Jon Stewart Crusading for Sept. 11 First Responders.

Jon Stewart’s next act: Lobbyist? 
The host has promised to fight for a 9/11 bill in September.
Politico
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN


Jon Stewart is less than a week away from retiring from The Daily Show, but he’s already thinking about his next act: crusading this fall in Washington for the Sept. 11 first responders.

The Comedy Central star has promised to make a Capitol Hill trip as early as September to support a bill extending an expiring law that provides billions of dollars in medical health benefits for the police, firefighters and other emergency rescue workers who spent time at Ground Zero, as well as survivors of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Stewart committed to lobby the very lawmakers he’s made a career out of skewering during a backstage greenroom chat early in July with John Feal, an Army veteran and post-9/11 cleanup worker who is spearheading the advocacy push for the legislation. Feal told POLITICO that he expected Stewart to firm up the date for the visit after his final Daily Show appearance on Thursday.

“Everything he’s ever said, he’s kept his word,” Feal said.

The first-responders portion of the law, passed in 2010, is scheduled to expire this October but has enough money to run into next year. A separate fund for 9/11 survivors and first responders ends in October 2016. Supporters want to renew the whole law in perpetuity, like the health programs for coal miners who suffer from black lung disease, and the government workers and contractors who built the country's nuclear weapon arsenal. In early July on his program, Stewart called it “bullshit” that the 9/11 first responders even have to lobby to extend it, and demanded to know who on the Hill was blocking the effort.

In his 16-year TV career, Stewart has put his shoulder behind a number of policy and political issues. He has put the spotlight on bureaucratic blunders preventing military veterans from getting health care, and is widely credited with CNN’s decision more than a decade ago to cancel an earlier version of the ‘Crossfire' talk show. Sensing his power with young voters, senior White House aides also cultivated relationships with Stewart and his staff, and the host even met twice privately in the Oval Office with President Barack Obama.
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Emergency Responders More Susceptible to PTSD

From 2008 to 2010 I took just about every training offered on Crisis Intervention available in Florida. I was certified as a Chaplain in 2008 by the IFOC. I focused on taking care of first responders since they were like most of the veterans I had experience with. Then it was more training including Disaster and Extreme Event Preparedness.

When I read this and the numbers, I remembered the training and what we knew back then. So why wasn't this training pushed for every group of first responders so they could find the support they needed in time to save their lives?

Fire Fighter Quarterly: Bringing PTSD Out of the Shadows
(The following article appeared in the Winter 2015 edition of the IAFF Fire Fighter Quarterly)

In just an 18-month period from 2008-09, Chicago Local 2 lost seven members to suicide. In 2010, four members of Phoenix, AZ Local 493 took their own lives.

Philadelphia, PA Local 22 has lost at least one member to suicide every year over the past five years. While each situation was different, Local 22 President Joe Schulle believes that work policies played a role.

A 20-year veteran firefighter at an urban fire department, John Smith had responded to every kind of imaginable — and unimaginable — emergency incident over the course of his career.

As a fire fighter, Smith sees people on their worst days, and the incidents he responds to on a daily basis can be truly horrific.

But it wasn’t until he saw a brother fall through the floor of a burning home to his death that the trauma stayed with him, and it seemed it would never get out of his mind. At the most unexpected times, he would relive the tragedy or hear his brother call for help. Every call became a stressful experience, even the most routine.

Smith thought he just needed time to recover, but the anxiety only escalated. Even stepping foot in the firehouse or completing routine tasks became daunting.

But he never told anyone about what he was experiencing. One day, a crew mate took him aside and said, “I think I know what you’re going through, and I think I can help.”

While this is a fictional account, it depicts an all-too-common behavioral health issue in the fire service.

Emergency responders are more susceptible to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because of the nature of the profession, coupled with the personal demands and challenges fire fighters and paramedics face.

“IAFF members respond to any number of incredible events, many of them tragic,” says General President Harold Schaitberger. “PTSD is a terrible condition that affects fire fighters and paramedics at double the rate of the general population, and we need a better way to deal with it.”

“People with PTSD are six times more likely to attempt suicide compared to demographically matched controls,” says Dr. Suzy Gulliver, who has participated in a number of studies on PTSD, and currently is founding director and chief of the Warriors Research Institute (WRI), which engages in multidisciplinary studies on the traumatic stress experienced by both soldiers and first responders.

Unfortunately, in many departments, even if the stigma is reduced, there are no programs in place for addressing behavioral health issues. Others may offer employee assistance programs (EAPs) but these are simply a referral line to community services.

“We need to do a better job of recognizing the signs and symptoms and providing the tools to help address it,” says Schaitberger. “Behavioral health services need to be embedded in all fire departments.”
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Israel reported that 9 out of 10 firemen suffer from symptoms of psychological trauma, according to an expert who spoke before a session of the Knesset Labor, Social Welfare and Health Committee

Canada lost 23 firefighters to suicide in the first part of 2014

North American Fire Fighter Veteran

" Beyond The Call " Full Length PTSD Training Documentary
London Professional Fire Fighters Association


UPDATE from Australia
Vets, paramedics among jobs with highest suicide rates
SUNDAY HERALD SUN
PETER MICKELBUROUGH FOI EDITOR
AUGUST 02, 2015

VETERINARIANS, paramedics, security guards, truck drivers and engineers share some of the state’s deadliest jobs a new report has found.

One of the starkest contrasts is among emergency workers, with Victoria’s paramedics having an average annual suicide rate of 35.6 per 100,000 workers - more than three-and-a-half times higher than police (10 per 100,000), and fire fighters and other emergency workers (10.5).

Only vets recorded a higher suicide rate at 38.2 per 100,000. And in findings that will surprise many, hairdressers (11.2), real estate agents (13.4) and engineers (21) were all found to have higher rates of suicide than police, fire fighters and other non-paramedic emergency workers.

Security guards (34.6) and truck drivers (23.3) are also professions that appear to need greater support.
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Atlanta Restaurant Turned Away PTSD with Service Dog

Vet, service dog turned away from Blairsville restaurant 
My FOX Atlanta
By Deidra Dukes, FOX 5 reporter
Posted: Jul 28, 2015

Jason Champain says, "Just because you can't see the disability on the outside, we have a disability on the inside."

ATLANTA
Nate's a great comfort to Army veteran Jason Champlain on a day like Tuesday, when he was visiting Zoo Atlanta with his family.

Jason Champlain says, "The dog has helped me tremendously."

Champlain has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

Champlain says, "I deal with anxiety, depression, nightmares and so on I mean I could just keep going and going and going."

But his life took a turn for the better earlier this year when he received Nate, a service dog.

Champlain says, "He can already sense when I'm having an anxiety attack or depression he'll actually jump in my lap and help calm me."
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VA Taking Care of Over 500,000 PTSD Veterans

While most folks seem only interested in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with PTSD, here are the real numbers. The VA says they are treating 119,000 OEF and OIF veterans for PTSD but they are treating 500,000 for it including the veterans no one wants to talk about.

The other factor to think about is with over 22 million veterans the VA has less than 4 million in their system. Now think about how many veterans do not go to the VA even though they really need to.

FactCheck: Bernie Sanders correct on veteran PTSD
Tucson Sentinel
Lori Robertson
FactCheck.org
Jul 28, 2015

"Right now, the VA is taking care of slightly over 500,000 people with posttraumatic stress disorder."VA Dr. Petzel

Sometimes politicians are right, but their campaigns can’t prove it. And we do.

That’s what happened when we decided to take a look at Sen. Bernie Sanders’ talking point that 500,000 veterans came back from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries. His campaign pointed us to a 2013 Senate hearing as its source — a hearing in which a Veterans Affairs official told Sanders that the number was less than half that.

But it wasn’t a case of Sanders exaggerating. We discovered more recent VA reports that put the number with PTSD at about 390,000, and that would only include veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan that sought care at VA facilities. Not all veterans use VA care. Other estimates suggest the total number could be around the 500,000 figure Sanders has been using for the past year.

Sanders, who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination, repeated his claim at a July 2 town hall event in Rochester, Minnesota, (5:30 mark) when he said: “In Iraq and Afghanistan, and I will tell you that I voted against the war in Iraq … it was not just the 6,700 men and women who died in the war. 500,000 — 500,000 came home with PTSD and traumatic brain injury.”

Chairman Sanders, March 20, 2013: I mentioned in my opening remarks that as we end 10 years of war in Iraq and 11 in Afghanistan or so, the cost of war, I think, is a lot heavier and more tragic than many people realize. So, let me start off with a very simple question. I do not know if you have the answer in front of you. When we are talking about posttraumatic stress disorder and when we are talking about traumatic brain injury, how many human beings are we talking about who are suffering from these illnesses?

Dr. Petzel: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Right now, the VA is taking care of slightly over 500,000 people with posttraumatic stress disorder.


Sanders: Let us stop right there. 500,000 returning soldiers.

Petzel: Correct. Not just returning. This is our whole population, Mr. Chairman.

Sanders: This is not just Iraq and Afghanistan.

Petzel: I was about to get to Iraq.

Sanders: Okay.

Petzel: We have about 119,000 people from the present conflicts that carry the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder.
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Army Reservist Due Promotion Killed in Her Home

Woman shot, killed remembered as loving mother, dedicated soldier
El Paso Times
By Aaron Martinez
POSTED: 08/01/2015

A 29-year-old woman shot to death Thursday night was known as a loving mother to an 8-year-old girl, a dedicated soldier and an all-around wonderful person, neighbors said at a vigil on Friday.

Blanca Rivera, 29, was shot and killed at about 9:15 p.m. at her home in the 11500 block of St. Thomas Way in East El Paso, police said. Her husband, Steven Quinteros-Rios, 25, was arrested in connection with slaying, police said.

Neighbors in the small gated community gathered Friday night in front of Rivera's home to pray and sing, including "Amazing Grace," in her memory. More than a dozen neighbors attended the vigil. They lit candles and left flowers and stuffed animals in front of her home.

"It is just heartbreaking," said Angel May, who lives across the street from Rivera. "I have known her for about a year. She was a soldier in the Army, she was funny, she was just a sweet girl all around. She loved her daughter so much. Blanca was such a great, loving mother."

Several neighbors said that Rivera served in the U.S. Army and was just two days from being promoted to staff sergeant.

Fort Bliss officials said Rivera was not stationed at the post, but was assigned to a local U.S. Army Reserve unit in the El Paso area.

"She was always friendly and would come talk to us and we would just laugh," said Maria Estela Cheung. She said she witnessed the start of the incident and called 911. "She was a wonderful person and an even better mother. It is just so sad that she lost her mother."
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Fort Campbell Soldier Found Dead Outside Courthouse

Soldier at Fort Campbell dies from self-inflicted gunshot
The Leaf-Chronicle
Ray Howze
July 31, 2015

FORT CAMPBELL – A soldier at Fort Campbell died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound Thursday.

According to the post’s Facebook page, the incident occurred at about 1:30 p.m. outside the U.S. District Courthouse at Fort Campbell. The post reads:

“At approximately 1:30 p.m. today, a Fort Campbell Soldier died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound outside of the U.S. District courthouse at Fort Campbell. The name of the Soldier is being withheld at this time. No other individuals were injured. The shooting is currently is under investigation.”

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