Backed by retired Lt. Gen., 'Not Alone' helps veterans from all wars deal with PTSD

People meeting retired Lt. Gen. Hugh Smith for the first time likely get the impression of a tough, no-nonsense man who does not suffer fools gladly.

They would be right.

They also might get the impression of a hard-nosed combat veteran who would tell a soldier claiming to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to "suck it up, drive on and stop whining."

They would be dead wrong.

If the general has one message for PTSD sufferers, it is this: "You are not alone."

By way of getting that message out, Smith has become a leading advocate of an organization that puts the message up-front in its name.

Written by Philip Grey

http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20111127/NEWS08/111270331/Backed-by-retired-Lt-Gen-Not-Alone-helps-veterans-from-all-wars-deal-PTSD?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Mission: Family: 2 well-known nonprofits expanding aid to military children - Navy Community, Navy Spouse and Family Resources - Navy Times

The Sesame Workshop and Boys & Girls Clubs — two nonprofit organizations whose work has provided tangible benefits for military children — are expanding their reach.

Sesame Street’s efforts for military families have grown beyond the preschool crowd, through a joint venture with The Electric Company to provide new resources for elementary school-age children and their families.

Boys & Girls Clubs will focus on youths’ mental health issues as their parents return from war. They will help distribute “Military Families Near and Far” materials produced by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit education organization behind Sesame Street and The Electric Company.

Sesame Workshop’s “Talk, Listen, Connect” series has helped military families with preschool children talk to each other and understand deployments, homecomings and when a parent comes home changed because of injury, as well as coping with the death of a loved one.


By Karen Jowers


Mission: Family: 2 well-known nonprofits expanding aid to military children - Navy Community, Navy Spouse and Family Resources - Navy Times

New Mobile App Helps Troops to Self-Manage Behavior, Stress

Most of us know what a mobile application is—chances are if you own a smartphone, you have downloaded not one, but multiple apps and for various purposes. I, for example, depend on my weather app to know if I should grab my umbrella, or leave it at home.

Standing apart from weather, music and game apps are a new genre of smartphone programs specifically designed for troops and health care providers. These apps, developed by National Center for Telehealth and Technology (T2), a center of Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE), address a more serious matter: psychological health and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

I spoke with Dr. Nancy Kao Rhiannon, a T2 psychologist and mobile application program manager, about some of these new apps (soon to hit the market) and how specifically the military community can benefit from using them.

“In the military, there’s a certain demographic that uses mobile applications regularly—around 60 percent of service members download apps on their smartphones,” said Rhiannon. “We saw that we could leverage this technology to help improve their psychological health.”

by Robyn Mincher

http://www.dodlive.mil/index.php/2011/11/new-mobile-app-helps-troops-to-self-manage-behavior-stress/

Half of Vets Returning From Iraq and Afghanistan Need Medical Attention

More than half of America's former warriors are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with medical and mental problems that need treatment, according to new statistics from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

"These are unprecedented numbers," said Dr. Sonja Batten, assistant deputy chief of patient services care for the VA Mental Health Division.

But they're surprising numbers, in some ways.

While they bear out the controversial 2008 Rand Report that one soldier in three will return home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression and/or traumatic brain injury (TBI), the TBI component is dramatically less than predicted.

By last June, Batten said, 1.3 million of the two million-plus soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 had left military service and were eligible for VA health care. About 700,000 of them (53 percent) have sought health care from the VA.

by: Eric Newhouse, Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/half-vets-returning-iraq-and-afghanistan-need-medical-attention/1321369149

Wife of suicidal Iraq veteran seeks better support

It has been two weeks since a 23-year-old Iraq war veteran slammed his car into a Sutherlin railroad crossing arm at more than 90 mph in a highly visible suicide attempt. 

Billy Canfield, formerly a member of the Army National Guard's Charlie Company, survived the crash but broke five vertebrae in his back. He was scheduled to be released from the Roseburg Veterans Affairs Medical Center this afternoon.

Less than a week before the crash, Canfield attempted to take his own life by overdosing on his prescription medications, according to his wife, Cassandra Canfield. 

She said the mental health services available locally were not adequate to help her husband. She said she hopes his story will inspire new programs and other means of support for those struggling to readjust to civilian life. 


Heather Morse

http://www.nrtoday.com/article/20111115/NEWS/111119881/1063/NEWS&ParentProfile=1055

Helping veterans and their families overcome post-traumatic stress

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can have a crushing impact on the lives of veterans. But worse, it is often contagious. The negative psychological and emotional traumas of a vet’s past can spread to his or her family members and other caregivers—with nightmarish consequences. Research shows that parents, spouses and children of returning soldiers with combat PTSD are particularly vulnerable to the stress that inevitably comes from living with a loved one suffering from the aftermath of war.

This video of Julia George and her son, David, a veteran of the war in Iraq, reveals the deep stresses that are all-too-often experienced by veterans and their family members. It also shows how the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique not only helps veterans, but also relieves the intense stress experienced by their loved ones.

by MARIO ORSATTI

http://www.tm.org/blog/video/veterans-and-families/

The hurt locker (room) bond

The soldier athlete. The athlete warrior.

Though their worlds are disparate, soldiers and athletes are alike in seeking physical and psychological perfection as ways to defeat their challengers. Conquering — in combat or on the playing field — is at their competitive core.

A less glorious common bond? The confounding concussion.

“People say ‘mild’ concussion, but I don’t think there really is such a thing,” NHL star Sidney Crosby said after he was checked into the boards during a Jan. 5 game and later diagnosed with a concussion. “I think it’s a serious thing.”

Crosby hasn’t played an NHL game in 11 months.

Better known in the medical community as traumatic brain injury (TBI), a concussion, in its milder forms, defies easy detection and treatment. It’s a so-called “invisible” injury, the secrets to debilitating symptoms such as headache, dizziness and inattention buried deep within brain tissue.

Sport and military researchers have stepped up concussion studies over the last decade — propelled by neuroscience breakthroughs and better scanning techniques, such as ultrasensitive Magnetic Resonance Imaging — within their specific populations.

Athletic-related concussions typically come from the head striking a solid object or having it whipped from the side. The majority of military personnel returning from Afghanistan with TBIs were wounded by supersonic shock waves emanating from improvised explosive devices. The brain is rocked when shock waves enter the body and create pressure that drives through the skull.

By Mary Ormsby

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1085969--the-hurt-locker-room-bond

Wounded Warrior shares his story to help others

MARION - Sgt. Adam Widner returned from his tour of duty in Afghanistan with a spinal cord injury and a traumatic brain injury, but his wounds ran far deeper than the physical pain.

Widner was on hand Saturday to receive a $25,000 check from Ashley Furniture Homestore for the Wounded Warrior Project, an organization that helps wounded servicemembers acclimate to civilian life.

A somber tone was set at the beginning of the event as a rifle volley provided by the United Veteran Council honor guard boomed and echoed off the nearby buildings. Folks lining the parking lot bowed heads and held hands over hearts as Bob Rinnert of VFW Post 7201 played a mournful taps on his bugle before heading inside to hear Widner speak.

http://www.marionstar.com/article/20111113/NEWS01/111130321/Wounded-Warrior-shares-his-story-help-others?odyssey=nav|head

Teaming up to help military families stay connected

Sesame Street and The Electric Company unveiled a new collection of resources for military families. The innovative materials are designed to help elementary school-aged children and families stay connected and communicate during times of tremendous change and uncertainty.

Both Sesame Street and The Electric Company are productions of Sesame Workshop, which designed the materials for the program. The new resources are being provided to military families in cooperation with the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

The Electric Company Extended Learning Program - afterschool tools for educators, filled with literacy and math-based lesson plans, games, activities and tips. 
Content will be distributed beginning in mid-November through multiple military channels, including Department of Defense Education Activity Educational Partnership Program, Boys & Girls Clubs of America-affiliated Youth Centers and other programs that support military families.

http://www.rbr.com/media-news/teaming-up-to-help-military-families-stay-connected.html

Back In the Game: Hunting trips aimed at healing combat veterans' spirits

RAYMONDVILLE — On a recent day in South Texas, a fresh-faced Marine from Kemp, Texas, sits at a local rancher’s dining room table, talking about hunting and fishing.

Sitting in a wheelchair, he also recounts in his steady Texas drawl how he lost his legs June 27. Lance Cpl. Jeff Knight, 23, was on his second tour in Afghanistan when the blast from an improvised explosive device sheered off both legs at the knee.

It was just two months before his birthday, and Knight, a combat engineer, had been sweeping for mines during a patrol.

The recounting is one of the few moments in the conversation in which his hint of a smile fades and his tone becomes serious.

Dina Arevalo

http://www.themonitor.com/news/members-56380-raymondville-aimed.html

Soldier: The Doctors Will See You Now!

The public-health gurus of the American Public Health Association – all 13,000 of them – are meeting in Washington this week to figure out how we can all lead more healthy lives. It's a noble pursuit, to be sure. Some of the studies and sessions investigate issues of interest to the nation's troops. They may sound pretty grim, but here's a rule of thumb that serves me well: the bad news in military-personnel studies tends to be as exaggerated as the good news in military-weapons-development pitches.

Bottom line: our troops are better than the research indicates, and our weapons aren't as good as the research suggests (then, consider the source: the APHA boasts both a peace caucus and a socialist caucus, but no military caucus or troops caucus that I can find).

One thing's for sure: after a decade of war, here's plenty of work for these folks to do. What follows are the titles and excerpts from the summaries of some of the research they're detailing this week:

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/11/01/soldier-the-doctors-will-see-you-now/#ixzz1clAzzVaT


http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/11/01/soldier-the-doctors-will-see-you-now/

Sleep disorders plague vets with head trauma or PTSD

HONOLULU (Reuters Health) - New research shows high rates of sleep disorders among veterans of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or head injuries.

The study conducted at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, found that among some 300 soldiers with PTSD, head injuries or both, more than half had sleep apnea -- a serious interruption of breathing during sleep -- and nearly half had insomnia.

"Sleep complaints were universal," wrote Dr. Jacob Collen and his colleagues in their research summary. Collen's team presented their findings this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Honolulu.

The researchers studied 135 soldiers with PTSD, 116 with traumatic brain injury and 66 with both conditions.

by Rob Goodier

http://www.healthnews.com/en/news/Sleep-disorders-plague-vets-with-head-trauma-or-PTSD/3zmRbtxPT0CAxTEDiUY4D3/