VA official urged fewer PTSD diagnoses to cut costs

Is there no end of the shameful, deceitful, amoral actions of this administration??


Joe(they should all be sprayed with Agent Orange.)Nation

Nope. No end to Bushit.

A SOLDIER'S TRAGIC TALE
A victim of the war within
Suicides of Houston Army recruiter and his wife leave questions of struggle that endured after Iraq

By LINDSAY WISE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
War's toll on soldier, family
A stressful job after a traumatic deployment
Army recruiter Nils Aron Andersson sat behind the wheel of his brand-new Ford F-150, firing round after round into the truck's CD player and radio with a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Spent cartridges littered the seats and floorboards, along with a paper pharmacy bag holding a prescription for the antidepressant Lexapro.

Andersson's wife, Cassy Walton, had been trying to reach the 25-year-old sergeant on his cell phone for hours. He finally picked up about 2 a.m. and told her he wanted to kill himself.

Walton begged him to keep talking to her. Andersson told her he was on the top floor of a downtown Houston parking garage and ended the call. Then he put the pistol to his head, just above his right ear.

Minutes later, Walton raced up the stairs of the garage to find her husband of less than 24 hours slumped on the driver's side of his truck, bleeding from a single bullet wound to his right temple.

Sobbing, she unlocked the truck with her own key, climbed onto his lap, and started CPR.

"Why did you do this?" she screamed.

When Andersson killed himself on March 6, 2007, he became one of at least 16 Army recruiters to commit suicide nationwide since 2000. Five of those suicides occurred in Texas, including three at the Houston Recruiting Battalion, where Andersson worked after serving two tours of duty in Iraq.

Roughly one in five U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan reports symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, but only slightly more than half have sought treatment, according to a recently published Rand Corp. study. Of those who did seek care, only about half received minimally adequate treatment, the study found.

Amid increasing concerns about failure to screen, diagnose and treat soldiers with mental health problems adequately, Andersson's story raises questions about the pressures faced by the growing number of veterans who return from multiple combat deployments to high-stress recruiting assignments back home.


Leaving for Iraq muchmore

RESOURCES FOR SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES
Warning signs: http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov
www.battlemind.org

Wounded Warrior Program: https://www.aw2.army.mil/

Wounded Warrior toll-free phone number: 800-984-8523
Soldiers in crisis should talk to their chaplain, chain of command or a fellow soldier immediately. They may also call Military OneSource at 800-342-9647

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 800-SUICIDE

VA Suicide Prevention Hotline: Veterans experiencing emotional and suicidal crisis, and their concerned family members or friends, have immediate access to emergency counseling services 24 hours a day, seven days a week by calling 800-273-TALK (8255).

SUICIDE PREVENTION TIPS FOR COMRADES
Ask your buddy: Have the courage to ask the question, but stay calm. Ask the question directly, for example, "Are you thinking of killing yourself?"
Care for your buddy: Remove any means that could be used for self-injury. Calmly control the situation; do not use force. Actively listen to produce relief.

Escort your buddy: Never leave your buddy alone. Escort to the chain of command, a chaplain, a behavioral health professional, or a primary care provider

Odd that they left out this portion of the Washington Post story.



The glass is always half empty with you guys, huh?

And Joe, Perez is a staff psychologist, not a member of "this administration."

McGentrix, are you pretending our troops are being treated properly?

No, I am pretending you don't exist, buh, bye.

the government doesnt care, if all the troops die and they get more resources they are happy. bottom line. the polticians dont risk their lives , they risk other peoples and that is always going to be.

Veterans press for info on 1960s chemical tests
Veterans press for information on 1960s chemical tests, complain of health impact

ERICA WERNER
AP News

Jun 12, 2008 03:14 EST

Jack Alderson was ordered never to talk about the secret weapons tests he helped conduct in the Pacific during the 1960s. He kept quiet for decades.

Sparse attendance at a 1993 reunion prompted Alderson, a retired Navy Reserve lieutenant commander, to speak out. He learned that more than half of the 500 or so crew members who took part in the tests were either dead or suffering from cancer, respiratory problems or other ailments. Alderson wondered whether his own skin cancers, allergies and chronic fatigue were linked to those tests or were simply the result of aging.

"I was told by my bosses and the docs and so forth that if you follow these routines ... you're going to be OK," Alderson, 74, said in an interview. "We did exactly as told. And we're finding out now that we're sick."

Alderson and other witnesses were to testify Thursday before a House Veterans Affairs panel considering legislation that would require more Pentagon disclosure about the Cold War-era germ and chemical weapons testing and extend benefits to veterans who participated in them. A similar bill is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee later this month.

Lawmakers say the legislation is needed because the Pentagon has not acknowledged a link between the tests and health problems, which has made it difficult for veterans to get health coverage. Pentagon officials don't rule out a health link but say it's tough to prove.

"We cannot say that this exposure 40 years ago had absolutely no health effect," said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, the Pentagon's deputy director for force health protection and readiness. "I don't think any physician would risk saying that. Because how do you prove that that's the case?"

A similar debate took place around Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used by U.S. forces in Vietnam that was linked to cancer and other ailments in those exposed to it. At Congress' insistence in the late 1980s, the government extended benefits to veterans and their children suffering from Agent Orange-related diseases.

The bill under consideration Thursday, by Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., is patterned after the Agent Orange legislation.

In testimony prepared for the hearing, obtained in advance by The Associated Press, Bradley Mayes, the Veterans Affairs Department's director of compensation and pensions, calls the legislation unnecessary, "due to the lack of credible scientific and medical evidence that adequately demonstrates any statistically significant correlation" between the tests and participants' diseases.

Last year, the Institute of Medicine, which advises the government on medical and health matters, found no specific health effects as a result of Project SHAD ?- Shipboard Hazard and Defense. Alderson, Thompson and others argue that the report was shoddily done and left out key information.

"It started out being a secret project and turned into being a CYA type of thing, you know, cover your rear end. And an embarrassment," Thompson said of the tests and their aftermath.

Action from Congress would be a relief to Alderson, who lives modestly in Ferndale, Calif., among the redwoods north of San Francisco. His home is decorated with stacks of documents about his days in charge of a fleet of five light tugboats that were sprayed with biological agents and cleaned afterward with solvents, some of which now are considered carcinogenic.

During the tests, conducted amid Cold War concerns about the Soviet Union's weapons capabilities, the military tested germs such as bacteria that could cause tularemia and Q fever, serious diseases more commonly found in animals. Also used were nonlethal simulated agents, including E. coli, now known to pose health dangers.

Test participants were given experimental vaccines but weren't told of any risks, only that the shots were a protective measure, Alderson said. Project SHAD also involved spraying service members aboard large Navy ships.

Kilpatrick acknowledges that some participants weren't fully informed about the project they were part of but says safety precautions taken then were appropriate for the time.

Alderson said he has pressed the Pentagon for answers about the secret tests because he feels he owes that to the crews he commanded.

In 1995, Alderson got a copy of a letter that the Navy's medicine and surgery bureau sent to his then-congressman, Rep. Frank Riggs, stating they had no records of Project SHAD. Six years later, after continued questioning from Riggs and Thompson, the Pentagon began to publicly release details on the existence of Project SHAD and its umbrella program, Project 112, which involved distribution of nonlethal bacteria and occasionally real chemical or biological weapons.

The Defense Department now says 6,440 service members took part in 50 tests under Project 112 between 1962 and 1973, including open-air tests above a half-dozen U.S. states.
link

I'm reminded of that Robert Burns, the 'Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang'. I identify especially with the WWI generation, being myself the rangy-nomad-reactionary type, and a fellow dissatisfied-customer of southern jurisprudence.

The guy goes to war, comes back disillusioned, has problems, robs a guy who'd later come to his defense, gets stuck in inhuman conditions on a chain gang, escapes, and becomes a successful businessman in Chi-Town. It doesn't end there, he writes a book of course, gets lured back to Georgia, and so on - but the point is, after the war he was in rough shape, but he was also way-overbuilt for everyday life - that is, like many of his generation, when and if he sought material success it came readily.

I don't mean that like it's bad or good - quite the contrary. It just is what it is, **** happens, you either survive, as to my understanding 99% of our men and women in the sandbox do, or you don't. The ones that don't are a real problem, but the ones that make it, I mean, as in Burns' case, they can channel it constructively or not. Also, as in Burns' case, society would do well to make every concession to allow them to move on, but in the end, there's no ass we can kiss nor country we can take crap from to make them right if nothing else works.