Tag: PTSD

Family violence in the military: Batterers or soldiers with PTSD?

On By AdministratorIn Domestic Violence, Felony Crime, Military Policy, PTSD, TBI, Mental IllnessLeave a comment

PTSDFamily violence in the military: Batterers or soldiers with PTSD?

When men end up in Anne Potts Jackson’s office, the signs often paint them as domestic abusers: controlling behavior, angry outbursts that turn violent.

As an assistant district attorney in Bell County, home of Fort Hood, Jackson tries to determine what’s behind all that. Are these men true batterers, or are they soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?

“Anger is the predominant emotion of the combat experience. It is the emotion that kept him alive, kept her alive, when he was in Afghanistan or Iraq,” Jackson said. “But it is the thing — the emotion — that will get him arrested at home.” As an Air Force wife herself, Jackson understands the tensions that exist inside military households.

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/plano/headlines/20131025-family-violence-in-the-military-batterers-or-soldiers-with-ptsd.ece

Death on the Home Front: Women in the Crosshairs

On By AdministratorIn Armed Forces, Domestic Violence, Felony Crime, Military Policy, PTSD, TBI, Mental Illness, SuicideLeave a comment

stop the violenceDeath on the Home Front: Women in the Crosshairs

Wake up, America.  The boys are coming home, and they’re not the boys who went away.

On New Year’s Day, the New York Times welcomed the advent of 2009 by reporting that, since returning from Iraq, nine members of the Fort Carson, Colorado, Fourth Brigade Combat team had been charged with homicide. Five of the murders they were responsible for took place in 2008 when, in addition, “charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault” at the base rose sharply.  Some of the murder victims were chosen at random; four were fellow soldiers — all men.  Three were wives or girlfriends.

This shouldn’t be a surprise.  Men sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for two, three, or four tours of duty return to wives who find them “changed” and children they barely know. Tens of thousands return to inadequate, underfunded veterans’ services with appalling physical injuries, crippling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suck-it-up sergeants who hold to the belief that no good soldier seeks help.  That, by the way, is a mighty convenient belief for the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, which have been notoriously slow to offer much of that help.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-jones/death-on-the-home-front_b_181728.html

When Strains on Military Families Turn Deadly

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DV AwarenessWhen Strains on Military Families Turn Deadly

A few months after Sgt. William Edwards and his wife, Sgt. Erin Edwards, returned to a Texas Army base from separate missions in Iraq, he assaulted her mercilessly. He struck her, choked her, dragged her over a fence and slammed her into the sidewalk.

As far as Erin Edwards was concerned, that would be the last time he beat her.

Unlike many military wives, she knew how to work the system to protect herself. She was an insider, even more so than her husband, since she served as an aide to a brigadier general at Fort Hood.

With the general’s help, she quickly arranged for a future transfer to a base in New York. She pressed charges against her husband and secured an order of protection. She sent her two children to stay with her mother. And she received assurance from her husband’s commanders that he would be barred from leaving the base unless accompanied by an officer.

Yet on the morning of July 22, 2004, William Edwards easily slipped off base, skipping his anger-management class, and drove to his wife’s house in the Texas town of Killeen. He waited for her to step outside and then, after a struggle, shot her point-blank in the head before turning the gun on himself.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/15vets.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Tester, Pingree question Intelligence Director over security clearance reversal

On By AdministratorIn Military Policy, PTSD, TBI, Mental Illness, Sexual AssaultLeave a comment

Office of Director of NSALawmakers vow to continue fighting to protect survivors of sexual assault

Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) are demanding that the U.S. Director of National Intelligence once again eliminate a requirement that forces survivors of sexual assault in the military to declare whether they sought counseling for sexual trauma when applying for a security clearance.

Tester and Pingree successfully overturned the policy in April after hearing from veterans and service members from Montana and Maine, but the government reversed course in the final version of the security clearance questionnaire released this summer.

Before the change, job applicants seeking a security clearance had to list whether they had received mental health counseling as a result of a sexual assault, and if so, allow an investigator full access to their health records.

Veterans and veterans’ advocacy groups told Tester and Pingree the policy discouraged qualified service members from applying for important national security positions and discouraged them from getting the counseling they need. The Defense Department estimates that there may have been as many as 26,000 instances of “unwanted sexual contact” in 2012, with the vast majority of cases reported by women.

“We strongly urge you to reconsider this matter and reinstitute the explicit exemption for survivors of sexual assault,” Tester and Pingree told Intelligence Director James Clapper. “As you recognized in April, we need to do everything we can to support survivors of sexual assault – not keep them from getting the care they need or jeopardizing their ability to provide for themselves and their families.”

“Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) is grateful to Senator Tester and Congresswoman Pingree for their dedication to ensuring military sexual assault survivors’ careers are not stunted or adversely affected because they sought counseling to cope with the assault,” said Anu Bhagwati, SWAN executive director and former Marine Corps captain. “SWAN has already heard from service members that are confused by the recently removed exemption for military sexual assault survivors and are now hesitant to seek help. We urge Director Clapper to reinstate the explicit exemption for sexual assault survivors.”

Tester and Pingree have been in contact with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and other officials about the issue over the last two years. The officials responded by altering the security clearance questionnaire to better handle sensitive information, but Tester and Pingree sought a complete policy change.

There are multiple forms of counseling that do not impede an applicant from securing a security clearance, including family counseling and counseling for combat stress.

September 17, 2013: Letter to DNI Clapper (10/24/13 03:29 PM PST)

Original: http://pingree.house.gov/press-releases/tester-pingree-question-intelligence-director-over-security-clearance-reversal2/

Confessions of a Drone Warrior

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uav-predatorConfessions of a Drone Warrior

He was an experiment, really. One of the first recruits for a new kind of warfare in which men and machines merge. He flew multiple missions, but he never left his computer. He hunted top terrorists, saved lives, but always from afar. He stalked and killed countless people, but could not always tell you precisely what he was hitting. Meet the 21st-century American killing machine. who’s still utterly, terrifyingly human

From the darkness of a box in the Nevada desert, he watched as three men trudged down a dirt road in Afghanistan. The box was kept cold—precisely sixty-eight degrees—and the only light inside came from the glow of monitors. The air smelled spectrally of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. On his console, the image showed the midwinter landscape of eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar Province—a palette of browns and grays, fields cut to stubble, dark forests climbing the rocky foothills of the Hindu Kush. He zoomed the camera in on the suspected insurgents, each dressed in traditional shalwar kameez, long shirts and baggy pants. He knew nothing else about them: not their names, not their thoughts, not the thousand mundane and profound details of their lives.

Read more: http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201311/drone-uav-pilot-assassination?printable=true

A Soldier’s Memoir (PTSD Song) by Joe Bachman

On By AdministratorIn PTSD, TBI, Mental IllnessLeave a comment

Learn more about this Patriot: http://www.joebachman.com/

Adjustment disorder may now net disability pay

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Veterans AffairsAdjustment disorder may now net disability pay

The Pentagon has changed its physical disability policy to include chronic adjustment disorder as a condition potentially eligible for disability compensation.

The Defense Department amended DoD Instruction 1332.38 in April to name chronic adjustment disorder as incompatible with military service, but possibly service-related and therefore eligible for disability compensation.

The change is notable because thousands of service members have been discharged for adjustment disorder, which had been previously characterized as a condition present before troops joined the military, and therefore ineligible for compensation or mental health treatment.

A Defense Department spokeswoman said the change was made to bring the policy in line with the Veterans Affairs Department’s schedule of rating of disabilities.

Critics have charged that the military services used the diagnosis of adjustment disorder in lieu of post-traumatic stress disorder to avoid paying benefits to troops who could no longer serve.

Read more: http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20131011/NEWS/310110027/Adjustment-disorder-may-now-net-disability-pay

Veteran says Fort Harrison VA is not qualified; Gatlin: Office near Helena ‘incompetent’

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Veterans AffairsVeteran says Fort Harrison VA is not qualified; Gatlin: Office near Helena ‘incompetent’

WASHINGTON –  The Veterans Board of Appeals heard oral arguments Wednesday by a disabled vet who charged that the Fort Harrison Veterans Affairs office near Helena is “organizationally incompetent.”

Charles Gatlin, a 38-year-old graduate student at the University of Montana, is a Ranger-certified Army captain retired on a disability. After being awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, Gatlin was retired from active duty with a 70 percent disability rating for traumatic brain injury (TBI) suffered in Iraq by a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).

But the VA at Fort Harrison ignored three batteries of neuropsychological testing by the Department of Defense and dropped Gatlin’s 70 percent TBI disability to 10 percent and then added another 30 percent for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Read more: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20131017/NEWS01/310170012?odyssey=mod%7Cmostcom&nclick_check=1

Viewpoint: How Marijuana Decision Could Signal Turning Point in the U.S. War on Drugs

On By AdministratorIn Military Policy, PTSD, TBI, Mental IllnessLeave a comment

David Chesser: A Man Changed Forever By PTSD

On By AdministratorIn PTSD, TBI, Mental Illness, SuicideLeave a comment

PTSD Invisible WoundsDavid Chesser: A Man Changed Forever By PTSD

Three hours before David Chesser, wife Jenifer Chesser was on the phone with her husband.
David had said he was going for a walk. When he called her, it was clear he’d been drinking heavily. Actually, he’d been sober for a month but in the past couple of days he began to unravel again, she said.

Back from the war, Chesser was unable to find regular work and unable to keep it when he did. He was drowning in back rent payments, and their landlord called to say they were out of chances. “It’s hopeless,” he told her over the phone. “If I was dead, at least you and the kids would be taken care of.”  Then he hung up.

Read more: http://lakewood-jblm.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/xyxyxyx