PTSD support doesn't mean the more the merrier

If you Google PTSD Support groups you'll find "About 3,620,000 results (0.77 seconds)"

That's a lot and just shows how many "experts" are competing for you to visit their sites. It is easy for established groups to just get buried under all the new ones popping up.

When I am contacted about a new group starting, especially from Facebook, I ask them a series of questions first. Once they can't answer what real expert they are connected to, I stop asking questions. Simple as that. It is great to have a site where people just open up and share what is going on in their lives but when they have no one they can call on when someone is in distress, they do more harm than good.

Charities are another issue. Too many start up doing what has already been done by other groups. When they are not interested in helping out established groups or trying to get them do something they are not, then you have to wonder what the real motivation is. Do they really want to help or do they want to make a name (money) for themselves?

So far after 30 years, I've seen very little new coming out of the over 3 million search results above. That's pretty depressing.

Here is one group doing it all but getting very little attention for one simple reason. We're more about the work and not the publicity but that ends up creating greater challenges to being able to do the work.

Point Man International Ministries doesn't get a lot of press but while that is not always a bad thing it is when there are so many veterans needing help to heal and getting a load of empty promises, bad advice and still left searching for some support.

Since 1984, when Seattle Police Officer and Vietnam Veteran Bill Landreth noticed he was arresting the same people each night, he discovered most were Vietnam vets like himself that just never seemed to have quite made it home. He began to meet with them in coffee shops and on a regular basis for fellowship and prayer. Soon, Point Man Ministries was conceived and became a staple of the Seattle area. Bills untimely death soon after put the future of Point Man in jeopardy.

However, Chuck Dean, publisher of a Veterans self help newspaper, Reveille, had a vision for the ministry and developed it into a system of small groups across the USA for the purpose of mutual support and fellowship. These groups are known as Outposts. Worldwide there are hundreds of Outposts and Homefront groups serving the families of veterans.

PMIM is run by veterans from all conflicts, nationalities and backgrounds. Although, the primary focus of Point Man has always been to offer spiritual healing from PTSD, Point Man today is involved in group meetings, publishing, hospital visits, conferences, supplying speakers for churches and veteran groups, welcome home projects and community support. Just about any where there are Vets there is a Point Man presence. All services offered by Point Man are free of charge.

This is one of the comments left on the video you are about to watch.

"after seeing this i sought counseling after 3 combat tours and also gave my life to Jesus!"

You'll see the link to the first part video of this veteran's testimony but I want you to focus on the possible for now.

In this video an Iraq veteran named Paul talks about how he had the gun to his head when his wife walked in. She was on the phone with Dana Morgan, President of Point Man. Paul's life was saved that day but he also began to heal soon afterwards when he was able to forgive himself as much as he was willing to forgive others.

There is so much that is possible but if things keep going the way they were with all the new groups popping up, it will just take veterans longer to find Point Man and harder to find leaders willing to do the work God has pulled them to do.

Veterans heading to Congress include Vietnam Veteran

9 More Iraq, Afghan War Veterans Joining Congress
By KEVIN FREKING
Associated Press
WASHINGTON November 23, 2012 (AP)

As Tammy Duckworth sees it, her path to Congress began when she awoke in the fall of 2004 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She was missing both of her legs and faced the prospect of losing her right arm.

Months of agonizing therapy lay ahead. As the highest-ranking double amputee in the ward, Maj. Duckworth became the go-to person for soldiers complaining of substandard care and bureaucratic ambivalence.

Soon, she was pleading their cases to federal lawmakers, including her state's two U.S. senators at the time — Democrats Dick Durbin and Barack Obama of Illinois. Obama arranged for her to testify at congressional hearings. Durbin encouraged her to run for office.

She lost her first election, but six years later gave it another try and now is one of nine veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who will serve in next year's freshman class in the of House of Representatives.

Veterans' groups say the influx of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is welcome because it comes at a time when the overall number of veterans in Congress is on a steep and steady decline. In the mid-1970s, the vast majority of lawmakers tended to be veterans.

For example, the 95th Congress, which served in 1977-78, had more than 400 veterans among its 535 members, according to the American Legion. The number of veterans next year in Congress will come to just more than 100. Most served during the Vietnam War era. In all, 16 served in Iraq or Afghanistan, not all in a combat role.

-Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who served near Baghdad for a year and was a medical operations specialist. Gabbard said she hopes the two of them can be a voice for female veterans and the unique challenges they face.

—Ron DeSantis of Florida was a judge advocate officer in the Navy who deployed to Iraq as a legal adviser during the 2007 troop surge.

—Brad Wenstrup of Ohio was as a combat surgeon in Iraq.

—Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan served in an administrative capacity with an artillery unit in Iraq and retired after suffering a neck injury. He also served as an infantry rifleman in Vietnam.

—Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma was a combat pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan.

—Scott Perry of Pennsylvania commanded an aviation battalion in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.

—Doug Collins of Georgia was a chaplain in Iraq.

—Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a Harvard Law School graduate, was an infantry platoon leader in Iraq and then was on a reconstruction team in Afghanistan. In between, he was a platoon leader at Arlington National Cemetery.
read more here

Murder-suicide has East St. Louis in shock

'So out of character': ESL murder, suicide has city in shock
Published: November 23, 2012
By CAROLYN P. SMITH
News-Democrat

EAST ST. LOUIS — The 69-year-old man and 66-year-old woman who died in a murder-suicide Thursday in the 700 block of North 75th Street have been identified as Bobby Stewart and Dorothy McCaskill.

East St. Louis Police received a call at 6 p.m. to respond to what they believed was a hostage situation at the couple's residence. Once there, they called in the Illinois State Police SWAT team. The next several hours were intense and police used extreme caution in an attempt to keep the situation from escalating.
read more here

Marine Major says criminalizing attempted suicides "helps retain discipline"

With military suicides at an all time high, there are even more surviving the attempt. You'd think after all this time there would be no one in charge coming out with such a stupid statement as this but they do.

Military court to revisit statute criminalizing suicide attempts

Lawyers for Lazzaric T. Caldwell, a discharged Marine from Oceanside, will argue it is wrong for the military to punish troops whose mental problems cause them to attempt suicide.

By Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times

November 24, 2012

In a case involving a discharged Marine from Oceanside, a military court next week will consider the decades-old military statute that makes it a crime to attempt suicide.

Lawyers for Lazzaric T. Caldwell will argue it is wrong for the military to punish troops whose mental problems cause them to attempt suicide — particularly in an era when the military is trying to reduce the soaring suicide rate among troops.

According to court records, the statute in the Uniform Code of Military Justice was used in World War II to punish troops attempting to avoid duty by faking suicide. The statute has not come to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which will consider Caldwell's case, since the Gulf War of 1990-91, when it was upheld.

Navy Lt. Michael Hanzel, representing Caldwell, argued in a legal brief that "surely, neither Congress nor the president intended [the statute] ... to prosecute mentally ill people who make genuine suicide attempts."

But Marine Maj. David Roberts, representing the government, countered that the statute is clearly written and that it helps retain discipline within the ranks.

Caldwell, now 25, admitted that he slit his wrists in January 2010 while stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He pleaded guilty to attempting suicide and was sentenced to 180 days in the brig and a bad-conduct discharge. His lawyers are arguing that his guilty plea be thrown out.
read more here

Judge orders more treatment for troubled vet with gun

Judge orders more treatment for troubled vet with gun
By Laurence Hammack
The Roanoke Times
November 24, 2012
ROANOKE

Sean Duvall will continue to receive the help he sought the night of June 8, 2011, when the depressed veteran called a suicide crisis line - only to be charged with possessing the homemade gun he nearly turned on himself.

Federal prosecutors, who charged Duvall with four felonies after his call for help, asked Wednesday that he be kicked out of the Veterans Treatment Court. Duvall was placed in the program, designed to offer treatment to veterans struggling with substance abuse and mental illness, after his arrest sparked controversy earlier this year.

Duvall, 46, spent a week wandering around town in 2011, sinking deeper in depression and coming closer to using a gun he had made to kill himself.

After calling a toll-free help line run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Duvall agreed to wait in a parking lot at Virginia Tech until a police officer arrived. read more here