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There are so many things about the drive-by mainstream media that irritate me that its sometimes hard to prioritize or quantify them. I can, however, say with alacrity that one of the irritants at the top of my list is the medias 40+ year-long effort to demonize Americas vets, whom they paint as ticking time-bombs in constant, imminent danger of exploding.
But as Swols sits in a small office in the Robinson Health Clinic at Fort Bragg, his hand drops to the furry head beside him and his mood brightens. Settled at his feet, Lexy, a 5-year-old German shepherd, gives Swols a few moments of distraction. It's her job. And, according to Swols, she's good at it. "I have a hard time talking to people about my deployments and everything," says Swols, who is with the 82nd Airborne's 4th Brigade Combat Team. After taking part in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the march into Baghdad in 2003, he's been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. "But having her here, I just pet Lexy. Or I'm just sitting here and we won't talk about deployments, we'll just (talk) about the dog. ... My day is better every time I come in."
For 82nd Airborne psychiatrist Maj. Christine Rumayor, Lexy is a partner, a conversation starter and a living, breathing medical tool that can calm a patient and make a therapy appointment a little more enjoyable. A slowly evolving form of treatment, animal therapy is used in only a few other Army installations, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. A small number of dogs like Lexy are being used almost as co-therapists. Others routinely work as service animals and are often used for animal-assisted therapy, including in visits to patients in the hospitals. Lexy's move into therapy was unexpected. Rumayor decided to put her new puppy through the training when she realized Lexy was less of a guard dog and more of a calm cuddler. So, Lexy went through about 2½ years of training before she was able to pin on her rank she's a lieutenant colonel and become certified as Fort Bragg's only therapy dog.
Lexy, a therapy dog at Fort Bragg, N.C. Lexy is a 5-year-old German shepherd.
As the Army struggles to address the broad swath of stress disorders and mental health problems brought on by more than a decade of war, one of the biggest hurdles is getting soldiers to put aside the bravado and seek treatment. Lexy, it turns out, is particularly good at that. Van Woodruff, who was a sergeant first class, went to his scheduled appointment just a few days before he was set to get his medical retirement and move out of the Army after 13 years in the service. "It's hard for me to come to these appointments. I can't really sit in the waiting room," said Woodruff, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. "I don't look forward to this whole process of being here. ... The whole process of being here is something that's agitative to my diagnosis." But on a sunny Wednesday morning, the Alabama native is sitting in Rumayer's office. "This is the only one I look forward to going to because of Lexy. I love dogs."
Rumayor, who wrote the Fort Bragg policy that allows her to use Lexy in her practice, said there was resistance at first. "You don't want everybody to think they can just bring their dog to work," she said. Rumayor also has seen what an asset the dog can be in getting soldiers to seek out therapy and consistently attend their appointments. Walking around the base, she uses Lexy as a lightning rod to attract soldiers, then draws them into conversation. On any given day, she and Lexy will wander over to the motor pool or anywhere troops might gather, to see who might be interested in having a chat. "Stigma is one of the huge things the military is trying super hard to overcome behavioral health stigma being the biggest one, I think. And Lexy is probably the biggest asset I have in overcoming that stigma," Rumayor said. "There's nothing better than coming to an appointment where you get to have a warm fuzzy thing that you get to pet all the time. People don't want to come in the door. When they see her coming in, it makes them want to come in the door." And often the soldiers reward her.
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Many Vietnam veterans claiming to have service-related PTSD have been petitioning the applicable “board for correction” for an upgrade to their discharge status. During the Vietnam War era, the U.S. military did not recognize PTSD as a legitimate medical diagnosis. A less than honorable discharge can have many negative effects on a former servicemember, including a loss of benefits. “Liberal consideration” will now be given in cases where there is any evidence to indicate that PTSD might have contributed to misconduct that led to a less-than-honorable discharge, Hagel said in the memorandum.
Hagel noted that records for troops who served before PTSD was recognized often lack important information, which makes it “extremely difficult” to document PTSD or establish a connection between PTSD and misconduct. The new policy guidance will make it easier for veterans to make their case that undiagnosed PTSD negatively influenced their behavior while they were in the service. It also clarifies how boards should judge applications. Hagel said that PTSD and related conditions will be considered potentially mitigating factors if they can simply be “reasonably determined” to have existed when the person was discharged for misconduct.
However, the existence of PTSD or PTSD-related symptoms at the time of discharge will not necessarily result in an upgrade. The Pentagon chief directed the boards to “exercise caution” when it comes to cases where a discharge stemmed from “serious” or “premeditated” misconduct. “Potentially mitigating evidence of the existence of undiagnosed combat-related PTSD … will be carefully weighed against the severity of the misconduct,” Hagel said. Moreover, the new guidance does not apply to people who had pre-existing PTSD that was not aggravated by military service.
Hagel makes it easier for veterans with PTSD to get discharge upgrades - News - Stripes
At stake for individuals is removal of lifelong stigmas that have scarred reputations, limited job prospects and blocked critical veteran benefits. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this month directed that boards for correction of military records or naval records begin to “fully and carefully consider every petition based on PTSD brought by each veteran.” His Sept. 3 memo gives Army, Navy and Air Force secretaries “supplemental guidance” that boards are to use when petitioners seek discharge upgrades claiming that unrecognized Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder caused the misbehavior that led to Other Than Honorable discharge.
Many of the veterans who will gain from the new guidance served during the Vietnam War, before the medical community recognized PTSD as a disabling service-connected condition. PTSD only received a medical diagnostic code in 1980, five years after that war officially ended. Hagel instructed boards to give “liberal consideration” to any language found in medical records describing one or more symptoms that meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD or related conditions. Liberal consideration also is to be used when veterans’ civilian providers have diagnosed PTSD. And where PTSD “is reasonably determined to have existed at the time of discharge,” it is to be “a mitigating factor” in the misconduct that generated an Other Than Honorable, also then called Undesirable, discharge.
Hagel likely is reacting to several recent developments including a federal class action lawsuit filed last March on behalf of Vietnam veterans, which generated a wave of publicity and attracted an influential advocate in Hagel’s former Senate colleague, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Blumenthal said last week that many veterans went to war when PTSD “was undiagnosed and untreated” and it “caused many of them, particularly from the Vietnam era, to be given less than honorable discharges.” The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale University Law School filed the class action lawsuit, Monk v. Mabus, with five combat veterans and three veterans’ organizations named as plaintiffs. Their complaint says that as a result of undiagnosed PTSD, these veterans were unable to perform assigned duties and were discharged for misconduct attributable to post-traumatic stress. Yet over the years, the lawsuit contends, the military “has near-categorically refused to correct these wrongful discharges.”
One plaintiff, Conley Monk, 66, joined the Marine Corps at age 20. Nine months later he was in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, flinching at enemy mortar rounds and sniper fire and, for him, living in a nightmarish habitat of mosquitoes and snakes, so different from what he had known. The day he arrived in Vietnam with the 9th Motor Transport Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, the airport came under a barrage of mortar fire. From July through November 1969, he drove troop trucks and “many times we would be under fire,” he recalled. “Every day I prayed God would bring me back home to the United States.” When his unit redeployed to Okinawa, but return to Vietnam remained a terrifying possibility, Monk said he suffered flashbacks from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress. He used drugs too and was absent without leave.
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I was tempted to contribute the the "Wounded Warrior Project" until they included alleged PTSD patients who may or may not have ever been in combat.
I was tempted to contribute the the "Wounded Warrior Project" until they included alleged PTSD patients who may or may not have ever been in combat.
