Most PTSD Treatments Not Proven Effective
Scientists Find That One Therapy Is Shown to Help Disorder; Evidence of Drugs' Benefits Inconclusive

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 19, 2007; A03

The majority of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder that are used to treat hundreds of thousands of veterans lack rigorous scientific evidence that they are effective, according to a report issued yesterday by a panel of the federal government's top scientists.

The report by the National Academies emphasized that the therapies might not be useless. Rather, it said, the evidence is weak when it comes to drawing any kind of conclusion about most of them. The findings of the panel, widely considered the nation's most influential scientific arbiter, will have far-reaching consequences. The report comes when awareness of PTSD has risen as a result of its incidence among veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"If a treatment that is not shown to be efficacious is nevertheless delivered to veterans, and if the treatment is relatively inert, even if it does not harm the veterans, it may demoralize the veteran," said Richard McNally, a Harvard University psychologist and PTSD expert. "Providing treatments that do not have a good basis in evidence can result in people not improving, therefore getting demoralized and therefore not seeking treatment that can actually help them."

The report did find strong evidence that one particular treatment known as exposure therapy was effective; the technique asks patients to repeatedly reimagine traumatic events as a way to make the events lose their potency. In a statement, the Department of Veterans Affairs said it was ramping up its ability to provide this therapy to patients.

But the panel failed to find evidence that any medication was effective in treating PTSD -- this included the drugs Paxil and Zoloft, which have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat the disorder.

"A very high percentage of people who have been diagnosed with PTSD are on medications," said Larry Scott, the founder of the advocacy group VA Watchdog dot Org, which serves as an information clearinghouse for veterans.

Most of the evidence supporting the use of medications and psychological therapies for PTSD has been assembled by pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs or by researchers with conflicts of interest in the outcome of the studies, and lack independent and rigorous proof, the report said.

The researchers also found there was insufficient evidence to support the use of a range of psychotherapies known as cognitive restructuring, coping skills training, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, and group therapy. Cognitive restructuring is a technique that trains patients to reinterpret a traumatic event from a different perspective. In the eye-movement therapy, patients are asked to think about traumatic memories while tracking quick movements of a therapist's finger.

A host of complicated political, economic and medical issues swirl around the issue of PTSD in a time of war. Many veterans advocacy groups are convinced that the government is trying to limit the spiraling costs of treating the flashbacks, anxieties and co-occurring psychiatric disorders that mark PTSD.

"I see the IOM report and the VA's acceptance as an indication that the agency will continue to move away from pharmaceutical-based therapies and group therapy for veterans with PTSD and continue to push their agenda of cognitive processing therapy as a 'cure,' as stated by former VA Secretary Jim Nicholson," Scott added. "If VA declares a veteran 'cured' of PTSD, this will mean the reduction or loss of disability compensation."

In the new report, scientists said evidence for many issues besides treatment efficacy was also limited. It is not clear, for example, how early treatment for PTSD should be started or how long such therapy should be offered.

"We found much of the research on PTSD to have major limitations when judged against contemporary standards for conducting trials," said Alfred O. Berg, professor of family medicine at the University of Washington, who chaired the panel that conducted a comprehensive review of the evidence for PTSD treatments.

Part of the problem, Berg said, is that studies for PTSD have been conducted over a long period of time. The modern standards the panel sought to apply simply happened to be much higher.

"Our report certainly must raise questions about treatments and whether they are effective or not, but our assessment of inadequate evidence does not mean the treatments are ineffective," Berg said. "It could mean some of the therapies are more effective than the exposure therapy, where we did find proof of effectiveness" but only that the other therapies lack evidence to show that this is the case.

Berg and another author, David Matchar, a professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, said a sustained national effort for high-quality research on PTSD, with a special focus on veterans and minority groups, was needed.

Edna B. Foa, a professor of clinical psychology in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the pioneers in developing exposure therapy as a PTSD treatment said the technique was based on the insight that many victims of trauma do all they can to avoid being reminded of traumatic events.

A rape victim might avoid going out in the evenings, while someone injured in an auto accident might avoid getting into any kind of vehicle. Soldiers might avoid movies or TV shows about war.

Two things happen in this process, Foa said. Patients come to replace actual recollections of trauma with other perceptions -- taking on blame and guilt, for example, for being afraid. Second, by avoiding situations, patients can fail to see that much of life is not dangerous -- the movie is only fiction.

Foa said she has patients recount traumatic events aloud with their eyes closed. She records the patient, and then has the patient listen to the tape repeatedly.

"People don't recover because they avoid thinking about the trauma," Foa said. "Every time the trauma comes to the mind, they push it away. They don't allow themselves to process and digest the memory, so it keeps on haunting them with nightmares, flashbacks."

Foa also has patients make lists of situations that trigger anxiety and encourages them to deliberately expose themselves to the least-frightening situation. As people realize that many situations are harmless, Foa said they replace images of self-doubt and helplessness with a more healthy outlook.

VA Official: More Than 60,000 Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Diagnosed With PTSD by Jason Leopold Page 1 of 2 page(s) http://www.opednews.com

Jonathan Schulze was awarded two Purple Hearts in 2005 after a lengthy tour of duty in Iraq.

But the Marine veteran couldn't escape the war inside his head.

Drugs and alcohol temporarily numbed his pain. Yet the guilt he carried around with him having been one of a handful of soldiers in his unit to survive combat was impossible to run away from.

Schulze was suicidal.

On January 11, 2007, he sought treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder. His parents drove him to the VA hospital in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Schulze told the VA staff that he "felt suicidal," his mother, Marianne Schulze, recalled.

The hospital didn't admit him. Instead, he was told to call back the following day. He did. He was given a number: 26. The VA staff told him he'd have to wait at least two weeks to be admitted. Apparently, there were other veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were also suffering from PTSD. It's unknown whether they met the same fate.

On January 16, 2007, Schulze placed a framed photograph of his one-year-old daughter beside him. He wrapped an electrical cord around his neck and hung himself in the basement of a friend's house in New Prague, Minnesota. He was 25 years old.

This week, Schulze's story is being retold in a federal courthouse in San Francisco as evidence of the widespread, systemic failures by the Veterans Administration to treat tens of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who suffer PTSD.

Attorneys for two veterans advocacy organizations are hoping to convince a judge that a lawsuit filed against the Department for Veterans Affairs last year and several government officials associated with the VA should receive class-action status. In their lawsuit, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, which represent about 12,000 veterans combined, claim Iraq and Afghanistan war vets are dying while waiting for the VA to treat PTSD and work through a backlog of at least half-a-million disability claims. The groups want Conti to issue a preliminary injunction to force the VA to immediately treat veterans who show signs of PTSD and are at risk of suicide.

PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that can develop in a person who witnesses, or is confronted with, a traumatic event. PTSD is said to be the most prevalent mental disorder arising from combat. According to the lawsuit, “more than any previous war, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to produce a high percentage of troops suffering from PTSD,” due to the widespread use of improvised explosive devises, multiple rotations, the ambiguity of fighting combatants dressed as civilians, and the use of National Guard members and Reservists.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs' attorneys allege that numerous VA practices stemming from a 1998 law violate the constitutional and statutory rights of veterans suffering from PTSD by denying veterans mandated medical care.

"Because of those failures, hundreds of thousands of men and women who have suffered grievous injuries fighting in the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are being abandoned," states the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for Northern California. "Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families, and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system and other social services in our communities."

VA attorneys had argued in court papers filed last month that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were not "entitled" to the five-years of free healthcare upon their return from combat as mandated by Congress in the "Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act." Rather, the VA argued, medical treatment for the war veterans was discretionary based on the level of funding available in the VA's budget.

On Tuesday, the second day of testimony before U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, Dr. Gerald Cross, the undersecretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration, made a startling admission during cross-examination by the plaintiffs' attorneys that would appear to contradict the agency's position.

Cross admitted that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were not only entitled to free healthcare, "there is no co-pay," he said.

Perhaps most startling, however, was testimony by Cross stating that of the 300,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars treated at VA hospitals, more than half were diagnosed with a serious mental condition, 68,000 of which were cases of PTSD.

His testimony marks the first time a Bush administration official has provided detailed information about the psychological impact of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on combat veterans. Cross testified that five years after the invasion of Iraq, the VA has still not completed a study on the link between suicides and PTSD among combat veterans. However, he said such a study is currently in the works and may be published soon.

Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, Paul Sullivan, said more than 5,000 veterans commit suicide per year.

Dr. Arthur Blank, a renowned expert on PTSD who has worked closely with the VA, testified that about 30 percent of Iraqi war veterans are likely suffering from PTSD due to multiple deployments and the VA is not doing enough to care for them.

"I think it's because of multiple deployments, which means one is exposed to trauma over and over again," Blank testified.

Last week, Daniel Cooper, the VA's undersecretary for benefits, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, abruptly resigned. Sullivan's group had called for Cooper's resignation two weeks ago in light of the huge backlog of benefits claims that have yet to be processed by Cooper's department.

Last August, the Pentagon's Inspector General revealed that Cooper used his government position to promote the work of a fundamentalist Christian organization, a violation of the laws governing the separation of church and state.

Cooper, and several high-ranking military officials, appeared in a promotional video for Christian Embassy, an evangelical organization that evangelizes members of the military and politicians in Washington, DC via daily Bible studies and outreach events. The group holds prayer breakfasts on Wednesdays in the Pentagons executive dining room, according to the organization's web site.

Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose organization called for a federal investigation after government officials were discovered to have participated in the Christian Embassy promotional video, said Cooper is a "disgrace."

"The D in Dan stands for disgrace," Weinstein said in an interview. "He's a disgrace to the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy, the US armed forces, the Veterans Administration, and the United States of America. Why? Because we have him on videotape making it very clear to the world that the most important part of his job was to push the fundamentalist agenda of the Christian right over his specified duties at the Veterans Administration. Dan Cooper has used the United States Constitution as his personal roll of toilet paper. I wish him as much good fortune as he has provided to our honorable and noble veterans; none."

*************

Jason Leopold is senior editor and reporter for Truthout. He received a Project Censored award in 2007 for his story on Halliburton's work in Iran. Jason is the author of the National Bestseller, News Junkie, a memoir. He is the editor of BackgroundBriefing.org, a new online political magazine scheduled to launch in March. He can be reached at jasonleopold [at] hotmail.com.

see: www.iava.org!!

send them your dimes, your nickels, your quarters and one thousand bucks! They do more than all the rest put together on this AND homelessness among veterans.

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/showtags.php?tid=5025&tag=/Veterans+Mental+Healthhttp://ladybroadoak.blogspot.com/search?q=ptsd

http://ladybroadoak.blogspot.com/search?q=ptsd

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_virginia_070620_about_bloody_time_2c_b.htm
My article about what it took to move the VA on this issue which ran in OpEd News

I did a whole series on PTSD and panic disorder, but my search engine doesn't bring them up????

About bloody time ... PTSD and the DOD

I have been on at least a dozen sites posting long and hard about this.  I don't know where the psychiatric profession has been on this; they weren't on summer vacation the WHOLE time.



Anyone who knows about, works with or is in a relationship with a PTSD could tell you .. nearly a half of PTSD sufferers who do not get help are going to really make bonafide suicide attempts.  It is a condition that is too bloody much.  In these times of mass genocide, I cannot even begin to imagine what blows through the soul of today's veteran.



If you have read some the 1000+ posts on this blog, you would know that I suffer from PTSD.  It is no picnic.  I have gradually gotten better, but losing my home and all my belongings last year set it off again - this time with agoraphobia complexing the already compounded PTSD.  This is similar to a vet who is suffering the disorder and then finds himself homeless in the US after a nice, loooooooooong stint at war.   A war that isn't at home!  A war that is illegal!  A war that shouldn't have started in the first place!   



I know alot about PTSD, in fact, I write a blog piece about it every week, so it is always fresh mind.  I am an "expert" patient, so to speak. I've read all the literature my hands would allow me to read; sometimes they get so overwhelming I cannot handle reading them at all.



The entire children of alcoholics grew out of the Veteran Administration's inability to cope with the constant need of Vietnam vets.  Thus, group therapy began to be studied and shown to be actually MORE effective.  However, the groups need to be monitored.  The suicide threats need to be taken seriously.  Perhaps this is another reason the VA chose to reject help seekers. It simply does not want to hear the damage that is being done.



The gross neglect and incompetance that has been shown when processing claims is a topic for a whole other blog item. For shame!  For shame!



These men and women, although probably sadly mislead when recruited, should not have to suffer endlessly due to "congressional oversight".  Or because the past Secretary of Defense was too busy playing with war toys.  As for BUSH, the commander in chief, who is so busy PLAYING Commander in Chief, this mistreatment of "his" troops is paralyzingly appaling and insensitive.



The article below mentions many many side topics -- including the questionable and baffling response of commanders to the mental (and emotional) problems of these troops - both before and after service.   On the websites I have insisted that more literature concerning PTSD be made available to EVERYONE.



The poor publicity that the VA has had as a result of the Jeans Cruz case, has certainly started "motivating" some action.  He had given up his appeals case.  And with good reaon: he was feel more hopeless and helpless than ever.  These two "feelings" are exactly what sets PTSD apart from other "mental" "illnesses".  It is a wonder Jeans Cruz was still alive.  They are bloody lucky they've seen fit to keep him alive.



New intiatives go into effect on August 1, requiring those who ask for mental health or substance abuse care to be evaluated within 24 hours.  Hell, if a person needs detox they need it when it is evident.  I suggested a 24/7 hotline in all my postings about the internet.  It is the LEAST they could do.  The addictions really kick in when you are not getting help.  Self medication is a very dangerous business.



At this juncture, ONLY 200 psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers have been added to America's effort to help shell shocked, war wearied, messed up ex-soldiers.  It ain't enough and it ain't bloody enough.



We won't stop screaming about this until there is enough in place.



This affects/afflicts my family, too.  My son was on mainstream media begging them to help the veterans with PTSD and addictions.  I am SO proud.   I just wish our whole family could finally rest assured that there will be enough care to get us all through the terrible mess ...



I read also about the two new Defense Department centers to be set up to study mental health.  My God!   Don't they read!  It was so predictable it is frightening to think that they are that bloody thick.  Their own PR department must be having a very bad day as this all looks horrible on them.



One last cranky observation - the only DRUG that Big Pharma has on offer besides their ineffective and overprescription of atypical antipsychotics is beta blockers.  Yes, beta blockers.  The ones that are on time release are best, but they are expensive if living on a veteran's pension.  The only known "cure" for this all too human soul affliction is LOVE.  Yup, you read that right.  LOVE.  Time that the DOD morphed into something it really does not intend to be - concerned and caring about the future of America's next LEADERS.







Military Psychiatric-Care Overhaul

Urged

By Ann Scott Tyson and Christopher Lee

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, June 19, 2007; Page A07

Top officials in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill said yesterday that the federal government must move quickly to revamp the nation's system for identifying and caring for military personnel with the invisible wounds of mental illness.

Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday and discussed mental-health issues, including treatment for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on Ward 53, according to an Army spokesman.

been going about fixing it," said Col. Dan Baggio, noting that the Army has conducted four mental-health surveys of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More ...

Technorati Tags: US policy, PTSD, soldiers, Walter Reed, Afghanistan, Iraq, perpetual wa, atypical antipsychotics, beta blockers, LOVE, suld affiction

The 51st State in the Union: PTSD

Murder, madness, mayhem. Incest, child abuse, spouse abuse. Treason, perjury, malfeasance.

Americans are consuming an increasing diet of emotional toxic waste, which grows more poisonous with each new technological advance in communications. If the psychological damage on American citizens gets any worse, we'll have to add Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome as the 51st State in the Union.

More than ever, we are exposed to violence on a never before seen scale. Because of this overwhelming exposure to violence and mayhem, Americans are becoming twitchier than ever before. The result of this exposure to family violence, neighborhood violence, school and workplace violence, and now, the violence of war, is generating an increasing cycle of trauma, drug use, alcohol use, escapism, and, yes, more violence.

A mile across town, in the heart of the ‘Hood, an out of control crack head throws a tantrum in front of her teenaged relatives, and conducts a three way conversation with the imaginary people who live inside her head. She airs a litany of complaints, and blames her addiction and out of control lifestyle on everything from a purported rape attack in childhood by one her mother’s boyfriends, to a recent out of town pistol- whipping.

No one, but no one, she claims, can understand what she has gone through. Her situation is unique and her selfish family isn’t giving her proper attention. To punish them, she punishes herself. Or threatens to.

For years, she made allegations that one of her mother’s boyfriends raped her when she was a child. Her mother slid from the addiction of nightclubs, to the addiction of “the church”, with the ease of a seasoned emotional escape artist. A love affair with the powerful dynamics of the herd mentality in the nightclub soon transformed itself into a toxic addiction to "church".

After being left alone and ignored as small children now the addict and her brothers and sisters suffered the consequences of being the offspring of the ‘barfly cum church fly’, leaving her children to fend for themselves as children, and live with the consequences of her emotional abandonment as adults.

Some became sexually promiscuous. Others acted out, turned to both sex and drugs as escapes. And one, turned to promiscuity, drug use, theft, prostitution, emotional blackmail and attempted suicide.

For more than 20 years she has slid in and out of sobriety and dependency, building a nest of chaos and confusion in her wake. In many ways, her claim of rape is validated by her behavior. She’s almost a pattern card for post-rape Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD).

Psychiatric authorities point to a number of causes and consequences of PTSD, including rape, sexual and physical abuse, repeated trauma, lack of social and parental support, fires and being in a war zone. Consequences include disassociation, acting out, substance abuse, eating disorders and promiscuity. (Roy Lubit, MD, PhD, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Children). Lubit says another consequence of PTSD “is the multiple emotional and behavioral problems that can arise…substance abuse, aggression, eating disorders, sexual acting out…”

For children, the anxiety associated with PTSD often keeps them unable to adequately deal with normal childhood experiences such as school. Some authorities believe that PTSD symptom may often be confused with various types of attention deficit disorders. Hence, many children who are doped up on drugs for hyperactivity may be suffering from PTSD.

As is probably the case of the out of control crack head, whose relatives have gotten so many late night suicide prevention calls from the police that they no longer answer her calls. Relatives are raising her children as best as they can, trying to fend off her dangerous attempts at “motherhood” and “aunthood”, both ineffective attempts may be causing additional PTSD problems with her children, nieces and nephews.

Unable to sustain employment, other than selling sex on the street, she has stolen from family and friends, and isn’t shy about lifting the occasional item from a drug store or grocery, if she thinks she can get away with it. Degradation is in her bones, and she wears her madness like an unwashed second skin.

She courts death like a child playing with a favorite toy, intimately and with abandon. The only thing that annoys the snot out of her is that her family no longer wants to play the game. She lost her “control” over her relatives and long-gone friends a long time ago.

They simply got tired of being at the mercy of an emotional vampire, whose out of control street stories and tales of being gang raped, robbed and beaten brought the filth of the streets into their living rooms. The sympathy button has been turned off and her relatives have long since tired of the aborted attempts at detox, and the twitchy, out of control behavior, which takes far too much energy to deal with. They have their own lives and their own children—and they’ll kick her to the curb in a hot minute if it means protecting the children.

Her presence, her conversation, everything to do with her is toxic and is capable of contaminating others in its wake. Her family protects itself as much as possible but the entire situation is a prime example of the delayed effect of childhood sexual abuse.

A medical journal notes that “Studies of adults who were sexually or physically abused as children demonstrate significantly higher rates of emotional problems (72-100%)” than they do as children, leaving many to conclude that childhood abuse may present problems more in later life than in childhood. In short, the adult madness that the crack addict is displaying has exploded more in adulthood than in childhood.

Like this family, too many of today’s children and their care givers are caught up in a maelstrom of malicious events over which neither they have control. Farm children see their parents, grandparents and relatives hauled off their farms in chains. The children of crime suspects are given over to over-burdened Child Welfare Authorities, and are often abused more in the foster home than the “abusive” home from which they were taken. Little old ladies die of heart attacks when drug agents kick in the wrong apartment door—theirs. Children huddle against one another in classrooms, as another out of control child with an assault rifle mows down their fellow students and teaches. And, dangerously estranged boyfriends and husbands gun women down in their workplaces or right on the courthouse lawn.

We can run, but we cannot hide. The 24-hour news cycle won’t let us. Usually, there is enough madness in the US to keep the channels spewing fear and madness, but if the crazies in America go on vacation, there’s always the war to fall back on.

The old saying is still true. Violence begets violence. And madness, too. So, if your neurotic, alcoholic, crack head or meth freak relative is getting on your nerves, just turn on the television, or head to the computer and wallow in somebody else’s misery. It’s all there. And, best of all: it belongs to somebody else.

Followup: Vets, PTSD and the RIGHT to bear arms!!

Veterans Disarmament Act to Bar Vets From Owning Guns

Sat Oct 13, 2007 4:49 pm (PST)

After seeing everything I have seen over the last 49 years of this short life. I now see an even bigger picture that just now has become even clearer to me. This is not about "PTSD" or an thing else other then total control of anyone who will pose a threat to the new government to be put into place in the next year. For those of you that feel this does not affect you. Please think again. It does. The government can place any persons name in the National Data Base for anything. Whether you were ever involved in that issue or not. Data bases are one of the easiest things to make in the Cybernet World. The government can either make you out to be a saint. Or another Saddam Husein, and there isn't anything you can do about it any more. The people of this land have allowed the new government to take total control of us all. Just remember. You fought for their war. And now your getting payed back. You are here today. But you could wake up one morning and not be alive or even existed as far as the government is concerned.
Posted by Kirk

Veterans Disarmament Act To Bar Vets From Owning Guns

Larry Pratt

Sunday September 23, 2007
Hundreds of thousands of veterans -- from Vietnam through Operation Iraqi Freedom -- are at risk of being banned from buying firearms if legislation that is pending in Congress gets enacted.

How?

The Veterans Disarmament Act -- which has already passed the House -- would place any veteran who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list.
This is exactly what President Bill Clinton did over seven years ago when his administration illegitimately added some 83,000 veterans into the National Criminal Information System (NICS system) -- prohibiting them from purchasing firearms, simply because of afflictions like PTSD.
The proposed ban is actually broader. Anyone who is diagnosed as being a tiny danger to himself or others would have his gun rights taken away ... forever. It is section 102((1)©(iv) in HR 2640 that provides for dumping raw medical records into the system.

Those names -- like the 83,000 records mentioned above -- will then, by law, serve as the basis for gun banning.

No wonder the Military Order of the Purple Heart is opposed to this legislation. The House bill, HR 2640, is being sponsored by one of the most flaming anti-Second Amendment Representatives in Congress: Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY).

Another liberal anti-gunner, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), is sponsoring the bill in the Senate.
Proponents of the bill say that helpful amendments have been made so that any veteran who gets his name on the NICS list can seek an expungement.

But whenever you talk about expunging names from the Brady NICS system, you're talking about a procedure that has always been a long shot. Right now, there are NO EXPUNGEMENTS of law-abiding Americans' names that are taking place under federal level.

Why? Because the expungement process which already exists has been blocked for over a decade by a "funds cut-off" engineered by another anti-gunner, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).

So how will this bill make things even worse?

Well, two legal terms are radically redefined in the Veterans Disarmament Act to carry out this vicious attack on Veterans' gun rights.
One term relates to who is classified a "mental defective." Forty years ago that term meant one was adjudicated "not guilty" in a court of law by reason of insanity. But under the Veterans Disarmament Act, "mental defective" has been stretched to include anyone whom a psychiatrist determines might be a tiny danger to self or others.

The second term is "adjudicate. " In the past, one could only lose one's gun rights through an adjudication by a judge, magistrate or court -- meaning conviction after a trial. Adjudication could only occur in a court with all the protections of due process, including the right to face one's accuser.

Now, adjudication in HR 2640 would include a finding by "a court, commission, committee or other authorized person" (namely, a psychiatrist) .

Forget the fact that people with PTSD have the same violent crime rate as the rest of us. Vietnam vets with PTSD have had careers and obtained permits to carry firearms concealed.

It will now be enough for a psychiatric diagnosis (a "determination" in the language of the bill) to get a veteran barred ­for life ­ from owning guns.

Think of what this bill would do to veterans. If a robber grabs your wallet and takes everything in it, but gives you back $5 to take the bus home, would you call that a financial enhancement? If not, then we should not let HR 2640 supporters call the permission to seek an expungement an enhancement, when prior to this bill, veterans could not legitimately be denied their gun rights after being diagnosed with PTSD.

Veterans with PTSD should not be put in a position to seek an expungement. They have not been convicted (after a trial with due process) of doing anything wrong.

If a veteran is thought to be a threat to self or others, there should be a real trial, not an opinion (called a diagnosis) by a psychiatrist.
If members of Congress do not hear from soldiers (active duty and retired) in large numbers, along with the rest of the public, the Veterans Disarmament Act -- misleadingly titled by Rep. McCarthy as the NICS Improvement Amendments Act -- will send this message to veterans: "No good deed goes unpunished"

If members of Congress do not hear from soldiers (active duty and retired) in large numbers, along with the rest of the public, the Veterans Disarmament Act -- misleadingly titled by Rep. McCarthy as the NICS Improvement Amendments Act -- will send this message to veterans: "No good deed goes unpunished."

NOTE: It’s passed Congress and is moving on to the Senate…….my opinion is that it’s not about vets with PTSD – it’s about veterans who are warriors and know how to fight in wars…trained by the USA – well, Baby Bush and his buddies who have pulled a lot of rotten deals since day 1 – want to make darn sure these vets are not able to come back at them when everyone does finally realize that so many of our freedoms have already been taken from us – and there will be more. These vets are a threat. If we are to ever stand up like the true patriots so many of us claim to be and take our country back and give back what was stolen from the Constitution – these vets are a threat. Arm yourselves – everyone – because like it or not, I hate to say this and I hope I am totally wrong, but a revolution will happen, because when we hit solid rock bottom while the rich have become so rich they could never spend it all – we will have to fight for our country and for our rights and freedoms.

This man – I won’t call him President, because we know he stole the election - denies little children desperately needed medical coverage – denies people decent housing, food, medical care and so forth – but he wants to take guns away from the very vets who he has claimed are dying for our freedoms? Who have died – a river of blood through many wars and conflicts – and this is how they are treated? Judged without the due process? We must do whatever we can to fight this bill.

More:

Vets with PTSD should not be put in a position to seek an expungement. They have not been convicted (after a trial with DUE process) of doing anything wrong.

Haven't they been through enough already? Many of our Vietnam Vets have fought for years to get help from VA (and are STILL fighting for them). Then to have the mere fact they sought help come back to slap them in the face is further insult to injury!

What stats are Congress basing this bill on? This is a veiled attempt to take away the arms of all Americans and defy our 2nd Amendment rights. Unless a Veteran is a prisoner, he still has his Second Amendment rights! If a veteran is thought to be a threat to self or others, there should be a "real" trial, not an opinion (called a diagnosis) by a psychiatrist.

Not to mention how this will PREVENT our troops returning from theatre from getting help if they are having problems. Can you imagine how ANGRY they will be? (And who wouldn't be? We were when we read this! Not to mention how emotional we felt about it too.)

I have a brother with PTSD. He hunts and subsidizes his family with meat because his income has been limited by his VOLUNTARY service, which affected him! What a slap in the face to him and others who were affected by what they encountered while serving all of us. I've never felt he would harm anyone, not ever. We've known a lot of Vietnam Vets with PTSD who we've never felt were a threat to society. Remember the number of Vets we are dealing with. So the stats just aren't there to warrant this!
Not everybody who went to Nam was affected the same way. But we know that some were and we care about them. (Unless you're in Congress evidently!) But this is the most disgusting thing we've ever heard of.
Lets see, you've been changed forever for serving your country, now Congress is going to PUNISH you further? Now that's a big THANK YOU FOR SERVING and that's logic for you...

The troops serving today are so amazing. Doing several tours of duty. We appreciate them so much. So a slap in the face like this is really going to help! Talk about pulling a bandaide off a wound! A HUGE slap in the face when these brave troops have had to fight for every thing they get. We have always needed to encourage troops to go in for counseling if they had a problem. Imagine if they were law enforcement? You're telling them they can never do the job they did before they left to serve our country? Nice job congress!

We've been dealing with Vietnam Vets for how many years? And there is NO HUGE stats for shooting incidents!

So why in the world would you do something like this to our troops?
It's a veiled attempt to take away our Second Amendment rights.. starting with the brave men and women who have been protecting THEIR sorry *sses!

When I called Sen's Boxer's and Feinsteins offices today, they said "yes, it has already passed in the House, and it's coming up for a vote in the Senate".

I told them that there are two Vets in this house. We've never been sorry to have served. One of us is 100 percent disabled, and the other 50% from a helicopter crash in Nam as a medivac pilot. My brother, who has PTSD, has never been sorry to have served, and he also volunteered.

But my brother never came back from Nam. In all these years, the young man who left, never returned. But no one fears him either. And now they want to PUNISH HIM?

This is INSANE!

I asked that they PLEASE advocate for our troops. The troops from before and now too. To do less is a horrible joke.

I even looked up the email I got on Snopes.com. Thinking it had to be a hoax. Surely they couldn't or wouldn't do MORE HARM to the troops who've served and are serving our country so well.

But, it's true.. it's all true.

I admit, during my conversation with both offices, I broke down near the end with each office. This IS EMOTIONAL. How can we allow this to happen to our Vets?

This is just too much for me to imagine. My brother having his rifle taken away. No more Elk or deer to feed his family. No more wild Turkey's to eat. After 30 some years?

What dignity he has left will be shattered. That young man who joined to fight for a country he loved so much.

It shames me to no end to imagine that his country would "continue" to do him harm. (His fight for benefits has been unreal.)

Please call your Senators. Please tell them to prevent this travesty from happening to our troops who've served. They deserve BETTER than this!
God forbid we treat them like common criminals by denying them this RIGHT afforded them by our Constitution!

It took me all of 5 minutes to make these two calls.

Please help to stop this travesty being visited on our nations hero's.
We owe it to them! PLEASE HELP OUR VETS!!!

Contact your State Senator and tell them to vote NO on this bill! You will be calling about the following:
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~
The Veterans Disarmament Act
HR 2640, section 102 (1)©(iv)

Little RedHawk
Cherokee Warrior

Today, America will observe Veteran's Day in honor of the sacrifice and contributions of the more than 25 million men and women who donned the uniform to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. The occasion will surely be marked with remembrance of, and respect for, a future generation of veterans -- the 160,000 soldiers fighting in Iraq and another 18,000 soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan. Regardless of the respectable differences that exist regarding the Iraq war, the nation is united in honoring a current generation of soldiers who continue to showcase the courage, bravery, and skill worthy of the honor bestowed upon previous generations of American soldiers. There is increasing widespread concern, however, that as soldiers return from their overseas assignments with physical and mental impairments, the Department of Veterans Affairs may not have the capacity to properly serve them. Because "soldiers in Iraq are surviving wounds that in earlier wars would have been fatal," there will continue to be an increasing need for the Bush administration to provide the necessary resources to "care for those who shall have borne the battle," a mission the administration has not yet properly prepared itself to fulfill.

A NEED THAT HAS NOT BEEN MET: National Adjutant of the Disabled American Veterans, Arthur Wilson, recently wrote, "[I]nstead of honoring its commitment to those whose service and sacrifice have kept us free and safe, our government has launched a devastating assault on benefits for America's veterans." The frustration results from watching an administration incompetently deal with the need to fund veterans health care and disability services. When President Bush released his annual budget in February 2005, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) said, "If this budget -- and its misguided proposals -- were enacted, it would devastate VA health care." The American Legion offered similar criticism. A few months later, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) warned, "There is a train wreck coming in veterans' health care." Rather than address the issue, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson claimed, "I can assure you that VA does not need" additional funds. But then in June, Nicholson came back to Congress and admitted the department didn't have the sufficient resources to deal with the incoming number of wounded soldiers. Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) called it an "embarrassment." The Senate then voted to approve an extra $1.5 billion for veterans' health care. Yet, given the increasing demand for VA services, the need still has not been fully met.

UNPREPARED FOR PTSD:

As soldiers return from the battlefront, many are reporting that they are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. "

PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that can occur after life-threatening events such as combat. Victims often suffer with nightmares, flashbacks, sleeplessness and anger and feel detached or estranged." As one soldier described his experience, "My nightmares are so intense I woke up one night with my hands round my fiancee's throat." Studies show 20 to 30 percent of combat vets will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and a recent Army study of veterans returning from Iraq suggests that as many as 240,000 could suffer from some degree of PTSD. USA Today reported that more than "one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment." Veterans receiving disability checks for PTSD jumped 80 percent from 1999 through 2004, from 120,000 to 216,000. That increase alone cost the VA an additional $2.6 billion in benefits." Secretary Nicholson seems to recognize the problem, recently stating that many of the wounded "


A BAD SOLUTION: The VA is reviewing 72,000 veterans who currently receive disability checks for PTSD. The review, seemingly a move to cut costs, may mean some veterans will lose their disability check and others may find it harder to get them. The VA claims it is looking for fraud and paperwork errors, but in the words of veterans advocate Gerald Humphries, "It's a witch hunt." "If you have got a guy who has got a ‘combat disability mental illness,’ why are you going after him?" "This," said Rick Weidman, legislative director for the Vietnam Veterans of America, "is a war on veterans."


SOME VETERANS COMING HOME ARE FINDING NOTHING: The face of poverty in the Gulf Coast region has another unseen dimension. For veterans returning home to the region, they will find their VA hospitals either destroyed or evacuated. Another problem, as the Christian Science Monitor writes, is that "veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are now showing up in the nation's homeless shelters",
will be in the VA system for the rest of their lives." But whether the VA is ready to make a lifetime commitment to these veterans remains to be seen.

A BAD SOLUTION: The VA is reviewing 72,000 veterans who currently receive disability checks for PTSD. The review, seemingly a move to cut costs, may mean some veterans will lose their disability check and others may find it harder to get them. The VA claims it is looking for fraud and paperwork errors, but in the words of veterans advocate Gerald Humphries, "It's a witch hunt." "If you have got a guy who has got a ‘combat disability mental illness,’ why are you going after him?" "This," said Rick Weidman, legislative director for the Vietnam Veterans of America, "is a war on veterans."SOME VETERANS COMING HOME ARE FINDING NOTHING: The face of poverty in the Gulf Coast region has another unseen dimension. For veterans returning home to the region, they will find their VA hospitals either destroyed or evacuated. Another problem, as the Christian Science Monitor writes, is that "veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are now showing up in the nation's homeless shelters

HEALTH CARE

For some time, the conservative "position" on health care has been a stalwart commitment to the status quo, resisting any proposals for sweeping reform. Two new studies comparing global health data -- one by American Progress distinguished senior fellow Tom Daschle, another by the Commonwealth Fund -- spell out what this position entails: conservatives apparently are content with a health care system that ",
ile the numbers are still small, they're steadily rising. ... The concern is that these returning veterans - some of whom can't find jobs after leaving the military, others of whom are still struggling psychologically with the war - may be just the beginning of an influx of new veterans in need." "When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that." While an estimated 500,000 veterans were homeless at some time during 2004, the VA had resources to deal with only 100,000 of them.

For some unknown reason, this message got very confused with itself. I have fixed to the best of my ability, because I want you to have access to the links.

This a very sad Veteran's Day. They are all sad. But this is the saddest of all.

Impeachment Toolkit: Allen Roland on PTSD and vets .. MUST READ

Believe me, this article is CHILLING. With well-armed, desperate troops, very badly damaged and a declaration of MARTIAL LAW and a drive to push people to accept the "domestic mercenaries" option ..

Things will be HELL .. I mean it . LITERAL HELL ON EARTH.

There is NO rule of law at present - merely a two-tiered justice system in place in both the US and in Canada.

There is a failure of WILL to implement proper public policy - even as Baghdad falls. The huge huge soul sickness that envelops us is a disaster in the making.

Allen knows well what he is talking about about PTSD, and I have posted his great articles on healing from PTSD previously.

As the theocracy comes forward to claim control of the government, just consider the very real possibilities .. and the US is already BROKE .. and all this information is applicable to Afghani vets here in Canada as well.

I wrote my warnings about this on OpED quite a while ago -

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_virginia_070620_
about_bloody_time_2c_b.htm

The PR goes on and on and on - the Cheney ripoffs of US taxpayer funds to "reconstruct" Iraq and Afghanistan for Halliburton/KBR citadels continues. Reconstruction funds (see my SIGIR/Stuart Bowen links) continue to go missing.

And those who suffer grave physical and moral problems continue to get little or nothing. ENOUGH!! Keep the spotlight on this issue!!

I know ALL about PTSD - I have ALL seventeen symptoms. It's horrifying and can make you completely dysfunctional. No, I get no help up here in Canada although I suffer from it, save from my GP.

We have TONS of work to do ahead of us to heal as nations from these bloody, bloody soul destroying wars brought on by NEOCONS, and paid for by US, the taxpayers and productive people (and you do not need to be a vet or a taxpayer to be productive, either!!) New public health policies cannot be ignored at a US federal level, that is for SURE.

All I can say is this - FOR SHAME! Bring on the ICC hearings and bring them on SOON!!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_ladybroa_080215_
special_prosecutor_i.htm

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/global-people-for-the-impeachment-
of-richard-cheney
Please sign this impeachment petition!

Bring a focus on ALL the problems.

Send pennies, dimes, nickels and $500 bills to IAVA.org. Let them have a platform everywhere. They do a GREAT JOB, as I often say.

While BuZh and buddies (Michael Mukasey for one) allow torturous tasers to proliferate and Big Pharma continues to see POISONS in the form of atypical antipsychotics and suicide-inducing antidepressants, this is what is TRULY GOING ON!! It is HORRIFYING. Let the vets who have committed WAR CRIMES long and loudly and GRIEVE what they have done - But DON'T let them commit suicide from lack of funding or lack of concern on our parts.

Please. My own son went on mainstream TV on this issue. Now he has lost his wife and his children .. and no, he does not speak with me. That doesn't matter, I love him anyway and have NO desire to see him suffer. NONE. Particularly not in THIS horrific way. He is my SON and those are my grandchildren - the future of AMERICA with valuable BLOOD And ties to American soil who need to know their FULL HISTORY.

Help me help them. I say this again, PLEASE.

So much damage, so much healing to be done .. things to cry long and deeply about. The Empire is falling . is this what we want America's (and Canada's) "legacy" to look like as it sinks deeper into the morality void for its citizens?

Veeger

THE WALKING DEAD / P.T.S.D. REVISITED by Allen L Roland http://www.opednews.com

Army 1st Lt. Jullian Philip Goodrum in his room in the Mologne House at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Goodrum suffers from PTSD. Nina Berman / Redux

Our European friends clearly see Bush for what he really is and what we refuse to acknowledge ~ a moral coward masquerading as a world leader. Posed on his wooden horse of hubris he has become a modern day Don Quixote flailing away at the windmills of the evil world he himself has created and remaining in deliberate denial of the human chaos and unneccessary deaths he is reponsible for: Allen L Roland

And so our troops trudge on ~ fighting an enemy they can't see, fighting for an illegal occupation they don't believe in, fighting to stay moral and sane in a foreign country where they are despised and hated ~ is it any wonder that they turn suicidal when Bush extends or demands another tour so that he will not have to face his incredible moral failure on his own watch.

They have, in essence, become cannon fodder for Cheney and Bush's failed criminal neocon pipe dream. Is it any wonder that they can see no way out ~ particularly in light of a timid self serving Congress who refuses to listen to the vast majority of Americans who want them sent home now.

And get this ~ Last year, the VA's Inspector General issued a report estimating that 1,000 veterans under its care commit suicide every year.

They are, indeed, the walking dead and Aaron Glantz gives us a short update on this nightmare scenario.

Allen L Roland

http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/03/30.html

Suicidal and Facing a Third Tour in IraBy Aaron Glantz

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17724.htm

05/17/07 - -- -SAN FRANCISCO, May 15 (IPS) - At the beginning of May, Corporal Cloy Richards tried to kill himself.

He punched out all his windows and cut major arteries," his mother Tina Richards told IPS. "He had to go to the hospital because he almost bled to death."

loy Richards, who lives in rural Salem, Missouri, has served two deployments in the Marine Corps in Iraq. The military lists him as 80-percent combat disabled.

His mother says he has knee and arm injuries, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, and currently has a claim pending with the Army for a traumatic brain injury.

"It's something that affects us every single day," Tina said, "when he's 23 years old and he can't even climb the stairs. He has bad nightmares where he thinks he's back in Iraq."

Richards said her son sustained most of his injuries after his first tour in Iraq, adding that the family protested his second deployment to no avail. After four years on active duty, Cloy Richards is now in the individual ready reserve and faces the possibility of a third deployment to Iraq.

New guidelines released by the Pentagon in December allow commanders to redeploy soldiers suffering from traumatic stress disorders

According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, service-members with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a "treatable" problem.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to an event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A person having a flashback may lose touch with reality and believe that the traumatic incident is happening all over again.

"It's just terrifying," said Dr. Karen Seal, a clinician at San Francisco's Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centre who treats soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological illnesses.

Seal told IPS that patients under her care have been deployed despite serious mental health conditions.

"I feel like writing them a medical excuse," she said, "but that's not my responsibility as a VA clinician. Because I'm a VA provider, I don't have the authority to do that."

According to a study co-authored by Seal and her colleagues at the Centre, about one- third of the more than 100,000 returning veterans seen at VA facilities between Sep. 30, 2001 and Sep. 30, 2005 were diagnosed with mental illness or a psycho-social disorder such as homelessness and marital problems, including domestic violence. Over half suffered from more than one disorder.

Other researchers suggest those statistics may only represent the tip of the iceberg. Many veterans, they note, don't come forward to seek care. The stigma associated with post- traumatic stress disorder may account for part of this gap, they say.

In addition, according to recent report by Linda Bilmes of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, waiting lists for returning veterans are "so long as to effectively deny treatment to a number of veterans."

In the May 2006 edition of Psychiatric News, Bilmes notes that VA Undersecretary of Health Policy Coordination Frances Murphy wrote that when services are available, "waiting lists render that care virtually inaccessible."

There is also the issue of geography.

"One of the disconnects and failures in planning for this war is that the Veterans Administration is essentially configured in an urban way," Bilmes told IPS. "That makes a lot of sense for recruiting specialists and staffing the facilities. However, recruiting for the military in this war tends to come primarily from small, rural America. So, what we don't have is enough mental health care for veterans in these rural communities when they come home."

Last Thursday, the VA's Inspector General issued a report estimating that 1,000 veterans under its care commit suicide every year.

The report also found that vets are at increased risk of suicide because many VA clinics don't have 24-hour care or adequate mental health screening, and lack properly trained personnel.

The report, which was requested last year by Rep. Michael Michaud, a Democrat of Maine, said clinics should work harder so veterans can seek treatment without feeling stigmatised, and recommended additional screening for patients with traumatic brain injury, a type of brain damage caused by projectiles like roadside bombs which many are calling the "signature injury" of the Iraq war.

"The problem is that traumatic brain injury, which is an anatomic, physiologic problem, sort of intermingles with post-traumatic stress disorder," Dr. William Schecter, the chief of surgery at San Francisco General Hospital, explained to IPS. "This is going to be a lifelong challenge for the individuals who have suffered these injuries." (END/2007)