De-Tour Combat PTSD Survivors Guide
Kathie Costos
October 1, 2013
Well Suicide Awareness Month is over and so far we have not learned much. At least nothing that is good or hopeful. We do know the answers are out there, just as they have been for the last 40 years but with the way most reporters act, it is almost as if nothing has been learned.
First you need to know that it is not your fault. PTSD goes all the way back to the Old Testament and if you ever read the Psalms of David, you'd see it in his words and his heartbreak. That depth of pain few find the words to express come pouring out of him. It isn't new.
There was a news report released today about WWI soldiers in what was most likely PTSD cases.
Call to rethink cases of French WWI 'coward' soldiers
The report said many soldiers must have had "a moment of weakness or despair"
A panel of French historians has called for the records of soldiers who were shot for cowardice and desertion in World War I to be rewritten.
The historians' report, commissioned by the government, called for the cases of 650 men shot during the war to be reconsidered.
Many of them are "worthy and deserving of moral, civic and public-spirited rehabilitation", the report says.
Veterans' minister Kader Arif has promised to consider the issue.
The report was sent to him ahead of next year's commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of the war.
It concludes that most of those shot "were not cowards: they were good soldiers, who had done their duty and did not deserve death. The shame which came with their convictions deserves to be lifted."
President Francois Hollande has said that marking the anniversary will be "a major event" in his term of office.
read more here
One more example of how terrible it was back then along with the simple fact, we haven't come very far from those dark days after all the research and funding has been spent. We may not shoot PTSD soldiers anymore but we let the DOD discharge over 30,000 of them under personality disorders.
We need to get something out of the way. I'd rather see you angry than believe any of this is your fault. It isn't.
The Army has just released the suicide numbers for August. We don't know how many committed suicide in September yet but as of August this year has brought the end to 106 Soldiers and 66 Army National Guardsmen and 36 Army Reservists. For 2012 there were 185 Soldiers, 93 National Guardsmen and 47 Army Reservists.
When you consider the troops left Iraq in 2011, the deaths since then are even more telling of the fact they have been nothing more than lab rats for a research project passed off as resilience training. Comprehensive Solider Fitness was based on a research project. The following is from The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War.
David Rudd was scheduled to work with University of Texas Health Sciences Center, the Warrior Resiliency Program at Brook Army Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania. It was supposed to be “clinical trails” to see if they could reduce the number of suicides because as the article quoted Rudd, “For the first time in history this January, more soldiers died by suicide than in combat” but since we just went through the deadliest year five years after the fact, it should give you a better perspective on what is actually going on here.
The program was designed for school age children and the creator didn’t think there was a single reason it wouldn’t work on the military. Experts started to line up and explain that to put a “program” into this kind of setting without being tested were not justified to justify the Army program.
Bryant Welch was a bit harsher but closer to telling the truth about what many experts had confirmed in a nicer way.
“They had schoolchildren, each night, write down three positive things about themselves. And then they noticed in a follow-up study that those children felt better about themselves. But to go from that to saying that we can have a soldier in a foxhole who says positive things about himself and follows the precepts of this program, is going to watch his buddy blown to smithereens and spend four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and come out feeling better about himself, there is a shallowness to the assessment that, from my vantage point, I find abhorrent.”
DR. BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, Boston University School of Medicine: “It doesn't make sense from a neuroscience point of view, because -- and what all of our research shows is that trauma affects cognition. And the very piece that you need to think clearly and to be optimistic gets severely impacted by being traumatized. So, traumatized people cannot think straight because their brains are sort of locked in horror and terror.”
“Recently, the Army released an evaluation of the program, which said, in part, "There is now sound scientific evidence that Comprehensive Soldier Fitness improves the resilience and psychological health of soldiers.” But there is disagreement over that statement in psychiatric circles from doctors and Ph.D.s who say the evaluation is flawed and doesn't prove anything. Meanwhile, the Air Force is in the process of implementing its own version of the program.” (Army Program Aims to Build Troops Mental resilience to Stress, PBS News Hour, Judy Woodruff, December 14, 2011)
“The Army and the National Institute of Mental Health have begun a five-year, $50 million research program into the factors behind soldier suicides and how to prevent them, Army Secretary Pete Geren.”
(American Forces Press Service J.D. Leipold October 30, 2008)
It is important to mention what has been going on behind the backs of the American people, especially military families because they thought the military has actually trying to take care of the men and women risking their lives for this country. They weren't.
While I heard the horror stories from veterans dealing with suffering after thinking PTSD was their fault and they tried to kill themselves because of how horrible it made them feel, they pointed to this training above anything else giving them a false sense of their own courage and mental fitness.
While Welch said the program was "abhorrent" what ended up being said last week by Army Chief Ray Odierno actually confirmed what the soldiers and veterans were feeling about the way they were treated in an interview he gave to David Wood of the Huffington Post.
First he blamed the soldiers,
"Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations."After pushing this programming since 2009 he confirmed what he really thinks so he has no problem at all with what soldiers end up believing.
Then he blamed the families.
"But it also has to do with where you come from. I came from a loving family, one who gave lots of positive reinforcement, who built up psychologically who I was, who I am, what I might want to do. It built confidence in myself, and I believe that enables you to better deal with stress. It enables you to cope more easily than maybe some other people."
So when you read about all these deaths, consider this. In 2009 after reading about this program and their attempts to brainwash the troops with a research project, I offered this warning.
"If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them."I was right and so were the troops. They believed the DOD was blaming them and it turns out, they were.
We do know how to treat PTSD but it doesn't cost billions a year. As a matter of fact, it is free to anyone wanting to heal and has been done for almost 30 years. If you want to be cured, you can't be but you can be healed. You can live a better quality of life and heal where PTSD lives. In your soul. Contact Point Man International Ministries or me and lets get the stuff the DOD told you out of your head. It doesn't belong there.
As for not being tough enough, put it this way. Ask yourself how you managed to survived combat if you were not tough enough? Bet you pushed all that pain you were carrying aside because your buddies lives depended on you and you didn't allow yourself to feel it until you got back home. How tough it that? How much courage did that take? How much love did that require of you? See anything evil in there anymore? Good. Those thoughts don't belong in you anymore than what the General said.
