Vicarious Trauma, Media Frames, Numbing and Avoidance

Article on vicarious traumatization. With commentary.

As an army psychiatrist treating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Nidal Malik Hasan had a front row seat on the brutal toll of war. It is too early to know exactly what may have triggered his murderous shooting rampage Thursday at Fort Hood - Hasan is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 32 others before he was wounded by a police officer - but it is not uncommon for therapists treating soldiers with Post Trumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) to be swept up in a patient's displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury. .

In medical parlance it is known as "secondary trauma", [vicarious trauma] and it can afflict the families of soldiers suffering from P.T.S.D. along with the health workers who are trying to cure them. Dr. Antonette Zeiss, Deputy Chief of Mental Health Services for Veteran Affairs, while not wishing to talk about the specific case of the Fort Hood slayings, explained to TIME that: "Anyone who works with P.T.S.D. clients and hears their stories will be profoundly affected."

It's entirely possible that other factors may have acted as a trigger for Hasan . . [who] . .had developed strong objections to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he was also due to be shipped out to Afghanistan, drawing him closer to the terrible scenes described in detail by his patients. At army hospitals dealing with P.T.S.D. patients, the staff is required to periodically fill out a 'resiliency' questionnaire that is supposed to gauge how well they are coping with the burden of their patients' emotional and psychological demands. [filling out a questionnaire? Wow, what a profound therapeutic intervention!] "It takes its toll on people," says one officer at a Colorado military hospital. "You cannot be un-affected by the terrible things these soldiers have undergone."

Most army psychiatrists now have a full caseload of men and women returning from combat zones with P.T.S.D.. A survey by the Rand Corp. last April revealed that one in five service men and women are coming back with post-traumatic stress and mental depression. Previously known as "combat fatigue" or being "shell-shocked", P.T.S.D was only diagnosed as an illness in the 1980s, but it has been around for as long as men have been killing one another and undergoing fearful experiences. It can lead to outbursts of rage, emotional numbness, severe depression, nightmares, and the abuse of alcohol and pain-killers. In extreme cases, P.T.S.D. sufferers have committed suicide and murder. Since the late 1980s, doctors have also learned that over time, along with drugs and therapy, P.T.S.D. is curable.

As part of their therapy, PTSD sufferers are typically asked to dredge up their worst wartime memories. [this is crap. it is also not standard of care. Note the "dredge up' frame, too.]Hearing these nightmarish experiences can stir up powerful reactions in even the most seasoned therapists [note how writer demonizes empathy]. One Colorado sergeant, diagnosed with P.T.S.D., who had served as a dog-handler in Iraq, told me how his psychiatric counselor had broke down sobbing after the soldier described how he had been sent out to find the remains of his close friend, a helicopter pilot, shot down in southern Iraq. "I looked up, and there she was crying," the sergeant says. "I didn't want that from a shrink." [well, that's crap, sergeant.]

But there is a major difference, says Veteran Affairs' Zeiss, between a therapist being moved by combat horror stories and being traumatized by them - though it can happen. "Psychiatrists are trained to notice their own reactions and emotions, and if there's something hard to deal with, they should turn to their peers," she says. [This is incorrect. One should not turn to one's peers. One should go get oneself a competent therapist] But according to some news reports, Hasan's unprofessional conduct was red-flagged early on; at Walter Reed he was given a poor performance report, but that did not hinder his transfer to Fort Hood.

And for even the most hardened army psychiatrist, that would be a grueling assignment. [note how sentence equates "hardness" with competence. Besides being a sexist frame, "hardening" is more like "numbing," a symptom of PTSD] Fort Hood has the highest suicide rate of any army base in the country, largely because so many service men and women stationed there have undergone severe trauma while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. At Fort Hood, in other words, there was no shortage of horrific tales that could have set loose the demons in Hasan's mind.

WaPo Headline Puts Torture in Quotes. Well, Torture's Not Quite the Same as "Torture," Is It?

Military Agency Warned Against 'Torture'.

An otherwise fine article on BushCheneyRrummy admin being warned that torture does not produce useful info, besides being, you know, "wrong."

My beef with the headline is that it continues the neo-Orwellian habit of the US media whore media to minimize torture by calling it "harsh interrogation," "harsh methods," making it not really torture because if you don't say it's torture then it just isn't, is it?

None dare call it torture?

Language: this is how we "create" our "reality."

Secret Bushist Fascist Pro-Torture Sadist Sez: DON'T TELL THE TERRORISTS ABOUT THE CHINESE WATER TORTURE! THEY'LL IMPLANT EXTRA LUNGS!

God, I do hate the stupid. I really do. I know it's wrong of me -- even rong of me. But I do.

F*ck.

From [Cheney? Rummy] some dude some dude at Politico listened to:

“It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. … Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by ensuring they can never be used again . . .

No, really, it's true, we need to keep the whole BAMBOO SLIVERS UNDER THE FINGERNAILS THING reallly hush-hush. You talk about stuff like that, and whoa, you SO lose the Element of Surprise!

Yeah, we all better shut up about BOILING PEOPLE IN OIL because really, it might give them ideas, you know what copycats them terrists is.

And really, STFU about all our copyrighted 60 WAYS OF MAKING HUMANS REALLY REALLY REALLY WISH THEY WERE DEAD because nobody could have imagined -- oh wait, that's about the other -- because if they find out what we did, then bad things will happen. Like they'll to it to us. Of course, they want to do those thing to us anyway.

Or more like, what if they find out that we were like into anal rape of kids well that wouldn't be good would it? Remember those tapes at Abu Ghraib that so suddenly disappeared because they were like, um, just toooooo awful? Well this stuff is just toooo awful, too. That's why we want to shut up about it, and we're hassling Obama into shutting up about it, and that's why we're going to get away with it because all the evil things we've done are just tooooo vile, so, you know, STFU!! How hard is that?

It's not like we planned it that way. Oh well, of course we did, but like, hey. Any means to the end. Wait that's a commie thing. Like being a socialist. Socialist means someone who wants to take his kids to the doctor. We want doctors to revive our torturees so they're awake enough to FEEL THEIR excruciating pain. Now, that's not socialist. We bushist fascist teabag sadists, of course, feel no pain, we just inflict it. On others. We don't even feel our own pain.

Wow. There ya go.


WE BUSHIST FASCIST SADIST TEABAGGERS DON'T FEEL ANYONE'S PAIN, ESPECIALLY NOT OUR OWN.

I mean, how cool is that? See? Torture works!



Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Note to teabaggers: pay your taxes like a man

This is why:

Desperate veterans turn to suicide.

You break it, you buy it.

Several branches of the military are reporting significant spikes in the number of suicides committed by both active-duty troops and veterans returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts are calling the number of military-related suicides sweeping the country an "epidemic."

Survivors of veterans who committed suicide are starting to file lawsuits, accusing the VA of medical malpractice. The agency also has come under attack by lawmakers and veterans' groups charging that it failed to treat injured veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury, the signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The agency also has been accused of manipulating suicide statistics to downplay the problem and systematically misdiagnosing returning combat soldiers who suffer mental illness because their resources are tapped.

I wrote long ago about the cons deliberately mis-diagnosing PTSD in an attempt to deny services. Click on PTSD; I can't elaborate because I'm off to a seminar. On treating PTSD, as it happens. More later.

Technorati Tags: torture, Bybee, CIA, memo, moral bankrupcty

Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace-Prize Winner, Banned from South African Conference on Peace: Guess We've Still Not Reached Peak Stupid

Nobel Peace Prize winner banned from a peace conference?

Yep.

Nope, I'm not making this up. I don't have to. I never have to.

Dalai Lama Banned from South African Peace Conference

"Nobel [peace prize] winners Desmond Tutu and FW de Clerk to boycott anti-racism conference in World Cup run-up after Chinese pressure forces ban on Tibetan spiritual leader


Two of South Africa's Nobel peace prize winners, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and FW de Klerk, have pulled out of a Johannesburg conference to fight racism after what they branded as Pretoria's "disgraceful" decision to ban the Dalai Lama from attending following Chinese pressure.

The Nobel peace prize committee also said it would boycott this Friday's conference, which is dedicated to tackling racism ahead of the 2010 World Cup.

The row threatens to draw in Nelson Mandela, who, with his fellow South African laureates, invited the Tibetan spiritual leader, and further embarrasses South Africa, which has been accused of squandering its moral authority since ending apartheid by blocking UN security council moves to pressure rogue governments in Burma and Zimbabwe.

Tutu, who won the prize for his resistance to white rule, told Johannesburg's Sunday Independent newspaper he will not attend the conference to discuss how to use the World Cup preparations to combat racism and xenophobia if the Tibetan spiritual leader is not present. . . "

[hat-tip to billy-bob neck]

china loses face, dalai lama, south afric peace conference

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Pushing Fundie Sexist Christ-ist Propaganda Instead of Treating PTSD

This is infuriating.

I don't have time to address it fully now, but it's so wrong across so many dimensions . . . feh.

Brainwashing "Purpose-Driven Airmen."

"What's In a Name? A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell --- " Um, like Torture?

No, Mikey, let's SO not call a spade a spade.

Let's keep throwing obfuscatory Orwellian propaganda-spin-chaff-labels around and see if anyone will notice.

Or if anyone will even mind.

So far so good, after all. The real problem is -- gay marriage! And a horrid failure to fill the universe with more and more unwanted children!

MukaseyCites Risk in Using Term 'Torture'.

(At this, NBFH, in a very unladylike manner, spits.).

No, no risk in torturing.

Truth-telling? Whoa, now that's risky business!


Question from non-media-whore media Foreign Press: Uh, Meester Mukasey, Meester Bush, Meester Rumsfeld, Colonel Geoffrey Meeller, een your Eenglish language, how you say "consciousness of guilt"?

.

.

Bushist Fascists to Vets: It's All In Your Heads, Suckers!

No purple hearts fer vets with post-traumatic stress disorder.

No wounds. No actual wounds, you see. It's sort of like waterboarding. No wounds there, either. No biggie.

Oh, except there are wounds generally speaking after one shoots oneself in the head in the process of committing suicide. So wouldn't that count? Wouldn't count if you just take pills, though. And what about wounds inflicted on other people by people with PTSD? Would those wounds count as wounds, ya think?

Suicide Attempts Jump for Vets by 500% In Five Years and Government Ignores It.

Bush
Vets with PTSD
Vets and suicide

Panetta: Anti-Torture American

Why are we even having this discussion?

What is wrong with the pro-torture crowd, anyhow?

Screws loose? Child abuse?

"Obama Picks Anti-Torture Chief for CIA" at Mother Jones.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Huzzah! Bubble Boy Brings Back Burqas!

Bubble Boy Wastes Blood and Treasure to Install Medievalist Islamic Theocracy: Mainstream Media Mum

No Veteran Not Left Behind

We Can't Care for the Children We Already Have

Child Abuse Prevention Month

America, America: Torture for Fun

Bubble Boy's Oedipal War Broke 'Em, But Bubble Boy Won't Pay to Fix 'Em

More tales of incompetence and inexcusible stupidity about shabby, shoddy "treatment" for American troops with PTSD.

(Recommendations for fixing VA system, here. Earlier WaPo story here.)

The American military, led by raucous draft-dodger George W. Bush as its shining, sock-stuffed-codpiece commander, apparently just can't handle treating its own troops with PTSD now, even thought it's Bush's own Oedipal war that gave them their severe psychological injuries.

Every month, 20 to 40 soldiers are evacuated from Iraq because of mental problems, according to the Army. Most are sent to Walter Reed along with other war-wounded. For amputees, the nation's top Army hospital offers state-of-the-art prosthetics and physical rehab programs, and soon, a new $10 million amputee center with a rappelling wall and virtual reality center.

Nothing so gleaming exists for soldiers with diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder, who in the Army alone outnumber all of the war's amputees by 43 to 1. The Army has no PTSD center at Walter Reed, and its psychiatric treatment is weak compared with the best PTSD programs the government offers. Instead of receiving focused attention, soldiers with combat-stress disorders are mixed in with psych patients who have issues ranging from schizophrenia to marital strife.

Even though Walter Reed maintains the largest psychiatric department in the Army, it lacks enough psychiatrists and clinicians to properly treat the growing number of soldiers returning with combat stress. Earlier this year, the head of psychiatry sent out an "SOS" memo desperately seeking more clinical help.

Individual therapy with a trained clinician, a key element in recovery from PTSD, is infrequent, and targeted group therapy is offered only twice a week.

Here's the real deall:

1. Assess.
Assess symptomatology, and the level of risk to self and others.
2. Refer In or Out, then Treat.
High-risk patients (dangerous to self/others) go inpatient, receive individual counseling at least twice a week, med eval, groups with possible referral for psych eval. They stay inpatient until they are stabilized.
3. Assess again, Refer Again.
Patients assessed as suitable for outpatient treatment get individual sessions, twice a week to start if they're very symptomatic, once a week if that will suffice. Med eval referrals made by clinician as needed. Work toward stabilization of symptoms.
4. Add Groups. (Maybe.)
Once a patient is doing well (symptoms less severe/less frequent), add group treatment -- down the line. Don't start out with group treatment.


Earlier in this series, the writers suggested that "more research" needs to be done on PTSD before treatment can begin.
This is total bullshit. Effective treatments already exist, the military just is not using them.

If the military's not prepared to treat their own wounded, they need to refer their wounded troops for treatment to experienced trauma-trained clinicians.

They're ready, willing, and able.

Get it done. Make it happen.

Get it done.


vets with PTSD
support the troops

ARP Poll: Scooter "OJ" Libby's Get Out of Jail Free Card Does Not Sit Well With American Public: 45% Support Impeachment of Bush

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.


--George Orwell, Animal Farm.












Bet Bubble Boy never thought he'd see these numbers.

Poll: Impeachment talk gains steam after Libby move

A bad week for President Bush may foreshadow a dismal political season, as the president’s poll numbers plummet, Republicans abandon his Iraq policy and he faces a nascent censure and impeachment movement.

A new survey by the American Research Group found that only 31 percent of respondents approve of the president’s commutation of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence. The study by the private New Hampshire-based polling company canvassed 1,100 Republicans, Democrats and Independents from July 3-5, finding 64 percent disapproved of the commutation and 5 percent were undecided.

The president commuted the sentence Monday, saying the 2 years imposed last month on Libby, who was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in a case linked to the Iraq war, was “excessive.”

The commutation has sparked a firestorm on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), who has drafted a resolution to censure Bush, said the president’s “intervention is an unconscionable abuse of authority by George W. Bush, and Congress must step forward and express the disgust that Americans rightfully feel toward this contemptible decision.”

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has scheduled hearings Wednesday on the commutation. The hearings will include pardons made by Clinton, former President Bush and possibly other past presidents.

Those hearings may be the least of the White House’s problems.

The ARG poll found a remarkable 45 percent in favor of the U.S. House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush.


In Los Angeles, a storefront “impeachment headquarters” emblazoned with American flags opened July 4. Activists who gathered to open the center accuse the Bush administration of condoning torture, spying on Americans and misleading citizens about the war in Iraq. They also were angry at the president’s decision to commute Libby’s sentence.

“Isn’t it ironic that Paris Hilton will spend more days in jail than Libby?” said Byron De Lear, a Green Party activist.

The White House declined to comment on the impeachment poll, the latest bad news for a president who has seen his public opinion standings dragged to record lows by the unpopular war in Iraq. A Newsweek poll puts Bush’s approval rating at 26 percent.

Full story here. (Big coverage from a rightwing newspaper.)

HuffPo story on Bush hiding his dirty laundry by stiffing Congress, here.

A great piece on the Augean stable that is Bubble Boy's DOJ.

And here's a Bush voter who believes in the rule of law!

And here's a Bush voter who wants to re-elect Gore!


Have the American people finally awakened from the deep sleep of 9/11 PTSD-induced numbing and avoidance?

One hopes so.


Libby
Dirty Bush

Say, Why DO They Call Him "Preznit Toad-Exploder," Anyhow?

Why do they call George W. Bush, "Preznit Toad-Exploder"?

Well, impressionable American boys and girls, it's like this.

It's sort of like calling James "Dogbeater" Dobson "Kiddie-Whipper Dobson."

Or calling him "Dogbeater Dobson" for that matter.

Well, besides Bubble Boy's actual childhood sadistic sentient-being-intentional-suffering-and-death-causing toad-exploding history, there's, you know, stuff like this: LEGAL EXPERT: BUSH MAY HAVE ORDERED TORTURE.

Via RawStory:

The administration has been almost pathological in trying to find ways to keep these people from ever seeing a real judge or a real lawyer," Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told the Associated Press, "and the reasons are obvious."

Turley, among many legal analysts, believes that the likelihood that torture tactics were used on the detainees has heightened the administration's state of secrecy for fear of public retribution. The law professor also suggested that President Bush not only knew about the torture program but may have ordered it.

"It seems pretty clear that they've been tortured," Turley told the AP, "and that the president knew they were being tortured, and may have even ordered their torture through techniques like 'water boarding'."

More here, about Bush ordering torture in Iraq at Abu Ghraib -- and it ain't pretty.

Bush
Iraq War Vets
Vets with PTSD

Dirty Bush to Vets: Shut Up and Die

Lookee here.

The happy couple. With their happy little boy. You can't tell from this picture that when the happy little boy becomes a bit older, he'll think it's fun to stuff lit firecrackers down the throats of toads who don't want to die. But he thinks it's fun, so the toads will explode, thanks to Bubble Boy, the toad-exploder, who will grow up to be president.

Other families have happy little boys and girls, too. But some of them grow up to be exploded.

In Bubble Boy's Oedipal Iraq war. Some are exploded like the toads, some are wounded. Physically wounded, psychologically wounded, or both.

Bubble Boy doesn't want to pay for troops with PTSD to be treated for the PTSD his splendid little Oedipal war gave them. Suicide saves dough, does it not?

Bubble Boy doesn't want to pay for brain injury treatment for troops with brain injuries his splendid little Oedipal war gave them. They're not Terry Schiavo, are they?

Bubble Boy wants all the rest of the wounded troops who were wounded fighting his splendid little Oedipal war to just shut the f*ck up. He wants them to shut up and die.

More here. And here. And here.

Way to support the troops, Preznit Toad-Exploder!

Vets
Iraq War Vets
Vets with PTSD

Imagine How it Would Have Been -- At Long Last, President Gore

OSTROY; Al Gore Will Not Only Run, but He Can and Will Win in '08
With an Oscar Appearance, and a Hit Documentary Gore Is Suddenly Very Cool
Gore

Feb. 27, 2007 — Make no mistake: Former Vice President Al Gore will be our next president.

I am as confident about that assertion as I am that George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst president ever. Gore is the right man at the right time, for many reasons. And it's clear that the momentum and buzz is shifting his way big time.

At Sunday's Oscar ceremony, Gore's movie producers took home the coveted prize for best feature documentary for "An Inconvenient Truth," his scorching red-flag raiser on global warming.

Gore joined them on stage and was graceful, poised and presidential. And it didn't hurt his hipness quotient any to be getting a little Leo DiCaprio love either. The politician also joined the Hollywood star on stage during the Oscars. That's right, Al Gore is suddenly cool.

It gets even better. In October, Gore will also likely be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for being the planet's biggest advocate in the fight against climate change. His prestigious nomination in this exclusive club puts him in the company of such independent thinkers, statesmen and activists as Dr. Martin Luther King, President Jimmy Carter, Elie Wiesel and Mother Theresa.

Now let's talk chops. Gore's an enlisted Vietnam vet who served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, two terms in the Senate, and eight years as vice president in one of the most successful administrations ever. Let's not forget that he won the popular vote in 2000, and as many say, the Electoral College as well.

So wait, he's hip, he's brilliant, he's highly experienced. Is America ready for a real leader after two terms of a guy who makes Jim Carrey's "Dumb and Dumber" character seem downright cerebral? You bet your asinine Bush-isms it is.

I even have the perfect campaign slogan for Gore: "Imagine how it would've been."

Just imagine what the country would be like today had he become president in 2000 and not Bush. Imagine an America without this bloody debacle in Iraq. Imagine an America that commands the respect of its allies and is feared by its enemies. Imagine an America that puts the environment before big corporate interests. Imagine having a president who strives to bridge the gap between rich and poor, where the middle class, not the wealthy, gets the tax breaks, and where the minimum wage is not a shameful $5.15. Pretty powerful stuff on the campaign trail, huh?

--Andy Ostroy

MoDo wrote a column lauding Gore just now, as well. Jurassicpork captures it here.

Link here.

Dirty Bush Screws the Troops. Again.

What's dirty Bush done this time?

He's cut in half funding for treatment of war-related brain injuries and research on war-related brain injuries.

You know, the kind of war-related brain injuries one might get while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. IEDS, gunshot wounds, that kind of thing.

Please keep in mind Preznit Toad-Exploder's previous record of supporting the troops:

issuing crappy body armor to save money
giving a hard time to troops who buy their own body armor because the DOD doesn't want to be caught being cheap shits
putting crappy armor on tanks to save money
denying treatment to vets with PTSD to save money
putting out anti-PTSD propaganda to save money
undertreating vets with PTSD to save money

Heckuva job.



Full story here.


2006--GET THE SNAKES OFF THE PLANE.

Iraq Veterans
Bush cuts funding for vets
Dirty Bush
Snakes on a plane

First We Maim Your Minds, Then We Dump You, Part Three: Haditha Massacre Version

Video photo: Bodies of Haditha massacre victims are loaded onto trucks (Hammurabi Human Rights Group)

MARINES WITNESS MASSACRE AFTERMATH
Receive sub-standard care for PTSD

Via Raw Story/AP:

HANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Two Marines were severely traumatized when told to photograph the corpses of men, women and children after members of their unit allegedly killed as many as two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians, their families said Monday.

Lance Cpl. Andrew Wright, 20, and Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones, 21, both members of the Marine unit based at Camp Pendleton, photographed the scene in the western Iraqi city of Haditha with personal cameras they happened to be carrying the day of the attack.

Briones later had his camera confiscated by Navy investigators, his mother said, while Wright's parents said their son was cooperating with the Navy investigation, but declined to comment further.

"It was horrific. It was a terrible scene," Briones' mother, Susie, said in a tearful interview Monday with The Associated Press at her home in California's San Joaquin Valley.

She called the incident a "massacre" and said the military had done little to help her son, who goes by his middle name, deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I know Ryan is going through some major trauma right now," said Susie Briones, 40, an academic adviser at a community college. "It was very traumatic for all of the soldiers involved with this thing. . . ." Lance Cpl. Briones told his mother he saw the bodies of 23 dead Iraqis.

Susie Briones got a panicked call that day from her son, who said he did not see the shootings but was told by his supervisors to go into the houses and remove the bodies. He brought along a digital camera that his mother had given him before he left for Iraq. One of the bodies was a little girl who had been shot in the head, Susie Briones said. "He had to carry that little girl's body," she said, "and her head was blown off and her brain splattered on his boots."

Briones' best friend, Lance Cpl. Miguel "T.J." Terrazas, had been killed earlier that day by the roadside bomb. He was still grieving when he was sent in to clean up the bodies of the Iraqi civilians, his mother said.

Ryan Briones told the Los Angeles Times that he'd been interrogated twice by Navy investigators while in Iraq. He turned over his digital camera but did not know what happened to it after that.

"They wanted to know if the bodies had been moved or tampered with," said Briones, who has not been interviewed by Navy investigators since he returned from Iraq in April.

Susie Briones said her son has been seeing a private psychiatrist and been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder since his return. She criticized his military care, saying all his military doctors did was give him sleeping pills and antidepressants.

Wright also photographed the scene, according to his parents, Frederick and Patty Wright. They said their son was an innocent victim who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. . . Wright told his parents about the incident soon after it happened. He was distressed, and they reassured him the incident would be investigated and that it wasn't his fault.

The Wrights said Naval Criminal Investigative Service had "all his information," but did not give further details. They declined to say whether he witnessed the killings or what he thought of the allegations against other members of his unit.

He was under so much pressure because of the investigation that he had consulted with an attorney, they said. . .On Monday, both Marines were back at Camp Pendleton, near Oceanside, where base officials said several members of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division were being confined during the investigations. . .Nicholas Grey, a second lieutenant in the Marine Reserves based at Camp Pendleton, said the case will result in a loss of credibility for the Marines and increase Iraqi anger.

"It will make it a lot harder for the Marines," he said.

Yes, it will.

So, shrieky Bushists who disbelieve in alleviating human suffering, doesn't this story just warm the cockles of your heart? Isn't it rich? Isn't it interesting how quickly this version of the AP story disappeared from the internet? Are we getting ready to slag the so-called "trauma industry" again? Nothing to see here. Move along.


Original Time article here.

Haditha
Haditha massacre
Vets
PTSD

New Bushist Money-Saving Tactic: Send Vets With PTSD Right Back Into Battle

Gee, why would the Defense Department send depressed, suicidal, suffering vets with post-traumatic stress disorder back into battle?

So they'll die, and then they'll save money by not having to pay any more for physical and/or mental health treatment? Can you say--heinous?

How about this? How about higher-ups instructing doctors to underdiagnose deliberately--so troops can be sent back for another tour, and then later be denied proper mental health care.

(We've seen this before: see, First We Maim Your Minds, Then We Dump You. It's Hard Work, here. Oh and then there's "You Break 'Em, You Fix 'Em -- Unless You're a Bushist," here.)

Besides bringing antibiotics and painkillers, military personnel nationwide are heading back to Iraq with a cache of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications. . . The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer hopes to address the controversy through the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health, which is expected to start work next month. The California Democrat wrote the legislation that created the panel. She wants the task force to examine deployment policies and the quality and availability of mental-health care for the military.

"We've also heard reports that doctors are being encouraged not to identify mental-health illness in our troops. I am asking for a lot of answers," Boxer said during a March 8 telephone interview. "If people are suffering from mental-health problems, they should not be sent on the battlefield."

Stress reduces a person's chances of functioning well in combat, said Frank M. Ochberg, a psychiatrist for 40 years and a founding member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

"I have not seen anything that says this is a good thing to use these drugs in high-stress situations. But if you are going to be going (into combat) anyway, you are better off on the meds," said Ochberg, a former consultant to the Secret Service and the National Security Council. "I would hope that those with major depression would not be sent."

. . [m]edical officers for the Army and Marine Corps acknowledge that medicated service members – and those suffering combat-induced psychological problems – are returning to war. And anecdotal evidence, bolstered by the government's own studies, suggest that the number could be significant.

A 2004 Army report found that up to 17 percent of combat-seasoned infantrymen experienced major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder after one combat tour to Iraq. Less than 40 percent of them had sought mental-health care.

A Pentagon survey released last month found that 35 percent of the troops returning from Iraq had received psychological counseling during their first year home.

That survey echoed statistics collected by the San Diego Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. The system has found that about 33 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from schizophrenia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The various studies apparently didn't consider the effects of multiple combat tours, though psychiatrists agree that the greater people's exposure to combat, generally the higher their risk of suffering mental illness. . .Joe Costello, a mental-health counselor at the Vista Veterans Center, said emotionally scarred troops are routinely redeployed and that most want to go back to the war zone.

"I see it every day," said Costello, who mainly treats reservists.

Buttressing the idea that large numbers of service members are medicated, more than 200,000 prescriptions for the most common types of antidepressants were written in the past 14 months for service members and their families, said Sydney Hickey, a spokeswoman for the National Military Family Association. . .

Mental-health care for service members and the Defense Department's efforts to keep the mentally ill in uniform are becoming national issues, said Steve Robinson, director of the National Gulf War Resource Center in Silver Spring, Md.

Robinson said three Army doctors have told him about being pressured by their commanders not to identify mental conditions that would prevent personnel from being deployed.

"They are being told to diagnose combat-stress reaction instead of PTSD," he said. "That does two things: It keeps the troops deployable and it makes it hard for them to collect disability claims once they get out of the military."

Robinson contends that the Pentagon is trying to control its spending on mental-health disabilities.

Between 1999 and 2004, disability payments to veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder rose to $4.3 billion from $1.7 billion nationwide, according to a report by the Department of Veterans Affairs' inspector general.

Overall, service members' mental health is a hot-button subject because it goes to the cost of the war in dollars and lives, said Joy Ilem, an assistant national legislative director for the organization Disabled American Veterans.

"The (Department of Veterans Affairs) is very worried about the political implications of PTSD and other mental issues arising from the war," Ilem said. “They are talking about early outreach and treatment, but they are really trying to tamp down the discussion."

Cmdr. Paul S. Hammer deals with such issues daily.

Hammer, a psychiatrist, is responsible for the Marine Corps' mental-health programs during this deployment rotation. He confirmed that Marines with post-traumatic stress disorder and combat stress are returning to Iraq, though he would not say how many.

Hammer said deciding who is deployed is often anguishing.

Persons in power sending others into combat who lack combat experience: Preznit Toad-Exploder, Five Deferments Cheney. Those lacking empathy: Toad-Exploder, Cheney, Rummy. Those leading the US further and further into moral and fiscal bankruptcy: all of them. All of them.


Full story here

Photo: agony of war, Vietnam, 173 Airborne.
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You Break 'Em, You Fix 'Em -- Unless You're a Bushist Fascist Pseudo-Conservative

OK, it's the middle of the work week, I don't have time to do justice to the whole subject now, but I wanted highlight a particularly repulsive op-ed in the New York Times today by a little lady with a big fat axe to grind.

Oh, I forgot, you can't get there from here--here's the little intro to silly Sally Satel's piece: it's really so stupid it's not even worth reading--but it's certainly worth ridiculing.

Silly Sally's silly take: "For Some, the War Won't End: More rigor in diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder will conserve resources for veterans who are truly deserving."

"Truly deserving"? What, like Bubble Boy?

Dickensian deserving? As in, "Please sir, can I have some more"?

"Rigor"? As in--anyone who admits to PTSD symptoms must be a pussy?

Oh, goodie. Silly Sally's got her spin on all those troops who suffer yet are undeserving.

Yes, we have the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, the deserving wounded, and the undeserving wounded--because, why would we want to pay for the damage we've caused?

I've written several times previously on the Bushist administration's penchant for exposing troops to conditions that engender PTSD, and then trying to change the rules so as not to have to actually pay for the treatment of PTSD that their splendid little war caused: see here "First We Maim Your Minds, Then We Dump You: It's Hard Work," with links to prior posts.

Their first attack on Veterans' benefits didn't succeed.

But--they're at it again.

Pigs.




Vets
PTSD
Sally Satel
New York Times

First We Maim Your Minds, Then We Dump You. It's Hard Work. Still.

This is a picture of Specialist Doug Barber. He acquired PTSD as a result of his participation in the Iraq War.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an eminently treatable psychiatric condition, one requiring individual therapy once or twice a week until symptoms--hyperarousal (anxiety, panic, hypervigilance, outbursts of rage, irritability, insomnia, etc.); numbing/avoidance; intrusive thoughts (flashbacks, nightmares)--subside. Individualized medication regimes can also be helpful.

Preznit Toad-Exploder's VA knew full well what was wrong with Doug Barber, yet denied him benefits and proper treatment for two years.

In response to this soldier's request for emergency crisis treatment, according to Jay Shaft, the VA gave him a counseling appointment every three months and threw meds at him without proper supervision and follow-up.

On January 18, 2006, Specialist Doug Barber, who had PTSD, an eminently treatable psychiatric condition, committed suicide.

We've previously mentioned the Bush regime's vicious cheapskate policy on PTSD here, here, and here.


Asserting that people with PTSD don't have PTSD, reclassifying diagnoses, stringing patients along on meds only, or groups, or whatever they can get away with--that's how Bubble Boy's VA balances their budgets.

Deny people with PTSD treatment for long enough, they just kill themselves. Saves a bundle, eh?


Sort of like waiting for someone to bleed to death so as not to pay for a surgeon.










Iraq War
Bush
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Iraq vets