Soldiers and PTSD

[editec]

I'm no expert so I ask a legitimate question about PTSD and I hope the experts can answer it. Are there degrees of PTSD?

Yes, of course.

What is the criteria for authorizing a PTSD disability?

Determination by a qualified psychiatrist

Is there a point at which the V.A. admits that a PTSD patient is dangerous to himself and society?

What makes you INSIST that they are a danger to himself and others?

They might be, (unlikely but possible) but being dangerous to yourself and others isn't necessarily an outcome of PTSD.

Where did you get THAT idea, Whitehall?

 

[bOOger]

My synopsis on Whitehall, for what it's worth. If he did serve?? It was before the Vietnam war. This makes him older than dirt. Due to the fact that he didn't participate in any type of military action (not his fault), he just can't comprehend this whole PTSD thing. We all know that as we get older, we become set in our ways, and hard to convince otherwise. What I'm trying to say is...... You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Doc Fred
Never had the Black Syph, but the Screamin' Demon was no laughing matter

Confusious bOOger

 

[BDBoop]

In case there is anyone out there who is sincerely curious about PTSD, here is something this guy wrote:

PTSD In One Sentence

So you are twenty and you just stepped on a mine and you are all mangled and the medic’s eyes tell you that are not going to live and you start crying for your mother in this little two year old voice which wakes you up and you are not two and you are not twenty but sixty five and the war was forty five years ago and you had this dream because you hit a stump yesterday and killed your mower and it freaked you out and you are going to walk around all day pretending to be fine but it will take one, two ,three weeks to come back from the dead if you don’t have another dream in one, two, three days and have to walk around some more pretending you belong in this world.

That's one of the reasons I could never begrudge, or second guess.

The other is my PTSD. Survivors come in all shapes, sizes, and life experiences. So if I, in my mid 50's and one of the strongest women I know, ... can feel my brain damn near literally shatter and crawl off into the corners whimpering at shit I cannot share to this day ... That happened when I was too little to fight back ...

Fuck.

Anyway.

So.

It takes a survivor to know a survivor.

Amd to also know all this unmitigated SHIT was for nothing is just salt in the wound.

 

[usmcstinger]

OK, OK, OK You got me. I confess. I burned my draft card. Some buddies and me burned our draft cards. We were drinking, (Imagine that) and were livin' large in Bien Hoa, Vietnam. We yelled, "Hell, no we won't go, we're already here!" A most satisfying moment, I must say.

Yeah, I avoided the Draft. I enlisted in the USMC. C co. 1st Bn 4th Marines 66-68 Infantry Fire Team Leader Northern I Corps to the Zee. I have no regrets and make no apologies.

I have two good friends who were with the 1st CAV. One was with the 1st of 7th and the other 2nd of the 8th.

Welcome Home!

I was 2/8 and Doc Fred was 15th Med. Semper Fi buddy and Welcome Home! I don't know anybody that has regrets or make apologies either. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Were you PI or Hollywood? I retired from DOD off of MCRD PI. I was doing recruit psych evals. Now that was a fun job!

I went to PI. We were not issued sunglasses like Hollywood got.

 

[usmcstinger]

You need to look up the History of PTSD. It is not hard to do.

 

[usmcstinger]

Labeling soldiers has a better effect than spitting on them.
It's more of the same liberal hate.

Why are you so eager to trivialize wounded soldiers to lamely promote your political agenda? A topic comes up by a poster with a genuine desire to learn about a problem faced by our returning veterans and reachs out for information that could lead to how the poster and those who read this thread might understand and perhaps be helpful to our veterans and you find the need to hijack it into a selfish opportunity to remind everyone of how you hate liberals. Like that is important. Your opinion is so important that you are willing to mislead people on such a serious subject shows a complete lack of decency, and shame on you. Shame on you sir.

Fuck of dick wad.
It's a fake condition.
Veterans don't need dumbass civvies telling them they have a mental condition that has no diagnostic tool, has no way to be measured and no specific symptoms.
The whole PTSD industry is a liberal one and relates only to the hate liberals have for veterans.
How often have vile liberals dismissed opposing views of veterans by sneering and saying things like " sounds like PTSD "?
Of course it is also a handy trick for a gun grab !!
Just declare all vets to have PTSD, grab their guns.
A liberals curiosity is never with the intent to help, only to further an agenda.

I am a Vietnam Combat Vet and most likely more of a Conservative than you are.

Since you do not understand anything about PTSD, try educating yourself by reading about the History of PTSD and the section of the DSM V devoted to it. If you do not know how to access the above, get a 12th Grader to help you.

It is plausible that you a left wing nut, trying to make Conservatives look bad.

Regardless of you political leanings, you are still very ignorant. Your BS is quite laughable.

 

[1CAVCCO15MED]

Let there Be Light by John Huston is on you tube.

 

[1CAVCCO15MED]

Add this to you tube. German shell shock /watch?v=yQD7ffTIhTM

 

[1AirCav69]

Let there Be Light by John Huston is on you tube.

I've never seen this Doc. Watched this today. Great documentary and continues to dispel the myth that PTSD is newly invented. Thanks. Will get to the Germans later.

 

[whitehall]

You asked that question before and I gave you a list. Now you are backpedddling and playing stupid. Are you to lazy to look up the information I provided to you or just backpeddling? You are asking stupid questions. Your fakery shows through. Why don't you quit while you are behind. You are just making a bigger fool of yourself than you already have.

I'm getting old Camp. Tell me again.

You can't educate yourself about PTSD on a message board. You can learn some things, but in your case, you have way to much to learn.
At least look up these five recognized levels or types of PTSD

Normal Stress Response
Acute Stress Disorder
Uncomplicated PTSD
Cormorbid PTSD
Complex PTSD

At least read up on these levels or types of PTSD before being so quick to talk about a topic you seem so unprepared to talk about.

Maybe you misunderstood my question. Is the PTSD syndrome directly connected to combat or should every housewife with a couple of kids who illustrates "comorbid PTSD" be eligible for a pension if she is a government employee?

 

[9thIDdoc]

I'm getting old Camp. Tell me again.

You can't educate yourself about PTSD on a message board. You can learn some things, but in your case, you have way to much to learn.
At least look up these five recognized levels or types of PTSD

Normal Stress Response
Acute Stress Disorder
Uncomplicated PTSD
Cormorbid PTSD
Complex PTSD

At least read up on these levels or types of PTSD before being so quick to talk about a topic you seem so unprepared to talk about.

Maybe you misunderstood my question. Is the PTSD syndrome directly connected to combat or should every housewife with a couple of kids who illustrates "comorbid PTSD" be eligible for a pension if she is a government employee?

How many times must you be given the same answers to the same questions before you begin to understand? Do you even bother to read them?
1. No pension for PTSD.
2. The Post Traumatic Stress involved in PTSD may or may not be as a result of combat but...
3. ...it must be "service connected" (line of duty) and disabling to one extent or another in order to qualify for disability compensation.
Example: a service member might become a POW and experience physical and/or mental and/or sexual abuse over a period of time without ever actually being in combat.

 

[emilynghiem]

Labeling soldiers has a better effect than spitting on them.
It's more of the same liberal hate.

Why are you so eager to trivialize wounded soldiers to lamely promote your political agenda? A topic comes up by a poster with a genuine desire to learn about a problem faced by our returning veterans and reachs out for information that could lead to how the poster and those who read this thread might understand and perhaps be helpful to our veterans and you find the need to hijack it into a selfish opportunity to remind everyone of how you hate liberals. Like that is important. Your opinion is so important that you are willing to mislead people on such a serious subject shows a complete lack of decency, and shame on you. Shame on you sir.

Fuck of dick wad.
It's a fake condition.
Veterans don't need dumbass civvies telling them they have a mental condition that has no diagnostic tool, has no way to be measured and no specific symptoms.
The whole PTSD industry is a liberal one and relates only to the hate liberals have for veterans.
How often have vile liberals dismissed opposing views of veterans by sneering and saying things like " sounds like PTSD "?
Of course it is also a handy trick for a gun grab !!
Just declare all vets to have PTSD, grab their guns.
A liberals curiosity is never with the intent to help, only to further an agenda.

Dear Pauli: I think you are talking about two different contexts.
(Like talking about the REAL green vote/movement and what the "Democrats/Liberals" bought and sold as carbon credits and passing corporations off as green for money etc.)

Those are two different things, and you are BOTH RIGHT.

There is a REAL PTSD and there is this abuse of labels to achieve political ends.
it happened with buying/selling the black vote, green vote, pink vote, anti war vote
and now the singlepayer vote was bought and sold as corporate political garbage.

This doesn't discredit the real thing that got HIJACKED.

So there is REAL PTSD
"in addition" to what you are talking about
You're both right!

* I even got it from a 1 day incident of watching a group of people
harassed by federal marshals with the media making a public spectacle though the eviction technically by law violated their rights, it was pushed as valid because govt was behind it.
* more recently I got it after spending 24 hours in a botched hurricane evacuation
where afterwards I went numb, jumped at the sound of any noise louder than a pin drop,
and couldn't look at people because I'd seen crowds and crowds of them and just absorbed too much emotional panic and hysteria (the silent type). It took months to return to normal.

And I work with Democrats trying to clean up the denial and damage going on. So I have seen the politicians buy and sell the minority votes, take millions of dollars away from community programs, and use that to buy big interests that can get them into office. After hijacking the Black vote, and the women's vote, they went after the anti-war and green vote, and now they are pimping the health care vote. All all these groups are complaining they go against their promises, so they have to do all the work themselves anyway!

I worry that this "denial syndrome "is something else. Either Bystander syndrome or Stockholm syndrome. Where people justify going along with it instead of confronting it. I think that is more dangerous. At least with PTSD there's recognition something is wrong.

Pauli what you are talking about IS really going on, but that is the political hijacking part.
That doesn't discredit the very real cases of PTSD and treatment.
Falsely claiming rape to cover up does NOT mean "all cases of rape are fake."
It is ABUSING the fact there IS REAL RAPE in order to make false claims at others' expense.

 

[waltky]

PTSD hangs on well after the battlefield is left...

Army Sgt. Issac Sims left the war in Iraq, but it didn’t leave him
November 2, 2014 — The tattered brown house on Lawndale Avenue bears the scars of a distant war that Issac Sims survived until he returned home. Slivers of glass from broken windows lie beneath walls pocked with bullet holes. In a corner of the garage, a faint stain on the concrete floor has turned the color of rust, time darkening the blood that emptied from his body.

Sims was killed here May 25, Memorial Day weekend, a year after his discharge from the Army and thousands of miles from Iraq. He endured two tours there only to die at age 26 in his parents’ home on Kansas City’s decaying east side. The fatal shots were fired not by insurgents but by police. The distinction may have eluded his damaged mind. During his second tour in 2010, Sims sustained a mild traumatic brain injury while riding in an armored vehicle that struck a roadside bomb. The former sergeant moved back to Kansas City from his unit’s base in Alaska in April last year, and struggling with migraines, insomnia, anxiety and depression, he visited the city’s Veterans Affairs Medical Center. His symptoms suggested post-traumatic stress disorder.

His erratic behavior made clear to Patricia and Shawn Sims that their son had left the war without the war leaving him. He swerved through traffic when driving to avoid bombs that he imagined were buried in the road. Walking the tree line near their property, he searched for enemy fighting positions and threw punches at phantom militants. He sometimes rushed into the house and announced, “You know I just saved your lives, don’t you?” “He thought he was back in Iraq,” Patricia said, sitting in the couple’s living room, where dozens of photos on the walls and shelves trace her son’s life from newborn to soldier. A triangular wood case holds the folded American flag she received at his funeral. “It was hard to understand who he was. He wasn’t Issac.”

At graduation from basic training in 2007, Issac Sims said of the Army, "This is my tribe. I'm never leaving." Six years later, he was discharged after serving two tours in Iraq, where he sustained a traumatic brain injury in 2010.

Sims pleaded guilty to domestic assault on April 30 this year after an altercation with his estranged wife. A municipal court judge ordered him to enter a VA treatment program as part of his probation. He sought to enroll multiple times in his final weeks. His last attempt was May 23. An intake worker told him a bed might be available in 30 days.

Forty-eight hours later, he was dead. Upset after arguing with his father that Sunday morning, Sims fired five or six rounds from an AK-47 outside the house. Shawn called 911 and asked that police take his son to the VA. Officers claimed they heard shots from inside the home after arriving. They cleared residents from the area and surrounded the property. Efforts to persuade Sims to surrender ended when the former soldier, standing in the garage’s back doorway, pointed the rifle at members of the police tactical team. One or more of them opened fire.

A constant shadow

See also:

IG report criticizes former Wounded Warrior Care director
November 3, 2014 ~ The former director of the Pentagon’s Wounded Warrior Care and Transition Policy Office bullied and verbally abused employees, calling some stupid and referring to others as idiots, liars and criminals behind their backs, according to an Inspector General’s investigation.

Philip A. Burdette — who left the position in March 2013 — also misused official time, rental vehicles, TDY schedules and expenses, and he improperly tried to use his influence on behalf of a subcontractor, according to the report, which was concluded in October 2013 but was not released until Monday, in redacted form. The report recommended corrective action against Burdette. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions as to whether or what type of actions were taken in the year since the report was issued. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported last week that the Pentagon confirmed Burdette was transferred to the position of special adviser to the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, where he remains.

The IG’s office received six complaints from employees during a four-month period after Burdette became director in March 2011. He was responsible for oversight of policies related to wounded, ill and injured servicemembers. Investigators asked 10 witnesses who worked closely with Burdette to provide any positive remarks regarding his leadership and actions with subordinates. “Many stated he had no positive leadership characteristics,” the report noted. One witness who did not work for Burdette said that the director managed his staff “primarily by mocking and punishing subordinates.”

The names of all witnesses were redacted from the report. Eight witnesses described Burdette’s behavior — during which he would routinely yell and scream — as “unchecked” by his direct superior, John R. Campbell, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the wounded warrior office. Campbell announced he was leaving the position shortly after Burdette left in March 2013. Campbell had taken a “laissez faire supervisory role” in regard to Burdette’s behavior, witnesses told the IG.

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