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Jason Haines was in survival mode in 2005 when a car pulled out in front of him on a side street in New Britain. In his mind, Haines was still patrolling the streets of Baghdad in a Humvee with the U.S. Army, firing his .50-caliber shotgun at enemy insurgents who set off roadside bombs. Haines beeped his car's horn, but the driver wouldn't speed up. In a rage, Haines began tailgating the car - which, he soon discovered, was an unmarked police cruiser. Haines wasn't arrested that day, but he came close to joining hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans nationwide whose untreated war-related emotional and mental afflictions - usually termed post-traumatic stress disorder - lead to minor criminal arrests.

War-related trauma doesn't just plague our veterans - it also haunts our military children, too. Is there a technique for weakening traumatic memories? The fact is, our troops are also dying at home. Add Nevada to the list of states considering special courts for our veterans suffering PTSD - as war has injured them, not that criminality has overcome them. Add Texas to the list of states looking to boost the mental health of military families. Because the most pervasive combat injury is invisible.

U.S. military veterans from three decades pass through Judge Sarah Smith's courtroom here, reporting on their battles with drug addiction, alcoholism and despair. Those who find jobs and stabilize their lives are rewarded with candy bars and applause. Those who backslide go to jail. Smith radiates an air of maternal care from the bench. As the veterans come before her, she softly asks: "How are you doing? Do you need anything?" But if a veteran fails random drug tests, she doesn't flinch at invoking his sentence. Her court is part of a new approach in the criminal justice system: specialized courts for veterans who have broken the law. Judges have been spurred by a wave of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, battling post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries and stumbling into trouble with the law. But advocates of the courts say they also address a problem as old as combat itself. "Some families give their sons or daughters to service for their country, and they're perfectly good kids. And they come back from war and just disintegrate before our eyes," said Robert Alvarez, a counselor at Fort Carson in Colorado who is advocating for a veterans court in the surrounding county. "Is it fair to put these kids in prison because they served and got injured?"

A lot of soldiers say war is hell, and then, they won't say anything else. That wasn't good enough for one west suburban playwright. She's created a new collaboration called the Vet Art Project. It brings veterans and artists together to make art out of war. The group's vision is a big one: it aims to be a national model for how veterans can tell their stories and get the public to listen.

A disabled Gulf War veteran who left Norman earlier this month on a hand-propelled bicycle headed for Washington D.C. to honor fallen soldiers has died. Kevin Baker suffered a seizure Friday morning in his sleep at the home of some friends in Lake Charles, La., said Norman resident Diane Zellner. He died in an ambulance en route to a local hospital, Zellner said she was told. Baker, a 39-year-old Navy veteran, had a history of seizures, stemming from a traumatic brain injury, she said. He also had been diagnosed with lymphoma.

The men crewed .50-calibers through Iraq neighborhoods, survived roadside bomb blasts, attended memorial services for buddies. Now they were being asked to cut cattle, on foot, in front of one another and a handful of real cowboys. It's safe to say there wasn't exactly a rush to start. But within a few minutes, the 15 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan-almost all of them self-described city boys whose experience with livestock extends only to the dinner plate-had learned a thing or two about patience and teamwork, and for a few minutes of laughter and sweat, they could forget about the war that still haunts them. "It's like we're back in the field now," said Jeremy Williams, a 26-year-old who lives in a small town near Huntsville and served three tours in Iraq with the Marines. The veterans came from throughout the United States to spend four days at the stylish Wildcatter Ranch, invited by the Wounded Warrior Project and the owners of the ranch to help restore their spirits. Some of the men have physical injuries, but each of them is struggling to deal with combat stress and their return to civilian society. The men went canoeing and rode horses. They got massages and shot skeet. They stayed in luxurious rooms and they visited an elementary school, where the children gave them Graham Steers ball caps. "I have never seen anything like this before," said Harvey Stubbs Jr., 32, a Chicago-area native who was medically retired from the Army because of his injuries. "The outpouring of love ... has been amazing. A lot of people give lip service to supporting the troops, but these people have opened their hearts to us in ways I can't believe."

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Chris Tucker received a medical discharge from the Army last year and he now is Officer Chris Tucker of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department. "You still get to serve your community and your country in other ways," he said. At age 26, he is a veteran of three combat tours. The patrol skills he learned on the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah and Sadr City come in handy as he drives his police cruiser around the neighborhoods of his Savannah precinct.

To date, neither a trailer nor even a still photo from the film, which tells the story of a disabled soldier who uses technology to inhabit an alien body on a distant planet, has been made public by Mr. Cameron or Fox. Dr. Mario Mendez, a behavioral neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, said it is entirely possible that Mr. Cameron's work could tap brain systems that are undisturbed by conventional 2-D movies. One, he said, is a kind of inner global-positioning system that orients a person to the surrounding world. "Three-D demonstrably creates a space that triggers this GPS; it's really very stimulating," Dr. Mendez said. He added that he had used virtual-reality therapy in working with soldiers at the Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles - and found himself jarred by his experience with a "virtual Iraq" simulation. "It was with me for days and days," Dr. Mendez said.

Legislation introduced recently by Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, would lift the burden of proof from veterans who served in combat zones and have a diagnosis of PTSD, allowing them to receive disability benefits without having to prove that a specific incident caused the disorder. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone, more than 100,000 veterans have been found to have PTSD, but only 42,000 have been granted service-connected disability for their condition, said Hall, chairman of the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs. The disability claims backlog at the VA tops 800,000. A large percentage of that number are Vietnam veterans seeking compensation for PTSD, Hall said.

In 2004, the Seattle Times published the first photograph of the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq being shipped back to the United States. Tami Silicio, the woman who took that photograph, was a military contractor working at the airport in Kuwait where the coffins were loaded onto planes to be flown back to the U.S. Ms. Silicio had taken the photograph with no thought of publishing it, even though she later said she was unaware that there was any ban on taking photographs of the coffins.

Curtis Warren

"In the shimmering fantasy realm of the hit movie "Avatar," a paraplegic Marine leaves his wheelchair behind and finds his feet in a new virtual world thanks to "the link," a sophisticated chamber that connects his brain to a surrogate alien, via computer. This type of interface is a classic tool in gee-whiz science fiction. But the hard science behind it is even more wow-inducing. Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Work is under way on devices that may eventually let you communicate with friends telepathically, give you superhuman hearing and vision or even let you download data directly into your brain, a la "The Matrix." Researchers are practically giddy over the prospects. "We don't know what the limits are yet," says Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech University's BrainLab. "

Marty Gonzalez - Once Carter learned Gonzalez's story, he agreed that the young man with the heroic record and no previous trouble with the law deserved a second chance. Gonzalez certainly had a bit of luck, or fate, on his side. Not only was Windham a veteran, but so was the judge. Carter is a former Army captain and his father was a career Army officer who served in Vietnam. Carter, 49, a Republican appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2003, has made it his personal mission to look out for veterans. About two years ago, he worked with Harris County's pre-trial services office to flag veterans when they're arrested and notify the VA hospital. In March alone, the system logged 350 arrests of veterans, some of whom may have been arrested more than once.

Mort Reichek - New Jersey - Age:83 ***would be great to interview*** What I do: Retired (former senior editor of Business Week) Me at home: Married, grandchildren My blog's beginnings: Began publishing when I achieved octogenarian status in 2005 Why I blog: As a retired, physically aching 83-year-old man, who once relished playing tennis, blogging has provided a stimulating alternative. Focus: Current events and memoirs as a one-time journalist, World War II army veteran, and first-generation American raised in an immigrant family in the Bronx. On the blog's impact: I published a piece about a fellow journalist who had been a Soviet air force colonel before defecting to this U.S. This produced responses from two of his children who were very young when he died. They were naturally eager to learn more about their deceased father. Above details from http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/who-are-the-bloggers/

Army Spc. Thomas Woolly, a Fort Carson soldier arrested Sunday in the shooting death of a 19-year-old woman, served two tours in Iraq with an infantry unit that suffered heavy casualties in combat and has been responsible for violent crime since returning home\nWoolly, 24, was a heavy machine gunner in the 4th Infantry Division's 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment.\n\nMembers of the 500-soldier unit, nicknamed the Lethal Warriors, have been involved in stabbings, beatings, brawls, domestic violence, shootings, at least two attempted murders and four homicides in Colorado Springs. Another soldier who served with the unit in Iraq has been accused of murder in California.\n\nThe unit has also been plagued by drug abuse and suicide. The most recent suicide was Spc. Leland "Cal" Tyrone, 23, who killed himself in a barracks at Fort Carson on Dec. 20, 2008.\n\nWoolly, who was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in the death of Lisa Baumann, is only the latest soldier from the unit to be involved in violence after returning from Iraq:\n\n * Louis Bressler, Bruce Bastien and Kenneth Eastridge were charged with killing two soldiers and stabbing a woman on her way to work in the fall of 2007.\n * Jomar Vives and Rudolfo Torres were charged in random drive-by shootings of three people on Colorado Springs streets in May and June of 2008. Two died.\n * John Needham is charged with beating a woman to death in San Clemente, Calif., in September 2008.

"* In July 2009, Army Sgt. Ryan Schlack of Oshkosh, Wis., died after being shot while trying to break up a fight at Fort Hood. Spc. Armando Ray Baca has been charged with first-degree murder. * In September 2008, Spc. Jody Michael Wirawan of Eagle River, Ala., who was scheduled to soon be discharged, fatally shot 1st Lt. Robert Bartlett Fletcher of Jensen Beach, Fla. When Killeen police arrived, Wirawan killed himself, Fort Hood officials said at the time. * In July 2007, the wife of a Fort Hood soldier was killed as part of a murder-for-hire plot. Hidi Gower was shot to death outside a Veterans of Foreign Wars pool hall in Kempner, 18 miles from Killeen. Army Sgt. 1st Class Donald Dean Gower was sentenced to life in prison without parole in August 2008. * In March 2005, Fort Hood Army Sgt. Jason Cline flew from Texas to California and plotted with Sharonmarie Ball to kill her husband, Navy Petty Officer John Ball, who was stabbed in the chin and right hand but survived, according to news reports on KWTX-TV in Waco. Cline was sentenced to 12 years in prison in February 2006, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. * In April 2005, former Army medic John D. Mayer Jr. of Fort Hood pleaded guilty in federal court in Waco to charges in the death of his 2-year-old stepdaughter. Mayer had been watching the child while the girl's mother was deployed to Iraq, according to news reports on KWTX. * In July 2004, Fort Hood officials identified the bodies of Fort Hood soldiers Sgt. Erin Elizabeth Edwards and her estranged husband, Sgt. William McKinley Edwards. Police investigated the shooting deaths as a murder-suicide, the Texas A&M University student newspaper, The Battalion, reported in 2004. "

First Lady Michelle Obama paid a visit to Soldiers and family members at Fort Bragg in what was her first tour outside the White House. During her visit, Obama said she was inspired by the spirit of the Fort Bragg community and said she was fully committed to improving support to all military families.

What exactly is a "mental disorder"? For that matter, what criteria should determine whether any condition is a "disease" or a "disorder"? Is "disease" something like an oak tree-a physical object you can bump into or put your arms around? Or are terms like "disease" and "disorder" merely abstract, value-laden constructs, akin to "injustice" and "immorality"? Are categories of disease and disorder fundamentally different in psychiatry than in other medical specialties? And-by the way-how do the terms "disease," "disorder," "syndrome," "malady," "sickness," and "illness" differ? Anyone who believes there are easy or certain answers to these questions is either in touch with the Divine Mind, or out of touch with reality. To appreciate the complexity and ambiguity in this conceptual arena, consider this quote from the venerable Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry: "The term 'mental illness' is probably best used for those disorders that are intuitively most like bodily illness (or disease) and, yet, mental rather than bodily. This of course implies everything that is built into the mind-brain problem!"1(p11) In a single sentence, we are already grappling with the terms "illness," "disorder," and "disease," not to mention Cartesian psychology! And yet-daunting though these issues are-they are central to the practical task now before the DSM-V committees: figuring out what conditions ought to be included as psychiatric disorders.