Some troops headed back to Iraq are mentally ill

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060319/news_1n19mental.html

Besides bringing antibiotics and painkillers, military personnel nationwide are heading back to Iraq with a cache of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications.

The psychotropic drugs are a bow to a little-discussed truth fraught with implications: Mentally ill service mem-bers are being returned to combat.

The redeployments are legal, and the service members are often eager to go. But veterans groups, lawmakers and mental-health professionals fear that the practice lacks adequate civilian oversight. They also worry that such redeployments are becoming more frequent as multiple combat tours become the norm and traumatized service members are retained out of loyalty or wartime pressures to maintain troop numbers.

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But medical officers for the Army and Marine Corps acknowledge that medicated service members – and those suffering combat-induced psychological problems – are returning to war. And anecdotal evidence, bolstered by the government's own studies, suggest that the number could be significant.

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“They are being told to diagnose combat-stress reaction instead of PTSD,” he said. “That does two things: It keeps the troops deployable and it makes it hard for them to collect disability claims once they get out of the military.”

...lots more...

It stands to reason that this would have to be the case. What an incredibly bad and irresponsible thing to do to the soldiers and to the people who come in contact with them. Absolutely sickening.

will find themselves on the wrong side of the law for crimes ranging from domestic violence to murder.

postal, as they say.

They are ready to really "even the score"

nt

What is that? Valium? The highly addictive valium?

Paxil is as addictive as heroin. The cure can cause as much harm as the disorder.

Big difference between SSRI's and benzodiazipines such as Ativan and Valium (what is usually given for anxiety). Benzodiazipines are highly addictive. SSRI's are not.

Is the government above giving addictive drugs to retain a compliant military? Our government? Ha! :rofl:

are being sent back, and how many are not properly diagnosed because their brain
damage is only 'MINOR' by military standards, that try to keep the statistics from becoming a political issue..

the Troops that have even very minor brain damage from concussions are at GREATER risk in combat and are the pentagons policies putting their fellow soldiers at greater risk by sending 'impaired' soldiers into combat that others depend on.

once you have a serious concussion the chances of DEVASTATING brain damage from what would be considered minor to one who had not had one to begin with.. is astronomical

http://www.press-enterprise.com/newsarchive/2003/09/17/1063758366.html

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/125/12/2699

just google.. iraq soldiers bain damage

there are articles about kids playing socker and bouncing the balls on heir heads getting lower school grades

i had a concussion (with laceration) of my forehead more than 30 years ago, from a head-on auto collision, when i hit the windshield (before the days of seatbelt requirements). i've often thought about whether it had permanently affected my memory or other areas of the brain.

...for combat, then they're asking for serious trouble.

I've got really severe PTSD from a messed up childhood, and it affects me in thousands of ways. I can't imagine someone in full blown PTSD getting shipped back into the environment that's triggering their symptoms. That's insane and a recipe for even more severe symptoms in the future. How can they hope to function?

Maybe the guys with a really mild case might be able to tolerate the environment retriggering their symptoms, but I suspect it will just make a bad situation worse.

Can you imagine a poor guy with serious PTSD on the battlefield trying to stay alive and keep his fellow soldiers alive while he's having flashbacks of other stuff he's been through, plus irritability, memory loss, severe depression, etc.?

Edit to add: And I forgot about the serious avoidance tendencies. I envision people with serious PTSD being forced to leave the battlefield because their PTSD has gone whacked. They'll desert. They'll avoid everything that reminds them of their trauma. How the heck can they get the job done? This is insane on so many levels.

More soldier deaths in Iraq. But oh, I forgot. Bush doesn't care about us. :sarcasm:

All I know it doesn't take much to go over the top and across the line to the point of no return. The irritability from the memory of the past is gut retching....then the mind regurgitates in an unpredictable manner. Watch OUT!!

and best wishes. Don't know what else to say.

served during Vietnam, and many of them suffered for years from PTSD. (A few that I knew back then came home really messed up. I'll never forget them. :cry: )

a while back. i knew then that the goal was to patch them up, send them back, and keep them going no matter how traumatized they were.

He'd already been there twice and couldn't face going back again. He was having trouble getting mental health treatment when he got stateside and started self-medicating with alcohol and street drugs. He was having nightmares so he was doing speed so he wouldn't sleep but it keyed him up so badly he drank. He was depressed and had been talking suicide for a while. All he wanted was "out" so he wouldn't have to go back. He had been notified that his discharge was going through and made arrangements to move in with my friend. He boxed up some of his stuff and shipped it out to California. Then he started getting freaked out and began binging. He was afraid they'd cancel his discharge and call him back up. We're not really sure what happened after that except that he started drinking in earnest. At some point, he and apparently fell and hit his head. He bled to death in his drug and alcohol stupor. He was found dead on Veteran's Day last year, the same day his first shipment of boxes arrived at friend's house.

He was so close to being free and alive. Now he's just free. Those fuckers are destroying so many lives. If there is a hell I hope they rot in it. :grr:

:cry:

is that there are some who are getting some form of mental help. But there are just too many wounds that have been opened and some people will never heal. None of them, not a single one of them, will ever be the same. All my aunts and uncles tell me that my dad changed after he came back from the Korean Conflict. I grew up in a house with a father who suffered (and still suffers) from PTSD (although we call it "combat fatigue") and know what it's like to have someone I love whose life was changed because of war. I never knew which dad I'd have when I got home (or from moment to moment). Would he be the "fun dad" or the "angry dad" or the "weepy dad" or the dad who wasn't sure what year it was? We never knew.

The one thing I do know is the Bush family has alternated the lives of the next few generations and they have done it on a global scale. None of this should have happened. If there is a hell I hope they rot in it.

under those conditions of using and abusing you describe. His life was already destroyed by this illegal war of aggression.

I'm sorry for him and all the other stories out there.

and his is only one example of those untold stories of men and women whose lives have been ruined because of this administration and, more specifically, this "war".

He was stationed at Diego Garcia for his first tour of duty and the second time he was in the Green Zone. Apparently he had problems after his first tour that he felt he couldn't get help for but they sent him back.

I'm so sorry for your friend. There are many broken people because of a handful of bastards in power. How can this be?

He thinks he could've/should've done more. I remind him that he was on the other coast and he did what he could. His mom is also kicking herself over it.

It's all bullshit. It doesn't make any sense.

from what is being done to these troops.

If you have any doubts about what sorts of long term problems our current soldiers will be facing for the rest of their lives, I suggest you visit a couple of Vietnam vet chat rooms and hang out there for at least a few months, till you get the reality that a majority of them are being medicated -- many extremely heavily -- for PTSD and other disabilities related to their service.

I was anti-war during Vietnam, but I was also fervently supportive of the soldiers, the veterans who managed to make it home alive, and I strongly resented the way most anti-war people treated them. That made their ordeal all the more difficult and psychologically punishing.

But our warmongering political "leaders" learned a lesson from the mistake they made in Vietnam of sending troops out individually for one-year tours of duty rather than keeping them together in units with buddies they trained with and got close to. The bond between fellow soldiers becomes very strong, especially once they have served in combat situations together. You've all heard a lot of the Iraq vets while home, many of them in hospital being rehabbed for injuries and wounds, saying they wanted to go back to support their unit, their friends, their buds, even though it meant going back into the hell of Iraq they'd left. This is a mentality the Bush administration is COUNTING ON so they can continue their "stop-loss" efforts -- and it works for them!

I believe history will judge the present resident of the WhiteHouse very harshly, and along with him all those who supported him and enabled him to commit such horrors as he has. I wonder also if it will judge the rest of us equally harshly because we failed to "get radical" in time to prevent so much damage to so many lives, both in America and abroad....

I asked him how it was and all he would say is that he's seeing a psych
doctor, taking medications every day; and, as long as he continues the meds he feels as if he'll be okay.Other than that he will not talk about Iraq, and I don't want to press it....

In high stress situations we tend to place blame not on our comrades but on our leaders. I would think that would lead to fragging. Not of platoon and company officers, but of higher ranks.

Anyone heard of such instances?

Army command is investigAting

THAT'S HOW THEY WRITE THE SHIT UP.

Along with the many points already mentioned, this use of "emotionally wounded" warriors furthers the illusion of full troop strength, buffers the drops in recruitment, and generally helps hide the damage this administration is doing to our forces. I second the concern that that we will see fallout for many years ahead.

Well, why do THINK they're not being allowed to come home? That's all the Bush monarchy needs, a bunch of soldiers running around having Viet Nam-type flashbacks without funding for veteran/medical services to help them!

:headbang:
rocknation

and enough psychotropics on board to choke a horse. Army didn't care at all.
He is in Iraq as we speak.

I have heard brief accounts that the surgeons are keeping men alive who would have died of such injuries in previous wars. It is the function of the propaganda organ to keep such stories hushed. Does anybody know what article or what site really does account for this?

and the Secretary of War==I mean Defense, and the Secretary of State Secrets, and so forth.

One of the trends in the armed forces is that reenlistment remains strong even as it becomes harder to find new recruits.

I suspect that PTSD may play a role in those reenlistment numbers, how large a role I don't know (Wikipedia guesses that the number of people already in the initial stages of PTSD from the Iraq war is from 25,000-35-000, so the total number probably isn't much more than that, but I think even a tenth of that is plenty enough.)

I think that people with PTSD are more likely than others to reenlist because they're suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and as long as they keep themselves in the ultra-real world of combat, the problem stays away.

It makes sense that the armed forces looks the other way when accepting reenlistments from people with PTSD. They need the bodies, and the people with PTSD may be the ones most willing to supply them.

But I don't think it's right or fair to claim that people with PTSD are reenlisting voluntarily. I think they're doing it to alleviate the pain and distress they experience trying to live by the more delicate rules of everyday life. I think they're having trouble with everyday life because they are not being properly diagnosed and treated by the nation which chose to send them to fight and by the armed forces which deploys them.

That is my concern.

"Get back in there you fucking coward!" :sarcasm:

Let me know when the compassion kicks in. I've given up on seeing any conservatism. :shrug:

:grr: :mad:

“They are being told to diagnose combat-stress reaction instead of PTSD,” he said. “That does two things: It keeps the troops deployable and it makes it hard for them to collect disability claims once they get out of the military.”

C-Span had a show with some drug abuse experts, one of whom was from Iraq. He said that there's already a legal epidemic of anti-anxiety drug use in Iraq. I always wondered how people could cope. I guess everyone over there is being medicated to soften reality. Since these drugs are used so widely here, maybe that also helps explain why America seems incapable of taking our country back.