UK: Disabled PTSD Veteran Feels Alone and Forgotten

"I feel alone and forgotten" - York army veteran and blast victim tells of PTSD struggle 
York Press
Kate Liptrot
July 27, 2015

"This country seems to want to ignore people, there has got to be a better way to treat PTSD."

A DISABLED war veteran who was injured in an explosion says he has been unable to access help for post traumatic stress disorder.

Christopher Hornblower, 36, from York, served in the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment until he was medically discharged in 2004.

He was left with extensive injuries including twisted knee caps, severed tendons and a dislocated right knee as a result of an explosion while serving abroad.

More than a decade later, Mr Hornblower still suffers traumatic flashbacks, difficulties with sleep and problems related to his time in the Army.

But he said despite repeatedly trying to access psychological help from the NHS in York, he has been unable to get the specialist help he needs for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Last week he was referred from York Hospital for an urgent appointment at Bootham Park Hospital but the appointment was cancelled at the last minute and he was not been notified of another, Mr Hornblower said.

He said: "I feel alone and forgotten. It's not just in York, this is happening all over the country.
read more here

River Community Wellness Gets Huge Donations From Philanthropist

Philanthropist, 97, gives River Hospital $1m
Watertown Daily
By KENNETH J. EYSAMAN
MAGAZINE EDITOR
PUBLISHED: MONDAY, JULY 27, 2015

Launched in February 2013, the River Community Wellness Program is the nation’s only civilian outpatient treatment program serving soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. The Army announced May 13 the program would end in July. But on May 30, Army officials agreed to a reprieve.

ALEXANDRIA BAY — A $1 million donation by a longtime north country philanthropist will kick-start a capital campaign aimed at helping River Hospital expand its River Community Wellness Program, hospital Chief Executive Officer Ben Moore III announced Sunday.

Retired businessman and philanthropist Richard R. Macsherry, 97, shared news of his latest gift with nearly 250 hospital supporters gathered for River Hospital Foundation’s 13th annual Festive Evening at Bonnie Castle Resort and Marina.

“This is my 98th year on the river,” Mr. Macsherry said, adding that the hospital is an “important institution worth our support.”

Three years ago, Mr. Macsherry, then 94, suffered a serious injury after a fall that required him to be airlifted to a hospital in Utica, said his son, Richard H., a retired hospital administrator and member of River Hospital’s Board of Trustees.
read more here

Iraq Veteran Missing in Ohio

Happy Update: 
Missing Upper Arlington Veteran Returns Home

Police search for missing Upper Arlington veteran 
NBC 4 News Ohio
By Nick Bechtel
Published: July 25, 2015

UPPER ARLINGTON (WCMH) — Police are searching for an endangered missing person Saturday evening.

Upper Arlington officials said Christopher Bock-Bacalao was reported missing on Saturday.

A police sergeant said he made threats against his well-being before he went missing.

Family members told NBC4 he is a rowing coach at Upper Arlington High School.

They also said he was an Army veteran who served one tour in Iraq. read more here

Congress Passed the Americans with Disabilities Act 25 Years Ago?

A soldier gets paid this much to risk their lives and spend 24-7 in service to the country.

VA Compensation

So we have some folks now getting $15.00 an hour for a "minimum wage" and some think that is great.

$670 a week is what a 100% disabled veteran receives as compensation.

If you look at it as a 40 hour a week paycheck they are missing since they cannot work, that boils down to $16.75 an hour for disabilities they suffer with 24-7. There are 168 hours in a week. That means they get less than $4.00 an hour for what they have to live with every day of the year for the rest of their lives.

When you think that veterans are having a hard time finding jobs, remember that they don't just want to work, they have to just to be able to live.

As for the rest of the article showing that employers are still reluctant to hire veterans they need to remember that while it is true most veterans do not have PTSD, there is no assurance anyone sitting across the desk from them doesn't have it.  Folks get PTSD from a long list of things in their own lives.  At least with a veteran you know they are used to hard work, working as a team in really bad conditions while thinking fast and pushing themselves to the limit of endurance.  Sounds like the perfect worked to me as well as among the best this country has to offer.  It isn't just patriotic to hire a veteran.  It is a smart thing to do!

People With Disabilities Are Twice As Likely To Be Poor. These Businesses Are Fighting That Stat
Huffington Post
Eleanor Goldberg
Impact editor
Posted: 07/26/2015

The staggering unemployment and poverty rates among people with disabilities is a reminder of how much work still needs to be done to protect this underserved demographic.

Sunday marks 25 years since Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, a bill that aimed to give the group equal opportunities to pursue jobs and public and private services. While some vital progress has been made, people with disabilities still face incredible challenges when it comes to obtaining employment and becoming financially stable.

"Employers are scared to hire us," Debbie Eagle, who’s been blind since she was born, told NPR.

"Because they don't know what kind of accommodations we require. And if they don't meet what we consider to be reasonable accommodations, they're afraid we'll sue them."

Eagle, 43, has a bachelor’s degree in special education and said she’d love more than anything to be able to find work and stop relying on government assistance.

Michael Morris, executive director of the National Disability Institute, agrees with Eagle and told NPR that the issue at hand is that “attitudes are slow to change.”

Veterans, both those with disabilities and without, are facing an overwhelming amount of such stigma when they return home.

While most veterans come back without any emotional issues, experts say that hiring managers are skeptical that vets will “go postal” while on the job, USA Today reported in 2013.
read more here

VietnamVeteran Deserves Standing Ovation

McCrabb: Vietnam veteran deserves standing ovation
Journal News
By Rick McCrabb Staff Writer
July 26, 2015

“I’m proud of my service, like the other vets,” he said. “We were all anti-war like the rest of the country. I just wish people weren’t anti-solider. I never was comfortable talking about the war.”

MIDDLETOWN — There was a time — the day before Army Lt. Dan Sack was scheduled to arrive home in Cincinnati after serving during the Vietnam War — when he was spit on while walking through Haight-Ashbury, a neighborhood district near San Francisco and fertile ground for the hippie generation.

Sack and an Army buddy took a taxi from the Oakland Army base and toured the neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon. As they walked down the street, proudly wearing their uniforms, hundreds of hippies exited the neighborhood stores, and started chanting, “Ticket To Kill. Ticket To Kill. Ticket to Kill.”

He still doesn’t understand the meaning behind the words.

Patriotism, he said, hit “rock bottom” in the late 1960s.

Thankfully, before a riot ensued, Sack and his friend were picked up by a military police unit, put in the back seat of a government vehicle and driven to safety.

“I could have died the day before I got home,” he said.

Now, 47 years later, Sack will receive a much different reception that will include a standing ovation, not spitting. Sack, 70, of Middletown, will be one of the five veterans honored on Aug. 2 during a Dayton Dragons baseball game at Fifth/Third Field. He will appear on the field between innings and a 60-second video highlighting his military career and community service will be shown on the scoreboard.

Sack’s life, and for that matter, some of Middletown’s history, could have been rewritten on a February 1968 morning.

Sack and Jan Doxey, 22, of Florida, were sleeping in a hooch when a 122mm rocket exploded in the early dawn, sending Sack under Doxey’s bunk. Sack’s legs were filled with shrapnel, and he was temporarily deaf.

But Doxey was killed.
read more here

Finalist For Ms Veteran America Served in the Air Force

Military vet with Alma ties competes for Ms. Veteran America
The Morning Sun
July 26, 2015

Anne Kitchen grew up in Alma and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force who was announced as a top 25 finalist for Ms. Veteran America 2015.

She competed in the national semi-finals back in May and is now competing for the crown on Oct. 18.

Kitchen began her military career in December of 2004, and thereafter served six years active duty in the United States Air Force as a meteorologist.

The main focus for Ms. Veteran America is to raise awareness and end homelessness among women veterans.

The competition highlights more than the strength, courage, and sacrifice of the nations military women, but also reminds people that these women are mothers, daughters, sisters and wives.
read more here

Fort Hood, At Least 9 Suicides In 7 Months

Fort Hood: 9 confirmed suicides so far this year 
Killeen Daily Herald
Jacob Brooks Herald Staff
July 26, 2015

Fort Hood is on track to match the 17 soldier suicides it had last year, and according to a recent Defense Department report, the Army has had more than double the number of suicides as any other active military branch in recent years.

Fort Hood officials last week said the post confirmed nine soldier suicides so far in 2015 with one pending.

There were 17 suicides in 2014, which is more than double the six suicides in 2013. That had been the lowest number in years.

Since 2009, Fort Hood has had double-digit suicide counts: 11 in 2009; a record-high 22 in 2010; 10 in 2011; and 19 in 2012.

By the Numbers
Fort Hood suicides by year:

2009: 11 confirmed
2010: 22 confirmed
2011: 10 confirmed
2012: 19 confirmed
2013: 6 confirmed
2014: 17 confirmed
2015: 9 confirmed, 1 pending

Fort Hood suicides in 2014:
January-March: 3
April-June: 6
July-September: 5
October-December: 3
Total: 17

Army suicides in 2014:
January-March: 27
April-June: 31
July-September: 31
October-December: 35
Total: 124


In a Defense Department report released earlier this month, the Army had 30 suicides in the first quarter of 2015; six of them were at Fort Hood.

The Army had 124 suicides in 2014, up from 115 in 2013. In 2012, the Army had 165 suicides.

The Air Force had 14 suicides in the first quarter of this year, the Marines had three and the Navy had 10, according to the report. 

In 2014, the Air Force had 62 suicides, the Marines had 34 and the Navy had 53.
read more here

Death by Suicide is Expensive

Forgotten in all the reports on veterans committing suicide are Vietnam veterans Suicide Rate Spikes in Vietnam Vets Who Won't Seek Help

But suicide rates among Vietnam veterans are the highest of any particular group, according to John Draper, project director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

In 2007 CBS News did a report showing the high number of suicides after contacting all 50 states and when information was not already collected, CBS paid to cover the cost of doing it.
Veteran Suicides: How We Got The Numbers

Results 2004
Overall Rates
Veterans: 17.5 to 21.8 per 100,000
Non-Veterans: 9.4 per 100,000
Male Rates
Veterans: 30.6 to 38.3 per 100,000
Non-Veterans: 18.3 per 100,000
Female Rates
Veterans: 10.0 to 12.5 per 100,000
Non-Veterans: 4.8 per 100,000

Results 2005
Overall Rates
Veterans: 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000
Non-Veterans: 8.9 per 100,000
Male Rates
Veterans: 31.5 to 35.3 per 100,000
Non-Veterans: 17.6 per 100,000
Female Rates
Veterans: 11.1 to 12.3 per 100,000
Non-Veterans: 4.5 per 100,000

And then there were more we didn't talk about. Attempted suicides within the records of the VA.

"This 12,000 attempted suicides per year shows clearly, without a doubt, that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans," said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense.

But that report didn't come out this year. Or last year. That report was made public because of a lawsuit filed way back in 2008.

The media has to stop pushing the "22 a day" claim made and start reporting the truth! Yet another report out of Washington tied marijuana to a report on veterans committing suicide.

Olympia Hempfest offers high times all weekend at Heritage Park

"The dispensary also hosts a support group for veterans called Twenty22Many (pronounced “twenty-two too many”), which has a visible presence at this year’s Olympia Hempfest. The group was started in response to a report that an average of 22 veterans commit suicide daily because of issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder."

Which is really ironic considering a couple of paragraphs above that one was this.

"Attending her first Hempfest was Anne Sulton, co-owner of A Bud and Leaf, one of two recreational marijuana retailers in Olympia. She was impressed by the peaceful crowd and said the event embodies an expression of freedom that Americans often take for granted."

A lot of people are taking those who served for granted.

Just because the media claims "freedom of the press" that does not mean they should have the freedom to push rumors.

We know the numbers are a lot higher and it is time the truth mattered simply because the numbers went up after the media decided it was a good topic to cover.

Charities popped up all over the country and congress spent more money on "awareness" and "prevention" when it turned out that veterans were preventned from healing and living better lives.

Suffering veterans turned into a billion dollar industry and funeral homes saw business booming. In other words, they became merchants of death. When more veterans committed suicide they became a price paid for our ignorance.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has been "dealing" with PTSD veterans for 4 decades yet someone decided only the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan mattered. Why? Because the press hardly ever bothers to tell the stories of older veterans suffering longer with less help for the same wounds the new generation is getting attention for.

The answer is obvious. Reporters are focusing on what is easy, social media. They are assigned stories to cover, don't take the time or don't get the time to do real research, so they opt out of fact gathering and search for what is popular on Facebook and Twitter.

So who do we get to blame for all of this? US! If we don't start to hold them accountable for correcting the rumors, veterans will still keep paying the price for charities raising funds about wrong "awareness" as congress spends more and more money on what does not work.

We've all heard about sequestration and the cuts in government spending,,,or so we were told. Yet that is not what Congress ended up doing.

Mental Health Programs See Increases in FY 2014 Funding; $1.012 Trillion Package Provides Relief from Sequestration

The budget plan increases spending to $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 in 2015—up from the $967 billion required by the across-the-board sequester cuts. It provides for about $63 billion in sequester relief, divided equally among defense and non-defense programs.

The spending package includes $1.1 billion for mental health programs, which is $136 million more than the 2013 enacted level. NIMH will receive $1.45 billion, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) will receive $1.03 billion and SAMHSA will receive $3.63 billion. In addition, the spending plan provides the first meaningful increase in funding for the Center for Mental Health Services.

Troops were discharged after sequestration kicked in and the defense budget for servicemembers shrunk. The funds for "prevention" programs that did not work did not get cut because more service members were still committing suicide and they needed the money to continue to push the programs that already were proven failures. Does that make sense to you?

The VA suicide report put the number at 22 a day with the disclaimer the data was limited based on 21 states. All veterans are not in the VA system, so they did could not track all the suicides tied to military service. Even within their own system they found there were 12,000 attempted suicides every year.

Death by suicide is expensive. Healing is less profitable but a hell of a lot more remarkable!

USA Today did a report on suicide stating there is an American committing suicide every 13 minutes.

The nearly 40,000 American lives lost each year make suicide the nation's 10th-leading cause of death, and the second-leading killer for those ages 15-34. Each suicide costs society about $1 million in medical and lost-work expenses and emotionally victimizes an average of 10 other people.

Only in one area did Americans react to suicide. When soldiers started killing themselves in record numbers during two arguably unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a groundswell from the public and Congress drove the military to respond.

The Army suicide rate tripled from 2004 and 2012 as more than 2,000 GIs took their lives. A new RAND study says that since 2005, about $230 million was poured into suicide research, more than two-thirds of it from the military.

"All the military research is likely to benefit civilians as well," says Michelle Cornette, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology.

A centerpiece effort is a $65 million study — the cost split between the Army and NIH — analyzing soldier suicides and tracking tens of thousands of troops over a period of years to understand self-destructive urges.

National Institutes of Health Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories (RCDC) Table Published: February 5, 2015
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
$0 2011
$0 2012
$77 2013
$79 2014
$79 2015
$81 2016

Suicide
$49 2011
$44 2012
$37 2013
$39 2014
$39 2015
$40 2016

Suicide Prevention
$25 2011
$22 2012
$21 2013
$22 2014
$22 2015
$22 2016

Yes those numbers are in the millions.

For all the money spent and all the information gathered the result is more veterans are dying after all the "awareness" made less veterans aware of what they needed to heal.

This is even more troubling when you factor in that all the research on combat related PTSD began with Vietnam coming home and pushing for it.
Suicide Wall

In its efforts to help these veterans, the 700,000-member Disabled American Veterans (DAV) funded the FORGOTTEN WARRIOR PROJECT research on Vietnam veterans by John P. Wilson, Ph.D. at Cleveland State University. That research resulted in formation of the DAV Vietnam Veterans Outreach Program to provide counseling to these veterans in 1978. With 70 outreach offices across the United States, this DAV program served as a model for the Veterans Administration (VA) Operation Outreach program for Vietnam era veterans, which was established approximately a year later.

I still have the pamphlet hanging on my wall.

Just goes to show that intervention happened but did more harm than good, yet we allowed everyone to do everything they wanted instead of what was needed. No one was ever held accountable when it all got worse. Americans wrote checks to charities raising awareness for a selected group of veterans leaving far too many still suffering longer and dying younger. No one paid the price for our ignorance but veterans and their families.