Group items tagged

MENTALLY UNFIT, STILL FIGHTING Gaps In Mental Health Screenings Still Haunt Military Little Progress In Expanding Screenings By MATTHEW KAUFFMAN | The Hartford Courant May 12, 2009 Chad Barrett had attempted suicide and was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder by the time his unit prepared for a third combat tour in Iraq. A psychiatrist had recommended the staff sergeant be separated from the military for his own good, but Barrett wanted to stay with his Army colleagues. And when it came time for deployment, Army commanders were happy to oblige. Barrett, who had spent a dozen years in the Army, shipped out in December 2007 with prescription bottles of Klonopin for anxiety, Pamelor for depression and migraines, and Lunesta and Ambien for sleep problems. But the drugs did not control his despair and mood swings. And less than two months after arriving in Iraq, Barrett popped open some of the bottles and committed suicide by overdose. He was 35.

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.

Worried about rising suicide rates and thousands of soldiers with posttraumatic stress disorder, the Army is launching the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program to help 1.1 million soldiers and their families cope more effectively with the stress of military life and combat.

Also check out PTSD Combat, a site from citizen journalist Ilona Meagher which deals with issues that face returning veterans. She also provides a list of resources under her "Where to Turn" section.

Best Blogs and Forums - PTSD Combat\nAuthor Ilona Meagher provides a great forum for veterans returning home."

"Ilona became a devoted advocate for military personnel and their families. She is the editor of the online jounral PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within and earliest force behind the ePluribus Media PTSD Timeline, a comprehensive database of press- and independently-reported OEF/OIF PTSD-related incidents. She has received national recognition for her work, everywhere from FOX News to The New York Times to the US House Veterans' Affairs Committee. Her blog is crucial for anyone who has a professional interest in helping soldiers and families, and an excellent resource for news about veterans' issues."

"Community members -- professionals and laymen of every skill set and sort -- are finding ways to help veterans process their experiences of combat while supporting their move from military life back into the civilian stream. Educational institutions, in particular, are finding interesting ways of engaging on the issue and creating spaces for these necessary reflections. "

"I've written about this before on other blogs. Ilona Meagher's PTSD Combat blog and her subsequent book, 'Moving a Nation to Care', were among the notable earlier bloggers to take on PTSD and the suicide rate in our military. "

Deploying to Afghanistan, Craig Mullaney writes, "was a slow immersion, like Dante's descent into the Inferno."\n\nOne moment, Mullaney and his Army Ranger platoon waited in an airport terminal at Fort Drum, N.Y. Televisions were tuned to Major League Baseball games. The soldiers ate what one jokingly called their "Last Supper" - rubbery T-bone steaks with Mexican rice.\n\nThey received an intelligence briefing warning them of the dangers awaiting them in Afghanistan, including ticks, cobras and camel spiders that can run more than 30 mph. Then they marched onto a cavernous cargo plane. Two flights and 7,000 miles later, Mullaney and his men stepped out into the dusty, baking heat of an airbase in Kandahar. It was 128 degrees, in the shade.\n\nIn that summer of 2003, Afghanistan had fallen off the front page. Attention had shifted to the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Taliban regime that had been toppled by the U.S. invasion following 9/11 was resurgent. Operating from across the border in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding, Taliban and al-Qaida fighters harassed local villages and Western occupiers.\n\nMullaney's Army Ranger training did not cover desert warfare, which had been dropped in 1995. Studying modern military history at West Point, he took just one paragraph of notes on Afghanistan, involving the Russians' failed experience there in the 1980s.

tiny http://tinyurl.com/6achspv http://tinyurl.com/5u4lcg9 http://tinyurl.com/6dvdsas http://tinyurl.com/6bf9xpv http://tinyurl.com/3t47oyz http://tinyurl.com/3t944jt http://tinyurl.com/42cub6w http://tinyurl.com/6cey9t2 http://tinyurl.com/64ok3gx

The lethal ambush of a convoy carrying female U.S. troops in Fallujah underscored the difficulties of keeping women away from the front lines in a war where such boundaries are far from clear-cut. The suicide car bomb and ensuing small-arms fire killed at least two Marines, and four others were missing and presumed dead. At least one woman was killed and 11 of 13 wounded were female.

Women make up about 20 percent of today's military. Information and resources concerning women in the United States military, both in the past and the present.

John Pace