[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep

Sun Nov 21 17:34:19 PST 2004

>
>
>Los Angeles TImes November 14, 2004
>
>These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep
>
>A mental health crisis is emerging, with one in six
>returning soldiers afflicted, experts say.
>
>By Esther Schrader - Times Staff Writer
>
>WASHINGTON - Matt LaBranche got the tattoos at a seedy
>place down the street from the Army hospital here where
>he was a patient in the psychiatric ward.
>
>The pain of the needle felt good to the 40-year-old
>former Army sergeant, whose memories of his nine months
>as a machine-gunner in Iraq had left him, he said,
>"feeling dead inside." LaBranche's back is now covered
>in images, the largest the dark outline of a sword.
>Drawn from his neck to the small of his back, it is
>emblazoned with the words LaBranche says encapsulate
>the war's effect on him: "I've come to bring you hell."
>
>In soldiers like LaBranche - their bodies whole but
>their psyches deeply wounded - a crisis is unfolding,
>mental health experts say. One out of six soldiers
>returning from Iraq is suffering the effects of post-
>traumatic stress - and as more come home, that number
>is widely expected to grow.
>
>The Pentagon, which did not anticipate the extent of
>the problem, is scrambling to find resources to address
>it.
>
>A study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
>found that 15.6% of Marines and 17.1% of soldiers
>surveyed after they returned from Iraq suffered major
>depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic
>stress disorder - a debilitating, sometimes lifelong
>change in the brain's chemistry that can include
>flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic attacks, violent
>outbursts, acute anxiety and emotional numbness.
>
>Army and Veterans Administration mental health experts
>say there is reason to believe the war's ultimate
>psychological fallout will worsen. The Army survey of
>6,200 soldiers and Marines included only troops willing
>to report their problems. The study did not look at
>reservists, who tend to suffer a higher rate of
>psychological injury than career Marines and soldiers.
>And the soldiers in the study served in the early
>months of the war, when tours were shorter and before
>the Iraqi insurgency took shape.
>
>"The bad news is that the study underestimated the
>prevalence of what we are going to see down the road,"
>said Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, a professor of psychiatry
>and pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School who is
>executive director of the VA's National Center for Post
>Traumatic Stress Disorder.
>
>Since the study was completed, Friedman said: "The
>complexion of the war has changed into a grueling
>counterinsurgency. And that may be very important in
>terms of the potential toxicity of this combat
>experience."
>
>Mental health professionals say they fear the system is
>not moving fast enough to treat the trauma. They say
>slowness to recognize what was happening to Vietnam
>veterans contributed to the psychological devastation
>from that war.
>
>More than 30% of Vietnam veterans eventually suffered
>from the condition that more than a decade later was
>given the name post-traumatic stress disorder. But
>since their distress was not clinically understood
>until long after the war ended, most went for years
>without meaningful treatment.
>
>"When we missed the boat with the Vietnam vets, we
>didn't get another chance," said Jerry Clark, director
>of the veterans clinic in Alexandria, Va. "When they
>left the service, they went away not for a month or two
>but for 10 years. And they came back addicted,
>incarcerated and all these things. We can't miss the
>boat again. It is imperative."
>
>Experts on post-traumatic stress disorder say it should
>come as no surprise that some of the soldiers in Iraq
>are fighting mental illness.
>
>Combat stress disorders - named and renamed but
>strikingly alike - have ruined lives following every
>war in history. Homer's Achilles may have suffered from
>some form of it. Combat stress was documented in the
>late 19th century after the Franco-Prussian War. After
>the Civil War, doctors called the condition
>"nostalgia," or "soldiers heart." In World War I,
>soldiers were said to suffer shell shock; in World War
>II and Korea, combat fatigue or battle fatigue.
>
>But it wasn't until 1985 that the American Psychiatric
>Assn. finally gave a name to the condition that had
>sent tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans into lives
>of homelessness, crime or despair.
>
>A war like the one in Iraq - in which a child is as
>likely to die as a soldier and unseen enemies detonate
>bombs - presents ideal conditions for its rise.
>
>Yet the Army initially sent far too few psychiatrists,
>psychologists and social workers to combat areas, an
>Army study released in the summer of 2003 found. Until
>this year, Congress had allocated no new funds to deal
>with the mental health effects of the war in Iraq. And
>when it did earmark money, the sum was minimal: $5
>million in each of the next three years.
>
>"We're gearing ourselves up now and preparing ourselves
>to meet whatever the need is, but clearly this is
>something that could not be planned for," said Dr.
>Alfonso Batres, a psychologist who heads the VA's
>national office of readjustment counseling services.
>
>Last year, 1,100 troops who had fought in Iraq or
>Afghanistan came to VA clinics seeking help for
>symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress; this
>year, the number grew tenfold. In all, 23% of Iraq
>veterans treated at VA facilities have been diagnosed
>with post-traumatic stress disorder.
>
>"And this is first-year data," Batres said. "Our
>experience is that over time that will increase."
>
>In the red brick buildings of Walter Reed Army Medical
>Center, the "psych patients," as they are known,
>mingle, sometimes uncomfortably, with those who have
>lost limbs and organs.
>
>One soldier being treated at Walter Reed, who spoke on
>condition of anonymity, walks the hospital campus in
>the bloodied combat boots of a friend he watched bleed
>to death.
>
>Another Iraq veteran in treatment at Walter Reed, Army
>1st Lt. Jullian Philip Goodrum, drives most mornings to
>nearby Silver Spring, Md., seeking the solitude of
>movies and the solace of friends.
>
>He leaves early to avoid traffic - the crush of cars
>makes him jumpy. On more than one occasion, he has
>imagined snipers with their sights on him in the
>streets. Diesel fumes cause flashbacks. He keeps a vial
>of medication in his pocket and pops a pill when he
>gets nervous.
>
>"You question - outside of dealing with your psych
>injury, which will affect you from one degree or
>another throughout your life - you also question
>yourself," Goodrum said. "I trained. I was an excellent
>soldier, a strong character. How could my mind
>dysfunction?"
>
>When it began to become clear that what the Pentagon
>initially believed would be a rapid, clear-cut war had
>transmuted into a drawn-out counterinsurgency, the Army
>began pushing to reach and treat distressed soldiers
>sooner.
>
>The number of mental health professionals deployed near
>frontline positions in Iraq has been increased. Suicide
>prevention programs are given to soldiers in the field.
>According to the Pentagon, 31 U.S. troops have killed
>themselves in Iraq.
>
>At more than 200 storefront clinics known as Vet
>Centers - created in 1979 to reach out to Vietnam
>veterans - the VA has increased the number of group
>therapy sessions and staff. Three months ago, the VA
>hired 50 Iraq war veterans to help serve as advocates
>at the clinics.
>
>Officials acknowledge that is only a start. The
>Government Accountability Office found in a study
>released in September that the VA lacked the
>information it needed to determine whether it could
>meet an increased demand for services.
>
>"Predicting which veterans will seek VA care and at
>which facilities is inherently uncertain," the report
>concluded, "particularly given that the symptoms of
>PTSD may not appear for years."
>
>The Army and the VA are also trying to catalog and
>research the mental health effects of this war better
>than they have in the past. In addition to the Walter
>Reed study, several more are tracking soldiers from
>before their deployment to Iraq through their combat
>experiences and into the future.
>
>If Iraq veterans can be helped sooner, they may fare
>better than those who fought in Vietnam, mental health
>experts say. And they note that the nation, although
>divided on the Iraq war, is more united in caring for
>the needs of returning soldiers than it was in the
>Vietnam era. And in the last decade, new techniques
>have proved effective in treating stress disorders,
>among them cognitive-behavioral therapy and drugs like
>Zoloft and Paxil.
>
>Whether people like Matt LaBranche seek and receive
>treatment will determine how deep an effect the stress
>of the war in Iraq ultimately has on U.S. society.
>
>Before the war, LaBranche was living in Saco, Maine,
>with his wife and children and had no history of mental
>illness.
>
>He deployed to Iraq with a National Guard
>transportation company based in Bangor. He came home a
>different person.
>
>Just three days after he was discharged from Walter
>Reed, he was arrested for threatening his former wife.
>When he goes to court Dec. 9, he could be looking at
>jail time.
>
>He lies on a couch at his brother's house most days
>now, struggling with the image of the Iraqi woman who
>died in his arms after he shot her, and the children he
>says caught some of his bullets. His speech is pocked
>with obscenities.
>
>On a recent outing with friends, he became so enraged
>when he saw a Muslim family that he had to take
>medication to calm down.
>
>He is seeing a therapist, but only once every two
>weeks.
>
>"I'm taking enough drugs to sedate an elephant, and I
>still wake up dreaming about it," LaBranche said. "I
>wish I had just freaking died over there."
>
>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-trauma14nov14,0,2230913.story?coll=la-home-headlines
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand