNN
updated 8:53 AM EDT, Thu March 22, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
A lawyer for Sgt. Robert Bales says the soldier may have been suffering from TBI, PTSD
Sometimes our understanding of psychiatry is unsatisfying, Dr. Charles Raison says
Raison: The backstory to someone's life is just as important as the current situation

Editor's note: Dr. Charles Raison, CNNhealth's mental health expert, is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has not personally examined the suspect in the Afghanistan mass shootings, Robert Bales, but has used news accounts as the basis for his views.

(CNN) -- Q: Sgt. Robert Bales has been accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians. He served three tours in Iraq before this and his lawyer says he may have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or a traumatic brain injury. What's the link between violence and those disorders?
A: Psychiatrists understand some types of aberrant behavior pretty well and can do things to help resolve it. But, unfortunately, in other instances -- and often the most interesting ones -- we can only mumble generalities that require no special expertise and that offer no hope for a diagnosis or treatment.
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Marine says Corps kicking him out for criticism on Facebook

Marine says Corps kicking him out for criticism
By Julie Watson - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Mar 22, 2012 5:39:18 EDT
SAN DIEGO — A Marine sergeant who started a Facebook group that is openly critical of President Obama and posted comments saying he will not follow the unlawful orders of the commander in chief is facing possible dismissal from the Corps.

The Marines on Wednesday told Sgt. Gary Stein — a Camp Pendleton Marine who started the Facebook page called Armed Forces Tea Party — that he is in violation of Pentagon policy barring troops from political activities.

Stein, a nine-year member of the Corps, said he started the page to encourage fellow service members to exercise their free speech rights. He has also criticized Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for his comments on Syria.
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Fort Carson soldier held in motorcycle club shooting

Carson soldier held in motorcycle club shooting
The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Mar 21, 2012 20:27:41 EDT
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Colorado Springs police say a second man taken into custody after a deadly shooting near the clubhouse of the Sin City Disciples motorcycle club is a Fort Carson soldier.
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Military is no closer to understanding how many deployments are too many

Military is no closer to understanding how many deployments are too many. Why?

Because they didn't care about what they knew back then!

Researchers wrestle with how many deployments are too many
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

After nearly 11 years of war and hundreds of millions of dollars in research on the mental health of troops, the military is no closer to understanding how many deployments are too many for individual soldiers, researchers say.

Military leaders have said the nation has never fought wars this long with this small of a military, deploying troops over and over. Yet questions about how many times a soldier can recycle into combat without psychological harm remain unanswered, reseachers say.

"I think it's definitely disappointing that we don't know. I wish we did," says retired Navy Capt. William Nash, a psychiatrist studying resiliency in Marine battalions.
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CNN on hand at Nicholas Horner PTSD murder trial

CNN on hand at Nicholas Horner murder trial
Kathy Mellott
The Tribune-Democrat
March 21, 2012
HOLLIDAYSBURG — A crew from CNN put in an appearance at the Blair County Courthouse this morning as the double-homicide trial of Nicholas Adam Horner entered its third day. A reporter, producer and a videographer were on hand as testimony continued in the prosecution’s case against the former Johnstown man.

While unable to have a camera in the courtroom, as per Pennsylvania law, the CNN crew was taking outside shots of the courtyard and public entrance area of the courthouse.

Their primary interest in the case stems from Horner’s claim that he suffers from PTSD as the result of three tours of duty in the Middle East.

It was the PTSD, his defense attorney maintains, along with drug and alcohol use, that led to his allegedly shooting and killing two men and wounding a woman on April 6, 2009, in Altoona.
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