Hood sees twofold increase in suicides from prior year

Hood sees twofold increase in suicides from prior year

Did it do any good to have predicted this would happen well over a year ago?

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Aftermath of Fort Hood shootings may be worse


As the news reports kept coming out today about the carnage at Fort Hood, my greatest fears were not for today, but for the next few months ahead. No one is talking about "secondary stressors" and this needs to be addressed quickly.

There are crisis teams heading there according to the press briefing by Lt. Gen. Robert Cone. This is one of the best things they can do. I spent months taking this kind of training and it is very thorough. The issue that we need to be concerned about is when there are thousands of soldiers, combat soldiers with multiple tours, many of them are dealing with mild PTSD. Mild PTSD is not that hard to cope with. They live pretty normal lives while covering up the pain they have inside. Many even cope well the rest of their lives but many do not. Like a ticking time bomb, PTSD rests waiting to strike if untreated. It waits for the next traumatic event and then mild PTSD turns into PTSD on steroids.

These are the soldiers that will need the greatest help as soon as possible.

These bases are very well secured. That makes the soldiers and their families feel safe. Think about going into combat and then making it home alive where you are supposed to be safe. Then having this happen.

I was at Fort Hood in March. I had an auto rental and even though I had a military issued ID, that was not good enough at the guard house. I had to show my rental agreement every time I drove onto the base. Even if you have a Department of Defense sticker on your car, you still have to show your military ID. That makes them feel they are safe. Then away from harm, away from combat, they end up having to face something like this from not only one of their own, but a Major and a Doctor who is supposed to be there for them, trying to kill them.

Crisis teams will address the traumatic events of today, but the soldiers that have already been involved in traumatic events cutting into them will need far greater help than anyone is really prepared to deliver. This is my greatest fear for them.

Then we have troops from Fort Hood and other bases deployed into Iraq and Afghanistan wondering who they can trust now after one of their own did something like this. None of this is good and the aftermath may be worse than this day itself.
Aftermath of Fort Hood shootings may be worse

There was not enough being done to address it before the shootings and there wasn't enough done after. I know trauma, human nature and what can follow, but if anyone in charge knew the same thing but did nothing, they should face a trail to answer for what they did not do.

They boosted staff but say nothing about the kind of training or understanding these people had. If they were anything like Hassan, they would do more harm than good. Maybe Col. Christopher Philbrick should have asked some of us what we think is not being done and then maybe, just maybe they'd finally save some lives.

Army: 22 suicides in 2010 at Fort Hood

One was Army Sgt. Douglas Hale Jr., who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after completing his second tour in 2007. He texted his mother, Glenda Moss, on July 6 asking forgiveness before shooting himself to death in a restaurant bathroom near Fort Hood.

During the last week of September, four soldiers committed suicide.
Despite suicide prevention efforts, Hood sees twofold increase in suicides from prior year; some say shooting massacre may have been contributing factor
By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Wednesday Jan 5, 2011 21:57:41 EST
The Army’s largest post saw a record number of soldiers kill themselves in 2010 despite a mental health effort aimed at reversing the trend.

The Army says 22 soldiers have either killed themselves or are suspected of doing so last year at Fort Hood, Texas, twice the number from 2009.

That is a rate of 45 deaths per 100,000, compared to 20-per-100,000 rate among civilians in the same age group and a 22-per-100,000 rate Army-wide.

The Army had boosted staffing and psychiatric services to address the problem, particularly after the fatal shootings of 13 people on the post in November 2009. The Army says that Maj. Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist, fired his pistol indiscriminately at soldiers waiting for routine medical care.

Fort Hood now has one of the largest counseling staffs in the Army with more than 170 behavioral health workers.

“Any time they’ve asked for it, the Army has done everything it can to provide assistance,” said Army Col. Christopher Philbrick, deputy commander of an Army task force on reducing suicides.

Philbrick said it “has been very frustrating for us to figure out what we haven’t done right.”

Many of the 48,000 soldiers at Fort Hood have either returned from war zones or are on their way to them.
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/01/gannett-army-hood-sees-22-suicides-010511/

President Signed Improvements to Post-9/11 GI Bill

President Signed Improvements to Post-9/11 GI Bill
Many Non-College Programs and State Service of Reserves and Guard now
Covered

WASHINGTON (Jan. 5, 2011) - To bring the educational benefits of the
Post-9/11 GI Bill closer to more Veterans and Service Members, President
Obama signed legislation Jan. 4 that streamlines the 18-month-old
education program administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA).

"Since the first GI Bill in 1944, this unique educational program has
adapted to the needs of America's Veterans, active-duty personnel,
reservists and Guardsmen," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K.
Shinseki. "Like its forbearers, the Post-9/11 GI Bill is growing to
ensure the men and women who serve this nation in uniform receive
valuable education benefits from a grateful nation.

"On behalf of Veterans and the many who serve them at VA, we would like
to thank the president for his support, as well as members of Congress
and our Veterans service organization partners for helping make this
bill a reality," Shinseki added.

Among the provisions of the legislation are:

* Paying for on-the-job training, some flight training;
apprenticeship training and correspondence courses;

* Allowing reservists and Guardsmen to have their time supporting
emergencies called by their state governors credited to the time needed
to qualify for educational benefits;

* Providing one half of the national average for the program's
housing allowance to students enrolled in distance learning;

* Pro-rating the housing allowance to exclude payments when
students are not in class;

* Allowing students on active duty receive the stipend for books
and supplies;

* Allowing people eligible for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, but
participating in VA's Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E)
benefits to choose between the GI Bill's housing allowance or VR&E's
subsistence allowance;

* Permitting reimbursement for more than one "license and
certification" test;

* Reimbursing fees to take national admission tests, such as SAT,
ACT, GMAT and LSAT; and

* Establishing a national cap of $17,500 annually for tuition and
fees in a private or a foreign school, not including contributions by
educational institutions under the "Yellow Ribbon" program.

Information about the new provisions is available on the Internet at
www.gibill.va.gov .

By the end of December 2010, VA issued nearly $7.2 billion in tuition,
housing, and stipends for more than 425,000 Veterans or eligible family
members pursuing higher education under the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

Bun pit linked to another soldier's death

Soldier from W. Babylon dies of rare cancer
Originally published: January 3, 2011 4:58 PM
Updated: January 3, 2011 9:28 PM
By SOPHIA CHANG AND VICTOR MANUEL RAMOS


After a long year of watching the slow death of her husband, Army Sgt. William McKenna, Dina McKenna decided the final goodbye should be dignified without painful lingering.

"Because of my children, I wanted to keep it brief. We've been suffering for a whole year with his cancer and how much he has deteriorated," she said Monday after her husband was buried at Calverton National Cemetery. He died in Florida on Tuesday at the age of 41 from a rare form of lymphoma.

There was no eulogy at his funeral at the Johnstons' Wellwood Funeral Home in Lindenhurst, just a few miles from the West Babylon neighborhood where McKenna grew up.
read more here
Soldier from W. Babylon dies of rare cancer

September 11 survivors show lasting traumatic stress

15% seems low considering we've been talking about one out of three for PTSD (some experts say one out of five) but you have to consider another factor here. Right after 9-11 trauma teams rushed out and got to work taking care of survivors. This shows that even with immediate help, 15% had their lives changed that day above others. What do you think the chances are for the troops coming back from multiple times with their lives on the line and not getting any help after each time? Not good odds at all. So why is it that no one in the government was ready for the troops coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan? They never thought to treat them like humans instead of "soldiers" trained to do their jobs.

September 11 survivors show lasting traumatic stress

By Amy Norton
NEW YORK | Tue Jan 4, 2011 4:41pm EST
(Reuters Health) - Many civilian survivors of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center were still suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic stress several years after the 2001 disaster, a new study finds.

Surveys of nearly 3,700 people who escaped the Twin Towers that day found that nearly all -- 96 percent -- still had at least one symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) two to three years later.

And of those, 15 percent screened positive for full-blown PTSD -- a rate about four times higher than that seen in the general population in any given year.

The study, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, is the first to focus on the long-term mental health of the people who were actually in the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11.

Past studies have looked at the general public, or people who lived near the World Trade Center, said senior researcher Dr. Sandro Galea, of Columbia University in New York.

The study found that people who had escaped from floors above the planes' "impact zone" were at greater risk of PTSD than those who escaped from lower floors. Similarly, people who were evacuated relatively later, or who had to run from the cloud of debris sent out by the collapsing towers, were also at elevated risk.

read more here

September 11 survivors show lasting traumatic stress

Study of Guard soldiers shows effects of mild brain injury not forever

Readers of this blog know I had TBI when I was very young and there was very little known about what happens to the brain after injury. I really should not have survived the fall but by the grace of God for some reason, I did. There are some things that will never be right about my brain, (stop thinking about jokes for now like my friends always come up with) but considering what my head went through, it's not all so bad. You can learn how to adapt. I had to see a speech therapist for a couple of years. Memory problems were overcome by learning some tricks like focusing on what I had to remember, writing down what was important and pretty much tossing things out once I was done with some useless information that really meant nothing. Unfortunately this meant that names were forgotten just about as soon as I was introduced to someone but their face was always remembered. This is a good report because it shows that while PTSD does not "go away" mild brain injury does and as far as traumatic brain injury, if my life is any indication, that can get better too.

Study of Guard soldiers shows effects of mild brain injury fade over time
by Jessica Mador, Minnesota Public Radio
January 4, 2011
St. Paul, Minn. — Results from an ongoing survey of Minnesota National Guard troops conducted by researchers at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center show that most cases of mild brain injury or concussion are likely to fade over time.

Researchers say the survey, which was published in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, also sheds more light on post-traumatic stress symptoms.

The findings could be good news for the thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans believed to have suffered mild brain injury during combat, although it's unclear how many troops have come home with TBI.

Minneapolis VA Medical Center psychologist Melissa Polusny says the number of soldiers who report an injury that made them feel dazed or confused, or forced them to lose consciousness, varies widely.

Polusny and her colleagues surveyed more than 950 Guard soldiers, and in one survey, as many as 22 percent of them reported suffering a mild traumatic brain injury while deployed.

"When someone hears the word brain injury, I think they make assumptions about what that is," she said. "What we are talking about is concussion, which is sometimes referred to as mild traumatic brain injury."

Mild traumatic brain injury differs from moderate to severe TBI. Polusny says there are a number of common symptoms.

"Like headache, or difficulty concentrating, or irritability or memory difficulties, maybe ringing in the ears or tinitis," she said. "These are grouped together and referred to as post-oncussive symptoms."

The survey followed National Guard soldiers who served in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. Researchers were looking at the associations between concussion and PTSD symptoms, and whether mild TBI caused long-term effects.
read more here
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/01/04/brain-injury-study/

PTSD signals longer-term health problems

Study: PTSD signals longer-term health problems
U. S. soldiers who experienced post-traumatic stress disorder during combat in Iraq were more likely to experience longer-term health problems including depression, headaches, tinnitis, irritability and memory problems compared with soldiers who experienced only concussions without PTSD. The study concludes that screening for PTSD among troops is critical for identifying and treating long-term health problems. The findings are published in the JAMA Archives of General Psychiatry.

Since Operation Desert Storm launched 20 years ago, millions of U.S. troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Combat exposure often places troops at risk of suffering psychological trauma and injury when they are exposed to the blasts from improvised explosive devices, according to background information in the study, and traumatic brain injury has often been called the “signature injury” of the conflicts. The study says that most TBIs are mild – better known as concussions. The symptoms of concussion, or MTBI, include loss of consciousness, loss of memory, dizziness, and headache.

Recognizing the increased risk of MTBI and PTSD, the Department of Defense and the VA have instituted post-deployment screening to identify service members who may require further treatment or evaluation. The researchers explain that while other studies have shown that PTSD is linked to long-term health problems and disability, less is known about the long-term effects of concussion on health problems.

University of Minnesota Medical School and Minneapolis Veterans Affairs health care system researchers surveyed 2,677 soldiers from a U.S. National Guard Brigade Combat Team stationed in Iraq. Participants completed their first questionnaire in 2007, one month before their 16-month deployment ended. They answered questions about whether they had experienced a concussion, and whether they were experiencing symptoms of PTSD and depression. 1,935 of those who took the first survey agreed to participate in further research. One year after they completed their first survey, the soldiers were mailed a second survey and 953 soldiers responded.

The first survey revealed that 9.2% of soldiers experienced symptoms of concussions and 30.2 percent of those soldiers had probable PTSD at the time of the survey. When they took the second survey, 22 percent of soldiers, twice as many, reported they had experienced concussions and of those, 30.4 percent got a diagnosis of probable PTSD. Reporting PTSD at the time of the first survey was strongly associated with having long-term health problems.
read more here
PTSD signals longer-term health problems

Soldier's send off followed by tragedy when fiance dies in accident

Woman Sends Off Fiance To Afghanistan, Dies In Crash

Woman, Daughter Killed In I-85 Wreck

Gordon Dill, WYFF News 4 Anchor/Reporter
POSTED: 8:06 am EST January 5, 2011


CHEROKEE COUNTY, S.C. -- Just hours after her seeing her fiancé off for a tour of during in Afghanistan, a woman and her daughter were killed in a single-vehicle wreck, Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said.

Fowler said 27-year-old Shawna Geraldine Zamora and her 9-year-old daughter Lillyana Zamora died in the crash on Interstate 85 just after 2 a.m. Tuesday. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

read more here
Woman Sends Off Fiance To Afghanistan

After cheating death, the real challenge of living begins

I supposed that I must be part of the two thirds considering the worst experiences to be life changing for the better. I am not as insane as that sounds. For me, each time changed me, made me more loving, living in the moment and above all, more forgiving. I value the people in my life more because I know that at any moment something can change all of it. Someone else may worry about it to the point where they stop living and enjoying the living but this is a story about what is possible after trauma and it is possible for anyone. Even people with PTSD can heal if not be cured and the next set of changes for them can be for the better.


After cheating death, the real challenge of living begins
How trauma can upend lives and, wondrously, transform some for the better


By Jennifer Wolff Perrine

When Julia Ferganchick learned storms had delayed her connecting flight from Dallas to Little Rock, Arkansas, she found a seat at an airport bar and ordered a Bloody Mary. The 30-year-old writing and rhetoric professor had just spent Memorial Day weekend on Coronado Island, off the coast of San Diego. She was eager to return home to start the summer semester at the University of Arkansas, where she had applied for tenure. Now she was irritated; the bad weather would push her arrival close to midnight.
Two hours and 12 minutes behind schedule, American Airlines flight 1420 took off. Once above the clouds, the flight was relatively smooth, but as it neared Little Rock, they flew into lightning and severe thunderstorms. “Quite a light show off the left-hand side of the aircraft,” the pilot announced. “I’m going to have to slightly overfly the airport in order to turn back around to land.” As the plane circled and dipped, it jolted in the wind. “I knew—all of us knew—that this wasn’t the feeling of a plane touching down,” Ferganchick says.
The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 slammed into the ground going 184 miles an hour, careening off the end of the runway into a flood plain, where it smashed into a steel light stanchion and split in two just four rows behind Ferganchick’s seat. Her seat belt kept her torso in place, but the impact ripped her blue clogs from her feet and wrenched her back so badly she herniated a disk in her spine. Still, she was alive. And as fire enveloped the cabin, she could see a way out, through a jagged gash in the plane’s ceiling. Ferganchick clawed her way over mangled seats and carry-on bags until she found herself in the open air in the middle of a hailstorm, standing barefoot atop a plane that seemed ready to explode.

Some never recover. But most do. In fact, nearly two thirds of trauma victims, even those who had extreme pain, say they ultimately benefited from the aftermath of their experience, according to the research of Richard G. Tedeschi, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Tedeschi and his colleagues have tracked outcomes for people who survived accidents and other traumas, such as life-threatening illnesses or the death of a child, and identified a phenomenon they call post-traumatic growth: Some survivors grow closer to people they love; others develop a sense of personal strength or appreciation for life. Still others deepen their spiritual beliefs or change their career and life goals. Women are more likely than men to report these benefits, and even those who are most impaired at first can find their way, as Ferganchick did, to feeling enriched by their ordeal.
What can these women teach the rest of us? As researchers learn more about what makes people resilient, they hope to develop therapies that could lessen negative responses and promote post-traumatic growth instead. “It’s not about getting over it‚ it’s about processing it in the most meaningful way,” Tedeschi says. “You still have your fears and grief and suffering, but you have made your suffering meaningful. If you can learn to do that, you can get through the bad stuff in life and find value in the struggle.”
read more here
After cheating death, the real challenge of living begins

Our New Puppy

Last year we had to put down our Golden Retriever Brandon. He almost made it to 14. Sunday we went to Pet Smart in Oviedo FL and adopted a 7 month old Lab-Border Collie mix, Mac from Save A Life. It's been a long time since we had a puppy and he is wearing me out but he is a very lovable BIG puppy so I am sure once we get past the hard part of getting him used to not eating my husband's slippers and thinking the dining room is his bathroom, we'll be all set! So meet Mac.

Police Chief forced out after Sanford police officer's son hit homeless man

Sanford police chief forced out the same day cop's son goes to jail, accused of attacking homeless man

By Rene Stutzman, Orlando Sentinel
5:13 p.m. EST, January 3, 2011


There's a new casualty in the case of a Sanford police officer's son who threw a sucker punch that floored a homeless man: retiring Police Chief Brian Tooley.

Sanford's City Commission voted Monday to dismiss Tooley.

He was scheduled to retire Jan. 31, but at a special meeting, commissioners voted to oust him immediately.

As of Tuesday, the department will be headed temporarily by former chief Steve Harriett, who currently works as chief deputy at the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.

Also Monday morning, Acting Chief Capt. Jerry Hargrett admitted at a public meeting that the officer's son, Justin Collison, 21, should have been arrested a month ago, the night he punched the homeless man. Sanford police questioned Collison, put him in the back of a patrol car but did not handcuff or arrest him.

read more here
Sanford police chief forced out

Central figure in Vietnam Memorial Wall body found in land fill

Dumped body was Vietnam War vet
Slay victim a defense consultant for US
BY CHAD LIVENGOOD • THE NEWS JOURNAL • JANUARY 3, 2011

Newark police have identified the body discovered on New Year's Eve at the Cherry Island Landfill in Wilmington as 66-year-old John P. Wheeler III of New Castle.

Wheeler, a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War who lived part time in Old New Castle, was a defense consultant in Washington, D.C., and had a long career in public service, working in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Wheeler was past chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which built the memorial on the National Mall in Washington.

His death has been ruled a homicide.

Newark police had a crime-scene van at Wheeler's home at 108 W. Third St. in New Castle on Sunday, with crime-scene tape roping off the prominent three-story brick home with black shutters.

Friends and neighbors were shocked to learn Wheeler had died.
read more here
Dumped body was Vietnam War vet

Army has learned nothing and redeployed soldier after suicide attempts

The Army declared him fit for duty and ordered him to Afghanistan after he had twice attempted suicide at Fort Campbell, Ky., and after he had been sent to a mental institution near the base, the home of the 101st.

Several Warnings, Then a Soldier’s Lonely Death

By JAMES RISEN
Published: January 1, 2011

WASHINGTON — A gentle snow fell on the funeral of Staff Sgt. David Senft at Arlington National Cemetery on Dec. 16, when his bitterly divided California family came together to say goodbye. His 5-year-old son received a flag from a grateful nation.

But that brief moment of peace could not hide the fact that for his family and friends and the soldiers who had served with him in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, too many unanswered questions remained about Sergeant Senft’s lonely death in a parked sport utility vehicle on an American air base in Afghanistan, and about whether the Army could have done more to prevent it.

Officially, the Army says only that Sergeant Senft, 27, a crew chief on a Black Hawk helicopter in the 101st Airborne Division’s aviation brigade, was killed as a result of “injuries sustained in a noncombat related incident” at Kandahar Air Base on Nov. 15. No specific cause of death has been announced. Army officials say three separate inquiries into the death are under way.

But his father, also named David Senft, an electrician from Grass Valley, Calif., who had worked in Afghanistan for a military contractor, is convinced that his son committed suicide, as are many of his friends and family members and the soldiers who served with him.

The evidence appears overwhelming. An investigator for the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division, which has been looking into the death, has told Sergeant Senft’s father by e-mail that his son was found dead with a single bullet hole in his head, a stolen M-4 automatic weapon in his hands and his body slumped over in the S.U.V., which was parked outside the air base’s ammunition supply point. By his side was his cellphone, displaying a text message with no time or date stamp, saying only, “I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry.” (Mr. Senft shared the e-mails from the C.I.D. investigator with The New York Times.)

With Sergeant Senft, the warning signs were blaring.
read more here
Then a Soldier’s Lonely Death

Hero “neighbor” lives in his car

Hero “neighbor” lives in his car
January 2, 2011 posted by Chaplain Kathie
This headline sounds like a good story as it is but it only gets better from here. One of the neighbors, it turns out, is no longer living in the building. He’s living in his car.

Neighbors rescue man from blaze
An evicted former tenant is among those who help pull the resident to safety
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Dec 30, 2010
Infamous as a drug haven, Kalihi’s Akepo Lane can now also be called the home of a hero.
An elderly man was rescued from his burning first-floor studio apartment at Akepo and North King Street by neighbors late Tuesday night.
The man who stepped into the apartment to pull out the victim was Gerald Arthur, 61, who had lived in the building himself until he was evicted about three months ago.
“I lost my job, my old lady lost hers, we couldn’t pay the rent,” Arthur said. He moved into his car, “the Honda Inn,” parked a few hundred yards down Akepo. His girlfriend, who he said is suffering from cancer, is now staying with family in Ewa Beach.
read more here
Hero “neighbor” lives in his car

Navy Officer dead after jumping to his death

Officer Jumps to Death After Cocaine Arrest
December 27, 2010
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
MANILA -- A 35-year-old US Navy officer jumped to his death on Monday in the Philippines after he was arrested at an airport for allegedly carrying cocaine, police said.
Lieutenant Commander Scintar Mejia was about to board a flight to Los Angeles from Manila on Sunday when a pack of cocaine was found in his luggage.
read more here
Officer Jumps to Death After Cocaine Arrest