'Frozen' princess surprises girl who lost Marine dad

'Frozen' princess surprises girl who lost Marine dad 
KUSA, 9news.com
November 28, 2014

Anna and Codi singing
(Photo: Colorado Supporting Our Troops)

KUSA – It was a tough summer for 4-year-old Codi.

Her father, Lt. Col. Anthony Alvarado, died while serving in the Marines.

Shortly thereafter, her family moved from California back to Colorado. One of her greatest wishes that she knew would bring her joy was to meet Princess Anna from Disney's hit movie Frozen.

While at a Colorado Supporting Our Troops event in October, little Codi was surprised by the princess herself, played by local artist Aubrie Hamrick.

Together they sang "Let it go" and "Do you want to build a snowman" – as Codi's face lit up.
read more here

Let It Go with Codi and Aubrie Hamrick as Princess Anna. Codi lost her daddy, a Marine, last June. She just wanted to sing with Princess Anna... Colorado Supporting Our Troops made that happen!

Land of the free but do we deserve to be?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 29, 2014


We have the best military in the world. No doubt about it. Patriots obtained our freedom and every generation after them retained it. They filled up cemetery plots during combat and afterwards because we didn't care enough about what they needed from us.

We don't take care of them when they are serving or when they come home. We are all enjoying the rights and freedoms they make sure we have but at the end of the day, we need to answer some questions honestly.

Why are soldiers and families on food stamps?

About five percent more shoppers used food stamps at commissaries in 2013 than used them in 2012. But the increase is actually a sign that use is leveling off instead of quickly increasing as it had been before. Between 2011 and 2012 it went up 13 percent. And back between 2008 and 2009 it went up 70 percent, according to figures from DeCA.

I’m conflicted about this. On the one hand, surely we should be paying our military members enough that food stamps are out of the question. On the other hand, is the need for food stamps really as high as it seems?

The story originally broke last fall here and finally made its way to CNN over Presidents Day weekend.

The food stamp increase doesn’t track with the rate of use of the Woman and Infant Children (WIC) subsidy. Army Times reported in October that those numbers were trending steadily downward. About 6 percent fewer military families used WIC at the commissary in 2013 than in 2012.

“On occasion, customers with food-stamp EBT cards found themselves in the wrong line, and we’d have to direct them to use one of the registers with an EBT terminal,” said Gary Hensley, director of the commissary at Fort Benning, Ga., in an announcement from the Defense Commissary Agency. The Fort Benning commissary rang up more than $1.1 million in purchases in the food stamp redemption program in 2007, tops among commissaries.

Why are they getting layoff notices in Afghanistan?

The study believes our newest veterans have financial hardships that make accessing sufficient food more difficult compared to the average citizen.

“We found that 27 percent of veterans who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t have consistent access to sufficient food,” said University of Minnesota researcher Rachel Widome, Ph.D.,. “That’s drastically higher than the prevalence of food insecurity in the U.S., which is 14.5 percent.”

Research was conducted with the Minneapolis Department of Veterans Affairs, and surveyed 922 veteran records.

The Army says it will soon notify 550 majors that they must leave the service by next spring as part of a budget-driven downsizing of the service.

As the Army looks to reduce its force to 490,000 by the end of fiscal year 2015 and 450,000 by the end of FY ’17, a military personnel official from Fort Hood said Tuesday that 213 captains within III Corps were recently identified by the Army Officer Separation Board to transition from the service in the coming months. At Fort Hood, 91 captains were affected by the OSB, according to Jay Whitaker, the senior military personnel officer, or G1, with Fort Hood’s Mission Support Element.

Fiscal 2016 sequestration marks ‘breaking point’ Everyone wants the U.S. to lead the way in resolving global conflicts and crises, he said, not necessarily supplying the preponderance of forces, but involvement to some extent. The nagging question is, “Do we want to do that or not?” In fiscal year 2016, Odierno pointed out that the budget will go down $9 billion from what it is now. That would have a “significant degradation” on the force “because I cannot take people out fast enough.”

Why do the wounded get this kind of treatment?

The memo encourages "dispositions/discharges as soon as possible." Hospital spokesperson Sandy Dean explained this direction, saying, "We are are encouraging health care providers to be more efficient when handling their paperwork instead of writing discharge orders later in the day ... no patient has been or will be discharged before it is medically appropriate."

With cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems at an all-time high, Dean says civilian caregivers in the hospital's in-patient mental health section are furloughed, reducing beds there from 28 to 22.

The news of veterans getting the shaft at the VA seemed like such a shock yet if you remember, since they didn't remind you, none of it was new. Congress gave us decades of promises to fix what the VA got wrong and support what they got right. Here's a few more stories the national press forgot about.

Why are veterans still finding when they turn to the VA for help healing PTSD, it isn't there?

Howard County Veterans' Service Officer Ross Waltemath estimated out of the up to 10,000 veterans who live in Kokomo and the surrounding area, which has the highest number of veterans per capita in Indiana, around 2,000 have mental-health disorders.

“We've got a lot of vets running around Howard County with real problems,” he said.

But when local veterans seek help for their disorder, they discover it's not easy to find.

Waltemath said there's a two-month wait to see a psychiatrist or mental-health worker at the VA clinics in Indianapolis, Marion or Fort Wayne, where most area veterans end up going for treatment.

He said with the influx of service members coming back with PTSD and other mental illnesses, area VA hospitals aren't equipped to handle the spike in cases.

“The VA health care system is completely overloaded,” he said. “Mental health is one of the areas that's totally overwhelmed all our medical facilities. No clinic is designed or manned anymore to deal with the volumes of people out there.”

Once vets do eventually get in to see a therapist or psychologist, there's a good chance they won't have another appointment for a few months, Waltemath said.

“I've never heard of a VA turn a guy away, but if you have mental-health issues and you get in once every three months, how big of a help is it really to you?” he said.

GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND

The problem goes far beyond long waits to get into to see a VA therapist.

One of the biggest issues is the lack of psychiatrists and psychologists who have any military experience or a real understanding of how to properly treat PTSD and traumatic brain injury, said Ken Gardner, an Air Force veteran and clinical therapist at Kokomo Family Psychiatric Center.

He said for most veterans, it's tough to speak to a mental-health worker about their disorder who hasn't served and doesn't understand military culture.

“It's really difficult to relate to a therapist who is fresh out of school and who doesn't understand the experience of the vet,” Gardner said.

Chris Fidler, the local facilitator for the non-profit Vet 2 Vet peer group, said the lack of providers with military experience is one of the biggest obstacles for veterans seeking help.

“People in the military are thrown into something they're not prepared for,” he said. “The military tries to prepare you for it, but who can ever really be prepared to go and kill people and see the horrors that they see? So anybody that tells a combat veteran they understand what they're going through is lying. They haven't been there, and they don't understand.”

Capt. Scott Edwards, a state behavioral health officer and the chief psychologist for the Indiana National Guard, said many mental-health workers at VA clinics not only lack military experience but don't know how to properly treat PTSD.

“The VA providers are supposed to know how to do these treatments, but what I've found is that they aren't very proficient,” he said. “We can't always assume that the VA is offering the appropriate treatment.”

For many vets, the only treatment they get from a VA behavioral health provider is a bag of prescription meds, said veteran's service officer Waltemath.

The situation is even worse for veterans trying to find help at civilian hospitals and behavioral-health centers.

Waltemath said there are hardly any local providers who have any military experience or know how to properly treat PTSD and other mental-health issues related to combat.

“If you have a clinician who can't even spell the word 'deployment,' these vets aren't going to come back to you,” Waltemath said.
read more of this here

Are they right? Yes but it turns out only 13% of civilian mental health providers understand military culture.

A Rand Corp. survey of 522 psychiatrists, psychologists and licensed clinical social workers found that just 13 percent met the study's criteria for "cultural competency," meaning they understood military mores, language and background, and delivered appropriate care for illnesses unique to the military, such as combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

We read the end result far too often. The result of the military refusing to adapt programs that actually work instead of kicking thousands of them out with bad paper discharges every year. Instead of trying to convince the public these soldiers were "damaged" before they enlisted so we aren't supposed to care or hold any of the leaders accountable for any of it. They are unable to accept responsibility for their own mental health testing failing if that actually is the reason as much as they refuse to accept responsibility for their own programs being inadequate for the non-deployed yet they tell redeployed they were trained to be resilient.

Then the VA itself lacks properly trained psychologists and psychiatrists to treat those able to overcome the stigma the military filled them with. Lacking the help they need adds to the stress they are already under but the top off is when members of the press twist words to make it seem as if veterans turning to the VA are only looking for money. Nice little trick being played on millions of veterans with PTSD.

The question we need to start answering is, do we deserve to have the best military in the world? Do we deserve the men and women stepping up to retain our freedom or not? Seems like everyone says stuff like "I know my rights" and scream about freedom of speech and religion but then never seem to understand where those rights come from. Our troops serving today and veterans who served yesterday made sure your rights were defended so you could use the right to ignore them or fight for them.

Do we deserve them or not? When do we start acting like it? When do we take the time to fight for them?

Thieves stole from veteran, community gives her much more

Navy Veteran Robbed Gets Help With Thanksgiving Dinner
News 10 Central Ohio
November 27, 2014

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Inside a Hilliard home, a Thanksgiving meal is taking form for a guest these cooks have never met.

"When we saw Jeanette's story we wanted to reach out and help and try to give her a better thanksgiving that's she's had so far," said Mallory Hammond of Pinup Patriots.

She's talking about Jeanette Waldon-- A Navy Veteran robbed on Veteran's Day. Waldon was waiting at this COTA bus stop in Clintonville. She told police two men robbed her of her purse and a gift card she hoped to use to pay for a thanksgiving meal.

"Watching Channel 10 it was just devastating that someone could do that to somebody we wanted to make sure that this will not stand and that she is not alone and that the community will stand behind her," says Hammond.

Hammond's group dresses like the pinups of 1940's and makes appearances at veteran's groups and makes care packages for active military.

"This is the first time we've taken a thanksgiving dinner to a veteran," she says.
read more here

Houston Citizens Join Forces to Get Korean War Veteran Home

When you read about younger families being helped by Congress because they are caring for their disabled veterans, remember this story. That help does not include older veterans and their families.

Local 2 viewers help disabled Korean War veteran get home for Thanksgiving
Click2 Houston
Author: Bill Spencer
Investigative Reporter
Published On: Nov 27 2014

HOUSTON
The Korean War -- it's been called America's forgotten war, but for 75-year-old Robert Taylor it's impossible to forget. As an Army foot soldier, Taylor suffered a near fatal head injury when he got into a brutal fight for survival with a soldier from the other side, getting his head smashed in with the butt of a rifle, an injury that has caused Taylor painful seizures his entire life.

Now, five decades later, after suffering a massive stroke last November, Robert and his wife, Linda, have been trapped in Houston for more than a year, unable to return to their home and family in Bristol, Tennessee -- all because they couldn't afford a $10,000 medical transport in an ambulance to get Robert back home.

"It sounds like an old cliché, but it's been like hell for us here," Linda said. "I have no help here to care for my husband and all our family is back home in Bristol."

With nowhere else to turn, Linda Taylor called Local 2 News for help to get her husband back home.

That's when Local 2's Bill Spencer went to work trying to find an ambulance service willing to help this brave veteran. It took more than a month and too many phone calls to count, but Spencer finally found the folks at Abingdon Ambulance Service in Abingdon, Virginia.

Through an incredible act of generosity, they agreed to transport Robert Taylor all the way from Houston back to Bristol -- an 18-hour ride with three trained paramedics by his side the entire time -- and absolutely free.

"We can be a blessing to this family, we have the ability, we have the resources, and it's the right thing to do for any veteran who has served this country," said Keith Martin, of Abingdon Ambulance Service.

In addition to the medical transport, a special GoFundMe account was set up to raise money for the Taylors.

After Local 2 News called loyal viewers to donate, you did just that. In fact, through those donations Local 2 raised more than $14,000 in a matter of weeks for the Taylor family.
read more here

Camp Lejeune Marine Shot by Police While Rushing Wife to Hospital

WIFE: Marine husband rushing me to hospital when shot by officer during chase
WITN News
By: Carly Swain, Rachael Cardin, and Clayton Bauman
Nov 28, 2014

The wife of a Marine who is accused of leading police on a chase and attempting to run down an officer says her husband was rushing her to the hospital.

Brandon Henry is facing several charges, including assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, assault with a deadly weapon against a government official, and fleeing or eluding arrest.

Jacksonville police say Henry was driving a vehicle that was first being chased by Camp Lejeune police.

The Wednesday night chase ended up in the city, and investigators said officers initially tried to stop the car near Corbin Road and Huff Drive. Police say the driver suddenly stepped on the gas, speeding straight toward Officer Jan Friis. Police said that officer shot at the car.

Jennifer Henry said she was unconscious in the car as her husband was trying to get her to the hospital. She says her husband was hit by one of the bullets in his arm, while another came close to hitting her. "One bullet came through the front window, the windshield and the other came in the passenger side, right behind my head, close to the door."

Henry, who says she was medically discharged from the Marines, told WITN's Rachael Cardin that both she and her husband suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. She says her husband told her he initially stopped for police, and then had a panic attack. Henry says her husband was only trying to go around the policeman when the officer opened fire.
read more here

Wall Street Journal PTSD Report on Vietnam Veterans Mostly Wrong

Vets Seek Help for PTSD Decades After War
Hundreds of Thousands of Aging Vietnam Veterans Receive Treatment
Wall Street Journal
Clare Ansberry
November 28, 2014

SANDISFIELD, Mass.—Nightmares of a friend dying beside him in a bunker years ago now waken Donald Vitkus.

“There is stuff that you carry from the war,” the 71-year-old Vietnam veteran said.

Mr. Vitkus spends his days in and out of therapy at a residential rehabilitation center filled with mostly older veterans, working on his memory while trying to gain control over disturbing recollections and the emotions they surface.

He is one of hundreds of thousands of aging Vietnam veterans who late in life are now seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder—a mix of flashbacks, depression and sleeplessness springing from a war that ended four decades ago.

More than 530,000 veterans received treatment for PTSD from VA hospitals and clinics through March of this year, nearly double the total through 2006, according to the Veterans Administration. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans make up a large portion of the increase but account for slightly more than a quarter of PTSD patients; the rest served in earlier wars, mainly Vietnam.

Many of those Vietnam veterans threw themselves into family and work after the war, keeping busy to avoid thinking about what happened. Now, in their 60s and 70s, they have retired, their children grown, living without the distraction of workaday life. Some no longer have confidants—spouses, friends or siblings.
read more here

Now for something they got wrong among other things.

"PTSD wasn’t identified as a medical disorder until 1980, after the emotional troubles of Vietnam veterans became too overwhelming to dismiss."

The VA didn't compensate for PTSD until the 80's but it was already being used by the mental health community and veterans centers. Vietnam veterans pushed for the research and treatment as well as compensation to take care of all generations of veterans.

The title of the report this came from was this

It hangs on the wall right over my desk so I never forget how long we've been talking about PTSD.

Some experts question the reported rise in PTSD cases. Christopher Frueh, a University of Hawaii psychologist and former clinician and director of a VA PTSD clinic, said the VA has relaxed criteria in determining PTSD—for example, not requiring documentation of exposure to a traumatic event—making it easier for veterans to misrepresent their combat experience.

The article seems to want to send a message supporting an agenda instead of facts. In 2007 El Paso Times had this report about Vietnam Veterans seeking help for PTSD.

In the past 18 months, 148,000 Vietnam veterans have gone to VA centers reporting symptoms of PTSD "30 years after the war," said Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker, deputy commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He recently visited El Paso.

That was long before the rules were changed to make it easier for Vietnam veterans to refile claims that had been turned down. Long before research, real research showed that Vietnam veterans were the majority of the homeless as well as the majority of the suicides connected to military service.

In the article them seem to be trying yet again to blame the veteran for not being, well, strong enough to deal with combat on one hand and on the other, being greedy taking advantage of the rule changes. With reporters like this, we have a view of what it will look like 30 or 40 years from now since they forgot what really happened.

Every generation came home with what we call PTSD. My Dad's generation still called it "shell shock" but they all knew what it was. They knew the price being paid by body and mind. Wounds that would never really heal.

My husband's Dad and uncles were of the WWII generation. One of them had "shell shock" and was given a choice. Go into an institution or go live on a farm with other veterans. He picked the farm.

Between WWI and WWII, psychiatric evacuations went up 300%. They tried something different during Kora and brought them down to 3% because they had clinicians pull soldiers out of combat, treat them and get them able to go back to duty.

With Vietnam they tried something else. 12 month deployments so that they were already back home and out of the military before they started to show signs they needed help. Marines did 13 months.

Now you know the rest of the story.

Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services Awarded for Outreach Efforts

Saugus veterans district is honored
Saugus Wicked Local
By Jessica Sacco
Posted Nov. 28, 2014

“For us being young Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in our 20s and 30s, we’re making our generation of veterans proud, too.” Andy Biggio

Ryan McLane, district director of veteran services for Melrose, Wakefield and Saugus, Andy Biggio, district veteran services officer, and Coleman Nee, Secretary of the Department of Veterans' Services, after the awards ceremony in Leominster.
Courtesy photo

SAUGUS
Saugus veterans’ officials were recognized for outstanding services and community outreach by the state. The Massachusetts Department of Veterans’ Services presented the Melrose, Wakefield and Saugus district with the Veterans’ Services District of the Year award during a ceremony on Oct. 27.

Every year the department hosts an annual training for veteran service officers to update officials on new policies, procedures and benefits. There are currently 201 VSOs throughout the commonwealth and 22 veterans’ services districts.

During the four-day training conference in Leominster, the department issued three awards: Veteran Service Officer of the Year, Veteran Service Officer Administrator of the Year and Veterans’ Services District of the Year.

The latter represents the hard work and dedication by District Director Ryan McLane and District VSO Andy Biggio.

“The Melrose, Wakefield and Saugus Veterans’ Service District has done a tremendous job of improving outreach and access to state, federal and other benefits for veterans and their families and are a perfect example for what communities can accomplish under a district model,” Coleman Nee, Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Services said in a statement. “I congratulate Ryan and Andy on behalf of the Department and the veterans in their communities.”

Nee created the Veterans’ Services District of the Year award in 2011, after he released official guidelines on the process for establishing veteran districts.
read more here

PR Campaign Starts to Counter WTU Reports

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 28, 2014

NBC5 and Dallas Morning News did a six month long report on the investigation of how PTSD soldiers were treated in Warrior Transition Units across military bases.

Injured Heroes, Broken Promises: Hundreds of Soldiers Allege Mistreatment at Army Warrior Transition Units Wounded soldiers found harassment and verbal abuse from commanders assigned to care for the injured.

Wounded Times has covered the truth for 7 years and it is far from what the national news will spend time on. Most of the great reporting is done by local news outlets across the country. That is where the reports on No excuse for Fort Hood mistreatment of Soldiers with PTSD came from.

The rest of the media can ignore it all they want but the truth is, while we do have the best military in the world, when it comes to the men and women serving, the leaders are PTSD imbeciles.

To discover how long all of this has been going on, we need to begin with the research the Army did on redeployments in 2006. The Washington Post reported their study showed this.

Repeat Iraq Tours Raise Risk of PTSD, Army Finds
Washington Post
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

U.S. soldiers serving repeated Iraq deployments are 50 percent more likely than those with one tour to suffer from acute combat stress, raising their risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Army's first survey exploring how today's multiple war-zone rotations affect soldiers' mental health.

More than 650,000 soldiers have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 -- including more than 170,000 now in the Army who have served multiple tours -- so the survey's finding of increased risk from repeated exposure to combat has potentially widespread implications for the all-volunteer force. Earlier Army studies have shown that up to 30 percent of troops deployed to Iraq suffer from depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the latter accounting for about 10 percent.

The findings reflect the fact that some soldiers -- many of whom are now spending only about a year at home between deployments -- are returning to battle while still suffering from the psychological scars of earlier combat tours, the report said.

"When we look at combat, we look at some very horrific events," said Col. Ed Crandell, head of the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team, which polled 1,461 soldiers in Iraq in late 2005. "They come back, they know they're going to deploy again," and as a result they don't ever return to normal levels of stress, Crandell said.
read more here

What did the Generals do? Did they make sure no one was sent back? No. As a matter of fact, they ignored their own research. This is an educated assumption simply because as they refused to adapt, they also refused to make sure these redeployed troops were properly cared for in response to what they knew would follow.

They pulled the wool over the public eye with Battlemind.

If BattleMind worked, there would not be more suicides and more attempted suicides than before BattleMind, but do you think they would be able to figure this one out yet? It came out in 2007 and yet again today I hear word of another soldier, a young, newly married soldier, who came back from Iraq and blew his brains out in front of his new bride. Is it because they do not show it to all the troops? Is it because they only show a lousy 11 1/2 minutes to the troops in Afghanistan as the BBC reported? Is it the trainers? Or, is the answer as simple as it does not work?

I don't know but you would think that since some of the finest minds in this country have been put to work on PTSD, they would have reduced suicides and attempted suicides instead of increasing them while they stick their fingers in their ears and hope the problem goes away! If they cannot cope with any of this after all this time, what's it going to be like two or three years from now when most of them have PTSD and they are still doing what does not work? Unit cohesion? Trust? How can they have any when they cannot trust what they are coming back to? How can they when some of them are National Guards and Reservists expected to go back to their civilian lives and jobs?

This was followed by Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

In a speech before the international affairs organization the Atlantic Council on Thursday, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey laid out the virtues of the newly formed initiative, which he called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness.

"We have been looking very hard at ways to develop coping skills and resilience in soldiers, and we will be coming out in July with a new program called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness," said Casey. "And what we will attempt to do is raise mental fitness to the same level that we now give to physical fitness. Because it is scientifically proven, you can build resilience."

"The whole idea here is to give soldiers the skills they need to increase their resilience and enhance their performance," he went on. "A lot of people think that everybody who goes to combat gets post-traumatic stress. That's not true. Everybody that goes to combat gets stressed. There is no doubt about it. But the vast majority of people who go to combat have a growth experience because they are exposed to something very, very difficult and they prevail. So the issue for us is how do we give more people the skills so that more people have a growth experience... We thought it was important to get started on this because everything else involves you treating the problem. We need to be more proactive."

Yet by 2009 it was already followed by a warning that this "program" would increase suicides simply by feeding the stigma.
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness will make it worse

If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

This training was designed as a research project to help school aged kids feel better about themselves but these yahoos decided to treat soldiers like kids on the playground and tell them they could train their brains to be mentally tough. As we've seen from the reports on Warrior Transition Unit leaders telling PTSD soldiers to "man up" they got the wrong message.

This training told the soldiers if you train right you'll be resilient and they heard if they ended up with PTSD, they were mentally weak. Would you want to admit you needed help after that? Would you want to tell you buddy you are falling apart or need to talk with this idea your brain?

Every single OEF-OIF veteran I talked to pointed to this training as part of the problem but the leaders have not been willing to listen to them.

Generals have been delivering the wrong message at the same time they ignore the right ones. When other generals talked about having PTSD, when MOH heroes talked about their own battles, the DOD failed to get their message.

Ok so now you know more of what has been happening. Just as the PR campaign started to blame soldiers for committing suicide making sure the country knew most of them had not been deployed, they failed to address the simple fact that CSF wasn't even good enough to keep them alive but they thought it would work for those redeployed over and over again?

They play another game of selling how great they are with a "success story" on Warrior Transition Units.

VA soldier interns share transition success stories with WTU soldiers
By Gloria Montgomery
Warrior Transition Unit Public Affairs
November 26, 2014

TEMPLE — It gave her goose bumps, she said as she listened to her former Fort Hood Warrior Transition Unit soldiers share stories of their transitioning successes with other WTU soldiers who will soon enter the civilian workforce.

The goose bumps, said Maj. Thelma Nicholls, a WTU nurse case manager, were from witnessing the transformation of her former “broken and worn-down” soldiers into confident and beaming professionals, thanks to the Temple Veterans Affairs’ “intern to hire” philosophy and the Operation Warfighter federal internship program.

“To see how they have transitioned into productive citizens and are now paying it forward is remarkable,” she said, adding how special it was that the WTU interns and VA veteran hires were sharing their positive messaging with Nicholls and nearly 50 other WTU soldiers and family members Nov. 14 at the Olin E. Teague Medical Center in Temple, during a panel discussion on federal internships and employment opportunities.

“It was so uplifting,” Nicholls said. “They are a light for the soldiers who are leaving and thinking there is nothing out there for them. Well, there is something out there, but they have to want it, go for it and be that little light to make things happen.”

It also validated everything about the WTU and the “process” called healing and transitioning, said WTU’s intake company’s 1st Sgt. Renita Garrett.
read more here

Researchers Find Reason PTSD is Not All in Your Head

'Trigger' for stress processes discovered in the brain
Medical Xpress
Medical University of Vienna

"In contrast, the consequences of chronic stress are manifold and can, for example, lead to an increased tendency to suffer from infections but also to high blood pressure, diabetes and an increased risk of cardio-vascular disease right through to chronic headaches, tinnitus or osteoporosis."

At the Center for Brain Research at the MedUni Vienna an important factor for stress has been identified in collaboration with the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm (Sweden). This is the protein secretagogin that plays an important role in the release of the stress hormone CRH and which only then enables stress processes in the brain to be transmitted to the pituitary gland and then onwards to the organs. A current study on this molecular switch has now been published in the top-ranked EMBO Journal.

"If, however, the presence of secretagogin, a calcium-binding protein, is suppressed, then CRH (= Corticotropin Releasing Hormone) might not be released in the hypothalamus of the brain thus preventing the triggering of hormonal responses to stress in the body," explains Tibor Harkany of the Department of Molecular Neurosciences at the MedUni Vienna.

"Now we have a better understanding of how stress is generated," says Tomas Hökfelt of the Karolinska Institutet and guest professor at the MedUni Vienna. This could result in a further development where secretagogin is deployed as a tool to treat stress, perhaps in people suffering from mental illness such as depression, burn out or posttraumatic stress disorder, but also in cases of chronic stress brought on by pain. If a rapid recovery phase follows a period of stress, body and mind are restored to "normal working", which is associated with a suppression of the release of circulating stress hormones.
learn more here

Air Force Staff Sgt. Pearsall Turns Lens Into Healing PTSD

Veterans Portrait Project new passion for former combat photographer 
The Post and Courier
Prentiss Findlay
November 27, 2014

"The physical pain was one thing. I was trained well enough to just kind of suck it up and keep going. I just wasn't prepared for the emotional anguish I was going to feel," she said.

Retired Army First Sgt. Eugene D. Smith enlisted in
1966 at the height of the Vietnam War.
He retired in 1992.
He was photographed for the Veterans Portrait
Project in St. Louis. Stacy Pearsall

Stacy Pearsall prepared to focus her camera on veteran David Ball as she softly sang "Let It Go" over and again, a tune from the Disney movie "Frozen."

She recently completed a year of coast-to-coast travel for her Veterans Portrait Project.

In 33 cities, she photographed men and women who served their country including a 99-year-old Bataan Death March survivor.

In West Ashley, she added another veteran to the list of more than 3,000 for whom she has done portraits. She and assistant Cali Barini set up lights and other equipment in Ball's garage where he was photographed.

It was a good day for Pearsall. The post-traumatic stress disorder that can keep her at home in Goose Creek was at bay.

Pearsall said that she is getting better emotionally.

The portrait project has been a saving grace for her. 

"Four or five years ago I wouldn't be able to sit in this room where we are sitting. I would be buried in the corner over there. I've been pushing my comfort zone to get myself out of this repetitious funk because that's what PTSD does to you," she said.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Pearsall was wounded in 2004 and 2007 during tours of duty in Iraq when improvised explosive device blasts hit armored vehicles in which she was traveling. She received the Bronze Star for her actions helping rescue wounded soldiers. 
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