Panetta: Junior leaders can stop suicides

Panetta: Junior leaders can stop suicides
By Patricia Kime
Staff writer
Army Times
Posted : Friday Jun 22, 2012

According to monthly service reports, the Army had 76 suicides through June 1 while the Marine Corps had 18. The Air Force had 35 as of May 1, according to figures provided to Air Force Times. The Navy does not publish monthly statistics, but at least 20 sailors have committed suicide this year.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday that preventing suicides is a foremost leadership responsibility shouldered by all commanders, but especially by junior leader, non-commissioned officers and petty officers with direct oversight over troops.

Calling suicide “the most frustrating challenge” of his position, Panetta said the Defense Department can create programs, conduct research and lead innovation in neuroscience, but leaders must tackle the issue “head on” because prevention falls to them.

“We will not tolerate actions that belittle, that haze, that ostracize any individual, particularly those who have made the decision to get help. Leadership throughout the department must make it understood that seeking help is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness,” he said. read more here

Healing military vets’ PTSD starts with understanding

Healing military vets’ PTSD starts with understanding
Posted: Friday, June 22, 2012
By Dr. Mike Rosmann
IFT columnist
Iowa Farmer Today

PTSD seldom goes away on its own. The most-effective help with PTSD is usually obtained from professionals and trained peer support counselors who understand the experiences of those struggling with PTSD.

Last week I explained how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can develop.

Reacting to a traumatic event with alarm is normal, but when we overreact with alarm to any reminder or cue of the trauma to the degree that distress interferes with our daily lives, it’s time to take corrective actions.

PTSD is fairly common for people involved in farming because farming is one of the most-stressful occupations and many of the factors that affect success or failure are beyond our control.

When I use the term “farming,” I am also referring to ranching, working on a farm as a laborer and related jobs that involve the production of food, fiber and biofuel.

One of my first professional experiences with PTSD after completing training in clinical psychology involved helping a farmer who became emotionally paralyzed while undergoing farm-foreclosure proceedings in court. He couldn’t sleep, he was unable to go about his daily chores on the farm, he became numb and was hardly able to speak. PTSD in the military

PTSD among soldiers who completed tours of duty in Iraq and/or Afghanistan is also common. Recent estimates range from 2.5 percent to 35 percent among U.S. veterans returning stateside (Richardson, Frueh & Acierno, 2010; Curry, 2012).

As might be expected, the prevalence of PTSD is positively correlated with the number of tours of duty and the number of exposures to fire-fights, bombs and other life-threatening events.

Many returning U.S. military who originated from rural areas find access to care for PTSD is an added burden.

Dr. Joel Kupersmith, chief research and development officer of the Department of Veteran Affairs, commented, “Providing comprehensive, high-quality health care to veterans in rural areas is a challenge.”

Of 5.6 million veterans who received care from the VA in 2006, about 40 percent lived in rural areas.

U.S. military personnel tend to originate in greater numbers from states that are rural, with Alaska having the highest number of military personnel on a per capita basis.
read more here

Home Depot Foundation doing more for veterans

Volunteers of America gets grant to help homeless veterans
Jun 22, 2012

Troops wait for President Barack Obama to speak to them at the Third Infantry Division Headquarters, Friday, April 27, 2012, Fort Stewart, Ga. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) / AP

Written by
The Courier-Journal

The Home Depot Foundation has awarded a $77,741 grant to Volunteers of America of Kentucky to help address the housing needs of Louisville-area military veterans.

The grant will be used to support transitional housing for homeless veterans at the agency’s campus at 1432 S. Shelby St. Among the improvements to be funded with the grant money is the replacement of 42 windows, many of which are in disrepair and not energy-efficient, agency officials said.

The funding follows a grant for $67,720 in October 2011 and $2,500 worth of gift cards in December 2011 from The Home Depot Foundation for other work at the campus.
read more here

THE CHALLENGES
Statistics show that many veterans face severe housing needs sometimes because of a disability from combat injuries or because they’ve been particularly hard hit by the economy and sometimes because they simply can’t find affordable housing.

An aging population: 9 million veterans are senior citizens, many of whom live on fixed incomes
Disabilities:
From 2001-2008, the number of disabled veterans increased 25 percent to 2.9 million.
Low Incomes:
More than 4.3 million veterans have a combined family income of under $20,000.
Homelessness:
Statistics show that veterans are twice as likely to be homeless than those who haven’t served.
Veterans represent 8% of the general population, yet they form 16% of the homeless population.

THE OPPORTUNITIES
The skills learned in the Armed Forces are often directly applicable in the workplace, making veterans highly educated and trained employees for businesses. We know that firsthand — more than 35,000 of The Home Depot’s associates are veterans.

Leadership & Work Ethic:
Proven leadership skills, honed in the most challenging operational environments.
Top Skills:
92% of active duty military in the United States use computers at their places of duty and 40% of military personnel have job assignments that involve information resource management; 60% of the enlisted personnel can program in at least one computer language.
Education Level:
Almost 33% of young veterans have an associate or bachelor’s degree, compared to 27% of young non-veterans.

Home Depot Foundation

UPDATE This is what they did last year.

By Joe Ruble ORLANDO, Fla. — A non-profit agency that serves 15,000 veterans in Central Florida with an annual budget of $16,000 had to make a tough decision. Were they to spend their funds entirely on the needs of homeless and other veterans or finally start a badly needed renovation project in the building they have called home for 49 years? "It was coming down to hard decisions," said Brad Bouters, commander of DAV Chapter 16 in Orlando.

Then another non-profit stepped in and with the help of The Home Depot Foundation were able to pull off the repair job. The Mission Continues organized over 100 volunteers who showed up at 2040 W. Central Avenue on Tuesday morning to turn it into a new place of work.

The DAV office there is normally open two days a week for paperwork, while the rest of the time veterans are working in the field with homeless veterans, Bouters explained. Not one DAV volunteer gets paid.

"It's just veterans giving back," he said.

read more here

And then they came out last week and did even more.

Older vets reach out to younger peers

Older vets reach out to younger peers
By ART HOVEY
Lincoln Journal Star
Posted: Thursday, June 21, 201

Peggy Gillispie remembers the day she was ready to declare her husband the winner in his war with himself.

It was 11 years after he lost a leg to a land mine in Vietnam and the day of their older son’s first communion.

When retired Marine Terry Gillispie went to confession and took part in the sacrament with 7-year-old Shawn at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln in 1979, she realized the “cradle Catholic” and father of three had found a measure of peace.

“It was one of the happiest days of my life,” said a woman who stood by her man through years of readjustment.

"I was more involved in my faith at that time, but I like to think I brought him back into the fold."

It took a long time for Terry Gillispie to move beyond his injuries from an ambush on April 20, 1968, just one year after graduating from Lincoln Southeast High School.

“I relived that incident every day,” he said. “I was angry. I did some things. I drank too much. I got in fights. I raised hell.”

Now that’s behind him. And now, he and fellow Vietnam veteran Larry Brown are reaching out to Mike Sheets and others coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with post traumatic stress and other problems.

They worry that a bleak jobs picture will add to the latest round of emotional turmoil for men and women returning from war zones.

“Our objective is to get them to the VA now,” Gillispie said, “and not to have them go through what we went through.”

One focus of their efforts is Saturday’s Veterans Freedom Music Festival at the Veterans Administration Campus in Lincoln.
Read more

The Invisible War opens in theaters

While doing a radio talk show interview a couple of years ago I met two female veterans. One was from a deployment to Iraq and the other from Afghanistan. During a break we talked about military rape. They told me that female soldiers stopped taking fluids at noon so they wouldn't have to use the latrine at night. Imagine being in that kind of heat and instead of giving your body water, you're just too afraid to drink. I asked them if it happened to them and then one of them said something that shocked me. She said that it really didn't matter if it did or not. The fear was there all the time. The rest of the conversation was personal but that always stuck with me. Just the fear of hearing someone was attacked was enough to cause these women, heavily armed women, not afraid of the Taliban or the insurgents in Iraq but afraid of what was happening with their own people.

Most of the troops are decent humans and we should be proud of most of them but there are some who still think that a woman is not worth anything else. While most of the troops would risk their lives for a servicewoman just as they would for a man, a few need to be stopped and kicked out of the military because they are nothing more than criminals. Rape is a crime.

While rape does not only happen to women, it takes the rest of the servicemen to put a stop to those who cannot live up to the military code of conduct. That "buddy" raping another soldier will not care about anyone but himself so don't count on them to be there watching your back.

Today, The Invisible War opens in theaters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.

Already, the film has been an incredibly effective vehicle to help raise mass awareness of military sexual assault and has served as a catalyst to effect change in Washington and beyond. However, much more needs to be done.

This is a must-see film about a must-solve problem. And if enough people show up opening weekend, it could expand and extend the number of showings. But if we don’t, millions of people may never have a chance to see it and learn how serious this problem is.

Make your voice heard and help tell policy makers this issue matters by supporting opening weekend in theaters. They are watching and now is the time for us to make a big impact. There is power in numbers – invite your friends, family and colleagues to stand with survivors and take the first step to ending rape within the military.

From Oscar®- and Emmy®-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated; Twist of Faith) comes The Invisible War, a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of America's most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within the U.S. military. The film paints a startling picture of the extent of the problem-today, a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. The Department of Defense estimates there were a staggering 19,000 violent sex crimes in the military in 2010. The Invisible War exposes the epidemic, breaking open one of the most under-reported stories of our generation, to the nation and the world.

Vietnam vet dies 'making a difference' in Afghanistan

Vietnam vet dies 'making a difference' in Afghanistan

Tom Boyle, right, shown in an undated photograph (Handout )

June 21, 2012
By Jim Jaworski
Tribune reporter

Friends recall that Tom Boyle faced many deadly situations on the streets of Chicago during more than 30 years as a police officer. More than a decade after retirement, at age 62, he was training police in war-torn Afghanistan how best to keep the peace when he died this week.

Eager to make another part of the world safer, Boyle took a job as a security contractor, according to his wife, Pauline Boyle. He trained police in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, she said.

Pauline Boyle was notified by his company and a military chaplain on Monday of her husband’s death in Afghanistan that day.

Described as a serious man with a sarcastic sense of humor, Boyle is being remembered as someone who never stopped trying to assist others — whether as a police officer, Marine or private security contractor.

“He wanted to see if he could help people,” said Steve Kirby, who sometimes employed Boyle as a private investigator at his Elmhurst company. “That’s just the kind of person he was. He’s been spending his whole life helping people.”

Boyle was born in 1949 and grew up on the Northwest side of Chicago, according to his wife of 35 years. He served two tours in Vietnam, earning multiple awards including the Cross of Gallantry.
read more here

Operation Homefront revamps national structure

Operation Homefront revamps national structure
By Karen Jowers
Staff writer
Army Times
Posted : Thursday Jun 21, 2012
The nonprofit Operation Homefront is changing its national structure to more efficiently serve military families, the organization’s leaders said.

Under the change, the administrative, management and governance responsibilities of the local chapters will shift to the national organization, which officials said would let the chapters focus more on directly serving military families.

Operation Homefront provides emergency financial assistance and other help to families of service members and wounded warriors. Families receive grants to help with basic needs such as food, utilities and housing.

Until now, each of the 23 chapters of Operation Homefront was its own nonprofit, with a board of directors and responsibility to fund itself locally, while handling fundraising, accounting, legal registrations, website maintenance and other administrative and management responsibilities. Now each will become a field office of the national organization, if they choose to remain part of Operation Homefront.
read more here

American Legion and VFW groups split on re-employment rights bill

Vets groups split on re-employment rights bill
By Rick Maze
Staff writer
Army Times
Posted : Thursday Jun 21, 2012
A House bill that would expand re-employment rights for veterans has divided the nation’s two largest veterans’ organizations.

The nation’s largest veterans group, the 2.4 million-member American Legion, supports the bill. The nation’s second largest veterans group and the largest for combat veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, opposes it because the 2.1 million-member group fears it could make it harder for National Guard and reserve members to get hired by large companies.

Sponsored by Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., HR 3860 would limit the ability of companies to claim “undue hardship” as the reason for not rehiring a returning veteran.

Testifying Thursday before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s economic opportunity panel, Garamendi said the “undue hardship” rule in current law is “too lenient in allowing employers to dismiss deployed service members.”

“Currently, an employer is excused from re-employing a returning veteran if the employer’s circumstances have changed in a way that it is now impossible or unreasonable to do so, or imposes an undue hardship,” he said.
read more here

Army finally acknowledges Combat PTSD is different!

UPDATE
Well that didn't end well. Given the latest reports, he still doesn't really get it. The suicide numbers are up and so are the attempted suicides.

Why is he still in the position he's in with these kinds of results?

Don't tell my husband but after reading what Col. Castro had to say, I think I'm in love! Most of what you'll read in this article will seem to be something you read before. You have. But not from someone in the military. It has all been on this blog but largely ignored by the people who have publicity, power and money. I think they may really have a chance of saving the lives of our troops and helping them heal if this guy is on the job.

I suggest when you are done reading all of this you click the link to read the rest because there is a lot more.

Army research looks at new PTSD treatment
June 20, 2012
By Rob McIlvaine

Photo Credit: Courtesy photo
Col. Carl Castro, director of the Military Operational Medicine Research Program.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, June 20, 2012) -- While there are no simple cures for post-traumatic stress disorder, a leading military researcher said progress is being made with a new treatment method and a number of recent studies.

Col. Carl Castro, director of the Military Operational Medicine Research Program, has been funding studies into post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD, over the past five years, and he said the results are beginning to come in.

"I really think the next eight to nine months are going to be the most exciting as the data comes on line and we can start saying, okay, this is really working, we really know what we're doing here, let's do this," Castro said.

Castro's program funds studies into PTSD at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Fort Detrick, Md.

"Some of the early initial data," Castro said, "looks like we can really treat Soldiers in a two-week compressed time frame. And then we're also looking to see about follow-up, modifying the treatment as we go: the grief, the anger, the second guessing."

Traditionally, he said, psychotherapy is one session per week for 10 weeks. But with the new compressed time frame the Army will use individual and group therapy because Castro wants to take advantage of the natural bonding and cohesion that exists within the military to facilitate recovery.

NO SILVER BULLET

"There's no 'take this drug and you're cured.' There's no, 'come talk to me for 10 minutes and you're cured,' or 'Go to this web link and go through this 20-minute training and you're cured.' There's none of that although people will promise that. I can assure you that does not exist. If it did exist, I'd be the first one saying let's do that," Castro said.

Castro said PTSD can result from many different kinds of exposures: rape, physical assault, earthquakes, national disasters and combat.

"Our current treatments, both psycho and drug therapies, were developed to treat rape and assault victims and had never been validated for use for combat-related PTSD.

"So one of the first things we did was to fund a huge baseline of studies to confirm that the current treatments are effective for treating service members with combat-related PTSD," Castro said. "We wanted to first establish a very solid baseline. We funded these studies about four or five years ago, and they are just now winding up."

As a result it does look like the psycho therapies are effective, but they are not as effective for treating combat-related PTSD as they are for treating rape and sexual assault victims with PTSD.

COMBAT DIAGNOSIS OFTEN DIFFICULT

"Doctor Amy B. Adler and I wrote a paper on why combat-related PTSD is very different than rape or sexual assault PTSD. If you look at the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, it implies that there are no symptoms or reactions present prior to the traumatic event, so all of the reactions and symptoms occur after the event," he said.

In the military, many of the symptoms and reactions that are part of the diagnosis of PTSD are present before a traumatic event ever occurs, he said. For example, having sleep problems and sleep difficulties is a symptom and reaction to trauma.

"But in the military when you deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere, your sleep is probably already disrupted. So you're probably already not sleeping well prior to ever being exposed to a traumatic event," he said.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM, is the criteria by which mental health diagnoses are made.

It's done through the event and the reaction to the event, Castro said. So, the DSM says what should happen when a person is confronted with a traumatic event, they should be horrified, helpless and freeze.

"But Soldiers don't do that. When they're in combat and they see things, their training kicks in, they go on auto pilot and they function. So, even the immediate reaction is very different. And the symptoms can be very different, but if the symptoms are already present before the event, how can the trauma be the cause of those symptoms and reactions?" he asked.

'SUFFERING WHILE FUNCTIONING'

There are symptoms and reactions missing from the DSM that Soldiers often talk about, like extreme anger, grief, second guessing. Castro said the nature of impairment for Soldiers is often quite different than for civilians. The DSM says things such as work, family and life should be disrupted.

"But because of the military structure, Soldiers are still able to show up for work, perform their jobs and carry on, but still have all the symptoms: drinking problems, nightmares; so we call that suffering while functioning," he said.

Castro noted that when Soldiers leave the Army, the military life goes away and then those Soldiers now as civilians come unraveled and they end up going to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Soldiers are expected to be exposed to traumatic events. They train for it, prepare for it and the Army has them sign wills in case something happens.

Nobody expects to walk down the street and be sexually assaulted or attacked. If there's a dangerous area of town, people stay away.

"But in the military, by its very nature, Soldiers go to dangerous places, so they prepare and train for it," Castro said.

For people not in the military, the traumatic event is unexpected, it's unwanted, it's discrete, it's a single event. Unlike the military, where it's expected, there's multiple and varied events that occur over time, and quite honestly, Castro said, a lot of Soldiers are looking forward to going into combat to prove their courage, and see if they've got what it takes.

ISSUE ABOUT PTSD MISDIAGNOSIS

"The first incidence of this happening was at Fort Carson, Colo., where Soldiers were being dismissed with personality disorders and saying it wasn't related to PTSD, then they'd end up in a Veterans Administration medical hospital. The VA would then say 'this is absolutely post-traumatic stress disorder,'" he explained.

"This is an important distinction because if you have a personality disorder it's an administration separation from the military, but if you have PTSD, it's a medical board disability separation and that's where the money, etc., comes into play," Castro said.

PTSD vs. POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS INJURY - PTSI

He said that changing the name is not going to reduce stigma because Soldiers aren't stupid.

"You could call it apple and pineapple salad and people would say, oh, that means you have PTSD.

It's the same thing around the Army, he said. For instance, the Army has Soldier Resilience Centers as the places to go for mental health issues.

"Soldiers know that's where mental health is. They know you go there if you have a mental health problem. You're not going there to build your resilience; they know this," he said.

It's not going to reduce stigma, he said, and it's not going to fool anybody.

Changing the "D" to an "I", isn't going to help the Soldier, at all. It doesn't make the problem go away by calling it an injury.

read more here

Melissa Harris Perry uses "PTSD" for political gain

There are so many things Perry got wrong in this speech. For staters, 9-11 did not give the nation "PTSD" and if she understood what PTSD was, I doubt she'd stoop so low. 9-11 was a shock to the nation and yes, it caused PTSD in the people living in New York while having to walk past the destruction year after year reminding them the planes hit there and the towers fell there. Reminder of the day their sense of security was shattered and how evil could cause so few to do so much to so many.

The rest of us were in shock but after a few months of being one nation that was attacked we returned to the many groups of this nation and returned to being divided.

It was around this time that all the cable news giants cut their cord to decency and the greater good for a political side where average people lost.

Average Americans don't spend our days talking about politics. We talk about our families, hopes and dreams as well as our fears. How do we pay our bills? How do we afford to take care of our health and worry about the day when our bodies give out. Right now we're not so much worried about when our kids take over and "have to pay our debt" as much as we worry about how to take care of today.

What do we hear from politicians and people on cable news? A foreign language we don't understand even though these talking heads say it is how we feel and what we worry about.

Now Perry joined the growing voices using PTSD for a political point. While we live with PTSD and try to help each other heal, they use it. There are many things that make my blood boil and this is one of them.