RE: http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,169678,00.html

Okay, some where between this two set of ludicrous numbers lies the truth:

300,000 men and women coming home with PTSD or TBI.

And, 1 Percent of men and women coming home with PTSD or TBI.

Clearly, both numbers are conflated with someone who has an agenda. That's the only explanation I can think of for presenting this kind of data. 300,000 people MAY have been exposed to a "concussive event," IE, a large or close explosion. Sure, I'll buy that. Anyone's who's been on a few patrols has risked an IED. Even us Fobbits get shelled by mortars, and a lot VBIEDs happen right on the perimeter - so plenty of people have probably been exposed to "concussive events."

But will everyone who experiences one automatically get a TBI?? That's like saying every kid football player who hits his head in a game gets a TBI. SOME will get concussions, and some will have permanent damage. The number is likely higher than the number of actual combat wounded - logically, if you were close enough to get shrapnel, you skull was close enough to get rattled pretty badly.

Again, will everyone who was under stress and emotional distress over here automatically get PTSD? I think not. A lot of will be fine, or will be as soon as they leave us home for more than a year and quit stop-lossing everyone. Many of us will be able to work our way through our problems, if we are smart enough to recognize them and humble enough to ask for help, and help is made available. We might not be the same people we used to be, but war changes people, and this is NOT the same thing as full-blown PTSD.

HAVING said all that, I find the number 1% to be much more unrealistic. That would mean only one out of hundred guys I know will get PTSD or have a traumatic brain injury. I personally know four people who have or will likely be diagnosed with PTSD, and I am in military intelligence! My unit is not very big, either. I would hazard a guess that ten percent of those who serve will have PTSD or a TBI, but that is just a guess, and so a guess I will call it. What we need is hard data, not politics. The left wants to victimize all combat veterans, and the right wants to sweep everything under the rug and clap us on the back and call us inhumanly brave heroes, when the fact is, precious few of us are victims, or excessively brave. We are just human beings. Quit politicking and expend your energy on coming up with hard numbers, and then some practical solutions for dealing with these problems.

Okay, Rant Over. Anyone else have something to say about this article?

Glad to read you appear to be the expert and I'm sure since you are in the Intelligence field tha you've done the study on this topic. I guess since my retirement from the military in the mid 70s that the Intelligence field that you are in has changed direction.

People are affected by PTSD or TBI all the time. Some times their called Victims, other times Emergency room workers, Cops, Fire Fighters, or First responders. It's the level of emotional distress that determines the amount of treatment needed.
GBH, Retired E-8

Each soldier, who enters the theater, sees and hears sights and sounds that are terrifying and this is a product of wars since time began. What matters is, that there has to be people with compassion that care enough to provide what is necessary to try and heal the wounds of war. What I see are people who want to push these non-bleeding injuries under the rug. So they are out of sight out of mind and not address them. Mean while, the poor soldier suffers in silence without the attention he so desperately deserves. How can we live with outselves knowing that the soldier cries and no one hears him. JERSEY ANGEL

War Casualties Under Reported?



Of course they are. War hawks like to push others to fight, instigate. They are not interested in who dies or how many as long as it is not them or their family. I doubt they sit around the dinner table talking about it either. Thats why they get so upset when somebody bring the numbers up.

Of course war casualties are under reported. The 4,000+ war dead are those persons who were dead at the scene. What is not counted in the 4,000+ are those who die of wounds received in combat 6 hours, or days, or months after the incident.

US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 135 combat casualties from May 13 to June 10, as the official casualty total reached at least 65,699. The total includes 33,517 dead and wounded by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 32,182
(last reported March 1) dead and injured from "non-hostile" causes.

The actual total is over 85,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the approximately 20,000 casualties discovered only after they returned from Iraq -mainly brain trauma from explosions.

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by routinely reporting only the total killed (4,094 as of June 10) and rarely mentioning the 30,182 wounded in combat. To further minimize public
perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 31,325 (as of March 1)military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,094 reported deaths
include 759 (up five) who died from those same causes, including 145 suicide as of March 1.


The number of wounded is updated weekly (usually Tuesdays) by the Pentagon at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf.

The dead are reported by Iraq Coalition Casualties http://www.icasualties.org/oif/

As of the end of the first half of FY 2007, almost 720,000 service men and women have separated from the armed forces after service in Iraq or Afghanistan, and over 250,000 have sought care in VA. About 95,000 received at least a preliminary mental health diagnosis. Among these, PTSD, experienced by over 45,000 or 48 percent is the most common.

These are all casualties

I believe that there are a greater number of casualties than what is being reported. PTSD, TBI and other injuries that may surface later.

Thanks

Weather or not there is a difference in the numbers, the way the VA treats disabled vets, I wish that I had claimed PTSD! Now days, it seems that you get more notice from the VA if you claim PTSD then if you are actually hurt. I, too am a Gulf vet and have done everything but fall over for the few dollars they give me. If I had convinced the VA that I had PTSD, I would probably be 100% disabled now with the other problems they are paying me for. Since nobody can disprove PTSD, why not claim it?? I was one of those vets that said I was OK and am now on sleeping pills just to get a good nite's sleep. Now it is too late. I appreciate the fact that a lot of young people saw things that maybe they found shocking, but, come on, war is hell and I have the feeling that if 300,000 soldiers have PTSD, I missed the boat. I have friends from Viet Nam that saw even worse and have not claimed. I am not saying that there are not true cases of PTSD, but, 300,000????? What did these people think they were going to see when they joined----picnics????

I retired in 1993 after 13 years of service in the Army Special Forces. It took 16 months for my MEB/PEB to go through for my discharge. I fought the VA for 4 years before receiving my disability rating. I have been granted a 100% permanent and total disability for tramatic brain injury/PTSD, and the other inevitable injuries that came with a tour in the SF. In the end, I lost all my friends and have become completely reclusive, my marriage failed, I have a 85% debt to income ratio from mismanaging my income, and am constantly in conflict with other people I come in contact with. A misanthrope of the highest caliber, if you will. I live in fear, and carry a firearm everywhere I go (legal CCP), and have been called hypervigilant. And this is with the best care the good physicians at the VAMC can offer me. Can you imagine what these fine, young, returning veteran's chances of succeeding in our current political climate will be? Can you imagine the fate that awaits them without the proper diagnosis and care? God help us all.

Nothing will seriuosly be done about this problem until a bunch of these neglected vets snap and make the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing look like a picnic.

Hats off to Mr. Michael L. Dominguez, principal deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, in my oppinion, you are a true tenured beurocrat!

I see it quite a bit in our returning warriors at Ft. Campbell. They come back from a tour and try to get back to a "normal" life. Some enroll in school to further their education, then drop out because they can not interact with the instructors and other students. One guy I know had driven, by his estimate, a couple hundred thousand miles in Iraq as a supply sergeant and survived 8 IED attacks. He lasted 2 months before he dropped out then was discharged a few months later. Haven't heard from him since. I just hope he gets the help he needs but I doubt if it will come from the VA.

I am a Vietnam Veteran. I served with the First Air Cav from 67-68. I have been diagnosed with PTSD and have been in treatment since 1993. When the war ended many Vietnam veterans were becoming victims of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, exposure to dioxins, and acting out in anti social behaviors such as crime and domestic abuse. In the 1980's the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) was formed and chartered by Congress. At that time the nation and veteran organizations turned their backs to the Vietnam Veterans and their collective war related problems. It was the hard work of the VVA that put pressure on Congress to look into why Vietnam veterans were suffering from all of the above problems. As a result Congress passed laws and mandated the VA to study these issues. Along with the VA the World Health Organization, and other independent agencies also did their own studies. Back at that time some of the studies have shown that as many as 30% of Vietnam Veterans had symptoms of PTSD. The VA has been mandated to track and update the the readjustment and health of all Vietnam Veterans. To date that report has not been completed. I would bet that as time has past the numbers of PTSD alone are probably much higher, now that the stigma of PTSD has been dealt with and people are coming forward after years of concealing their PTSD. What makes matters worse is that the VA has been caught with Dr Katz hiding suicide numbers and Dr Perez sending emails to have clinicians in a Texas Va clinic to mis diagnose PTSD as readjustment disorder! So go figure folks and make up your own minds about what our government thinks of it's Vets.

Does this mean that all veteran should be given dissabilty pay.Gee I hope it's retroactive. I'm 85. This implies that all veterans are a bunch of wimps.

Hal Hooper

from the same govt.that dienied agent orange

quote:

Originally posted by sgt_de:
from the same govt.that dienied agent orange

And the Atomic veterans that were used as guinea pigs most are dead now having been denied benefits and the genetic calculations are inumerable. They havent even acknowleged these vets and wont for fear of opening a pandoras box.

Unfortunately my true military experience is limited to four years in military and two tours to the Balkans to fight on behalf of Islamic Jihad under the brave leadership of Bill Clinton. However I would to contribute to this discussion my grandfather’s story. He passed away in 2006 from a piece of shrapnel he carried in his stomach since 1942.
In 1941 he was evacuated at the age of 16 from a small town in the East Ukraine along with his 15 year old sister. They had to walk 150 km to the nearest train station, where they were put on the train on a way to Ural Mountains. During the train ride they were subjected to constant German air strikes, Nazis has absolute air superiority after they destroyed nearly 80% of Russian air force within the first few days of the war, and had to take refuge in nearby fields.

Upon his arrival, he lied about his age to join the military, he was only 16. He was deployed in fall of 41 in the southeast region of Ukraine. His first combat experience came in the summer of 1942 during a failed Russian offensive. After a few short days offensive stalled and Germans went into the counter-offensive encircling over 500,000 troops. My grandfather was on of them. He and seven other men had to walk 80 km west to break out from encirclement through an open Ukrainian prairie. They walked during a night and hid during a day. Only three of them made out alive.

Next military action he participated in was the Battle of Stalingrad. When his unit landed on the west bank of Volga river in the late summer of 1942, the stretch of land that separated Nazis from the water was as thin as 80m, in some places Germans were actually getting water out of the river. During one of the Russian attempts to push German forces away from the river he was hit in the stomach by three pieces of fragmentation. He was only seventeen.

Later, he participated in Russian counter-offensive in Stalingrad and liberation of Ukraine. It was then when he found out that his entire village of 1,500 people was exterminated by Nazis in retribution for supporting Ukrainian partisans. Units of Nazi SS forced the entire population of the village into a number of farm buildings and burned them alive. His parents, grand-parents, and other relatives were murdered along with his friends and almost everyone else he knew before the war. Over 2,000 villages in Ukraine and Belarus met the same end. He was nineteen.

He was wounded once more in Poland in 1944 and never saw action on German front. The war was almost over and he was sent to a short term military academy. He became a lieutenant and was sent to Russian Far East where 1.5 million strong Russian forces were being prepared for an attack on Imperial Japan.

After the end of the war he spent 30+ years in the Russian military retiring as a colonel. He was married to the same woman until the day he died. He raised two beautiful daughters and had four grand-children. After the end of his military career he continued to work as a chief of security at a large factory that produced fire fighting equipment.

He died in 2006 after a piece of fragmentation that he carried for over 60 years in this stomach, moved causing an eternal bleeding.

PTSD? TBI? What a bunch of whinny women.

quote:

17218959
Basic Training

Posted Tue 17 June 2008 07:49 AM Hide Post
Does this mean that all veteran should be given dissabilty pay.Gee I hope it's retroactive. I'm 85. This implies that all veterans are a bunch of wimps.

Hal Hooper

Posts: 1 | Registered: Tue 17 June 2008

Thank you Hal for your service