Lee Spiller on KXYL : Enviroment, Religion, *Terrorism, & Mental Health

I agree with Lee Spiller on the important role that "enviroment" plays in mental health issues !
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Guarding human rights
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. Our mission is simple: to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.
It is truly unfortunate that so many children in Texas and the U.S. are subjected to heavy mind-altering psychiatric drugs, many of which now carry stern warnings from the FDA. As our state's inspector general found last year, these drugs were often prescribed to Medicaid kids without a diagnosis to support their use.
Another issue: Our organization has worked since 1999 to curb the use of deadly restraints in mental health facilities, particularly on children. We were thrilled last week when Gov. Rick Perry signed Senate Bill 325, prohibiting the use of more dangerous restraint techniques that interfere with breathing.
We cannot afford to treat people diagnosed with mental illness as second-class citizens.
Lee Spiller, Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Texas, Austin

source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/stories/062605dnediltrs.41d55826.html
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Enviromental issues such as religious abuse ?

13 March 2002 :: "With God, All Things are Possible."

I'm more disturbed by the Andrea Yates verdict than I'd have expected. It was announced last night at work where televisions are suspended throughout the office. Upon the word 'guilty,' my coworkers began speaking their approval, and then, in the warmth of their unanimity, they became bolder, making statements such as "They should drown her," and "Fry, Baby, fry". When I looked over my dreary cubicle wall to see who was talking, someone saw me, sensed my contempt, and asked if I disagreed. I said I did, of course, and listed her history of psychosis, that she'd stopped taking her medication, that she lived in an environment of religious fundamentalism, had a negligent husband, suffered from deep postpartum depression yet her husband urged her to have more and more children. My points caused an uneasy silence, and then slowly, one after another, the condemnation returned. "I'd put five bullets in her head, if you ask me," said one of my Christian coworkers.

And naturally these very kinds of men and women sat on the jury for the trial. These are the jury of one's peers, guaranteed as a safeguard against injustice. But among those 'peers,' I wonder if there was a single person who'd experienced religious fundamentalism firsthand, or a psychologist who could speak to postpartum depression, or even someone familiar with a chemical imbalance over which one has no control except through medication. Probably no on all counts. More likely, her so-called peers were Texas housewives and businessmen who saw that she locked the doors before killing her children, and therefore must have known the difference between right and wrong. And in the backs of their minds they probably thought, like a bunch of weed-bender Kantians, that everyone really knows the difference between right and wrong deep down, crazy or not.

When I was at EC, I made a point of not watching a single day's coverage of the OJ trial. I didn't want to participate in that kind of CNN festival by which viewers become the equivalent of a national Jerry Springer audience. With the Andrea Yates trial, I still didn't watch television coverage, but I followed the story in print media, sought to understand the facts and nuances of the case. This is probably why the points I made last night at work seemed to surprise those standing around the television screens. But, as I said, they eventually turned back to their screens and warm group, which is also probably why their judgments remained unaffected.

If I'd been Yates' attorney, I'd have emphasized the psychological double-barrels of a chemical imbalance and religious fundamentalism. I've seen supposedly sane men and women convinced of nearly anything by fundamentalism. They thought they were evil, everyone else was evil, that public schools are tools of the devil, that KISS stands for Knights in Satan's Service, and that the Smurfs are based on a satanic pagan legend involving blue men who turn one of themselves into a woman in order to further their satanic lineage. These men and women didn't just hear these ideas, they believed them deeply. Mysticism and unreality became their reality. When their friends got sick, they would put oil on their heads and pray over them in tongues, trying to cast out demons. I saw a woman treated this way after she'd been in a car accident and suffered loss of short-term memory. She'd been a teacher, an intellectual of sorts, and there her fellow church family stood around her, laying on hands, speaking in tongues, casting out the 'spirit of dumbness'. In such an environment of sweeping magical thinking, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to have met an Andrea Yates, this person standing on the brink of psychosis, being pushed farther and farther away from reality by her religion and the religious.

Personally, when I was in the midst of that fundamentalism, I had the wherewithal—intellectual and psychological—to realize that I was willing myself to believe a lie, and worse, I was perpetuating it. In it's own way, those days were my own form of madness. Black was white, wine was water, and virgins became pregnant. I plainly remember the moment when I understood that if I were willing to accept those impossibilities, I had to accept (If I was to be honest with myself) that I couldn't justifiably place any limits at all on what was possible. And that would have been the true descent into madness. Mirrors could have become doorways to other worlds, squares could have been circles, mountains could be flat as valleys. That moment was tangible, as though I were consciously choosing to lose my mind or hold on to it. I chose to stay sane.

No doubt Christians watching the Yates trial will shake their heads in disapproval and condemn her. God, they'll say, would never ask some parent to kill her own children. They will safely and conveniently ignore that the entirety of their religion is based on their god, long ago, telling Abraham to slaughter Isaac for Him. [11:57 AM]

source:http://www.rambunctious.org/2002_march.html
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3.13.02 - Andrea Yates, the 37-year-old housewife who admitted to drowning her five children, was convicted of murder. One disturbing thread in the Yates saga involves the role of religious belief, and the family's ties to a controversial fire-and-brimstone street preacher named Michael Peter Woroniecki. Some accounts suggest that Woroniecki's extreme Christian fundamentalism may have contributed to Andrea Yates' psychological problems, which included a fixation with demonic possession and the view that human existence was continually "under the curse of sin and death." Both Andrea Yates and her husband, Rusty, had a close and lengthy relationship with pastor Woroniecki and his wife, Rachel. Woroniecki and his wife became "spiritual advisers" to the Yateses, who despite their marginal lifestyle often sent money to help the traveling preacher with expenses. Woroniecki preached a stern and patriarchal doctrine. In letters and taped messages to the family, he claimed "all women are descendants of Eve and Eve was a witch. The women, particularly women who worked outside the home, are wicked." According to Spencer, one of those letters was sent to Andrea Yates in the spring of 1999, just a few months before her first suicide attempt. The Woroniecki's letters hammered her about her salvation. Andrea Yates was obsessed with religion and the power of Satan. Following her arrest, for instance, she told doctors that the deaths of her five children were punishment, and that only execution would free her from the clutches of the devil. She also wanted her head shaved so she could see the number 666 on her skull, the alleged "Mark of the Beast." At home, the Yates family lived a lifestyle saturated with stern, patriarchal religion - most of it conforming to the teachings of Michael Woroniecki and his wife. There were also the peculiar views of Rusty Yates, who saw his wife's mental illness as an indication that her resistance to evil had been lowered. And, too, there was the non-stop sequence of pregnancies and births. Birth control was not part of the agenda at the Yates household. The youngsters were home-schooled according to Woroniecki's teachings, placing more stress and responsibility on their mother. Randy Yates had also absorbed the patriarchal teachings of Michael Woroniecki which held that women should occupy a subservient position in the home. This and other elements of Christian fundamentalism were encouraged through a regimen of family Bible study three nights a week, presumably since Rusty had not found a church compatible with his beliefs. Andrea Yates may not have been technically "insane" under the law when she murdered her five children, but she was certainly disturbed, mad, and wracked with religious delusions. (AA)
source: http://quinnell.us/religion/bad/violence2.html
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http://www.jcnot4me.com/Items/cults/victims_of_religion.htm
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* I would have asked Mr Spiller what role he thinks religion plays in acts of terrorism (local, state, national and international). Who manipulates people over the Brownwood airwaves and encites Religiously inspired hatred from his listeners ?

To suspect's friends, an unlikely terrorist
Hometown shocked as man is ID'd as one of London attackers
07:07 AM CDT on Thursday, July 14, 2005
By TOD ROBBERSON / The Dallas Morning News
LEEDS, England – Muslim friends and neighbors of Shehzad Tanweer were struggling Wednesday to explain how the 22-year-old transformed himself from a sports enthusiast with no particular religious devotion to fanatical suicide bomber.
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Across the street from the Tanweers, a Pakistani lawyer, who declined to be identified, said Mr. Tanweer and other local youths were susceptible to literature from Britain-based extremist groups, as well as Internet chat rooms and satellite-television programs from around the Middle East.
"It's easy to manipulate people," he said. "My view is that not enough is being done by our senior leaders to denounce any form of literature that has an anti-U.S. or anti-British message. They need to nip it in the bud."
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/071405dnintbombings.a06f30d9.html
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Posted 2/28/2005 2:08 AM

Trauma of Iraq war haunting thousands returning home
By William M. Welch, USA TODAY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Jeremy Harrison sees the warning signs in the Iraq war veterans who walk through his office door every day — flashbacks, inability to relax or relate, restless nights and more.
Jesus Bocanegra, 23, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, visits the South Texas War Memorial.
By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
He recognizes them as symptoms of combat stress because he's trained to, as a counselor at the small storefront Vet Center here run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He recognizes them as well because he, too, has faced readjustment in the year since he returned from Iraq, where he served as a sergeant in an engineering company that helped capture Baghdad in 2003.
"Sometimes these sessions are helpful to me," Harrison says, taking a break from counseling some of the nation's newest combat veterans. "Because I deal with a lot of the same problems."
As the United States nears the two-year mark in its military presence in Iraq still fighting a violent insurgency, it is also coming to grips with one of the products of war at home: a new generation of veterans, some of them scarred in ways seen and unseen. While military hospitals mend the physical wounds, the VA is attempting to focus its massive health and benefits bureaucracy on the long-term needs of combat veterans after they leave military service. Some suffer from wounds of flesh and bone, others of emotions and psyche.
These injured and disabled men and women represent the most grievously wounded group of returning combat veterans since the Vietnam War, which officially ended in 1975. Of more than 5 million veterans treated at VA facilities last year, from counseling centers like this one to big hospitals, 48,733 were from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many of the most common wounds aren't seen until soldiers return home. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an often-debilitating mental condition that can produce a range of unwanted emotional responses to the trauma of combat. It can emerge weeks, months or years later. If left untreated, it can severely affect the lives not only of veterans, but their families as well.
Of the 244,054 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service, 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with PTSD. Comparisons to past wars are difficult because emotional problems were often ignored or written off as "combat fatigue" or "shell shock." PTSD wasn't even an official diagnosis, accepted by the medical profession, until after Vietnam.
There is greater recognition of the mental-health consequences of combat now, and much research has been done in the past 25 years. The VA has a program that attempts to address them and supports extensive research. Harrison is one of 50 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hired by the VA as counselors for their fellow veterans.
'It takes you back there'
Post-traumatic stress was defined in 1980, partly based on the experiences of soldiers and victims of war. It produces a wide range of symptoms in men and women who have experienced a traumatic event that provoked intense fear, helplessness or horror. (Related story: Iraq injuries differ from past wars)
The events are sometimes re-experienced later through intrusive memories, nightmares, hallucinations or flashbacks, usually triggered by anything that symbolizes or resembles the trauma. Troubled sleep, irritability, anger, poor concentration, hypervigilance and exaggerated responses are often symptoms.
Individuals may feel depression, detachment or estrangement, guilt, intense anxiety and panic, and other negative emotions. They often feel they have little in common with civilian peers; issues that concern friends and family seem trivial after combat.
Harrison says they may even hit their partners during nightmares and never know it.
Many Iraq veterans have returned home to find the aftermath of combat presents them with new challenges:
• Jesus Bocanegra was an Army infantry scout for units that pursued Saddam Hussein in his hometown of Tikrit. After he returned home to McAllen, Texas, it took him six months to find a job.
He was diagnosed with PTSD and is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim. He goes to the local Vet Center but is unable to relate to the Vietnam-era counselors.
"I had real bad flashbacks. I couldn't control them," Bocanegra, 23, says. "I saw the murder of children, women. It was just horrible for anyone to experience."
Bocanegra recalls calling in Apache helicopter strikes on a house by the Tigris River where he had seen crates of enemy ammunition carried in. When the gunfire ended, there was silence.
But then children's cries and screams drifted from the destroyed home, he says. "I didn't know there were kids there," he says. "Those screams are the most horrible thing you can hear."
At home in the Rio Grande Valley, on the Mexico border, he says young people have no concept of what he's experienced. His readjustment has been difficult: His friends threw a homecoming party for him, and he got arrested for drunken driving on the way home.
"The Army is the gateway to get away from poverty here," Bocanegra says. "You go to the Army and expect to be better off, but the best job you can get (back home) is flipping burgers. ... What am I supposed to do now? How are you going to live?"
• Lt. Julian Goodrum, an Army reservist from Knoxville, Tenn., is being treated for PTSD with therapy and anti-anxiety drugs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He checked himself into a civilian psychiatric hospital after he was turned away from a military clinic, where he had sought attention for his mental problems at Fort Knox, Ky. He's facing a court-martial for being AWOL while in the civilian facility.
Goodrum, 34, was a transportation platoon leader in Iraq, running convoys of supplies from Kuwait into Iraq during the invasion. He returned to the USA in the summer of 2003 and experienced isolation, depression, an inability to sleep and racing thoughts.
"It just accumulated until it overwhelmed me. I was having a breakdown and trying to get assistance," he says. "The smell of diesel would trigger things for me. Loud noises, crowds, heavy traffic give me a hard time now. I have a lot of panic. ... You feel like you're choking."
• Sean Huze, a Marine corporal awaiting discharge at Camp Lejeune, N.C., doesn't have PTSD but says everyone who saw combat suffers from at least some combat stress. He says the unrelenting insurgent threat in Iraq gives no opportunity to relax, and combat numbs the senses and emotions.
"There is no 'front,' " Huze says. "You go back to the rear, at the Army base in Mosul, and you go in to get your chow, and the chow hall blows up."
Huze, 30, says the horror often isn't felt until later. "I saw a dead child, probably 3 or 4 years old, lying on the road in Nasiriyah," he says. "It moved me less than if I saw a dead dog at the time. I didn't care. Then you come back, if you are fortunate enough, and hold your own child, and you think of the dead child you didn't care about. ... You think about how little you cared at the time, and that hurts."
Smells bring back the horror. "A barbecue pit — throw a steak on the grill, and it smells a lot like searing flesh," he says. "You go to get your car worked on, and if anyone is welding, the smell of the burning metal is no different than burning caused by rounds fired at it. It takes you back there instantly."
• Allen Walsh, an Army reservist, came back to Tucson 45 pounds lighter and with an injured wrist. He was unable to get his old job back teaching at a truck-driving school. He started his own business instead, a mobile barbecue service. He's been waiting nearly a year on a disability claim with the VA.
Walsh, 36, spent much of the war in Kuwait, attached to a Marine unit providing force protection and chemical decontamination. He says he has experienced PTSD, which he attributes to the constant threat of attack and demand for instant life-or-death decisions.
"It seemed like every day you were always pointing your weapon at somebody. It's something I have to live with," he says.
At home, he found he couldn't sleep more than three or four hours a night. When the nightmares began, he started smoking cigarettes. He'd find himself shaking and quick-tempered.
"Any little noise and I'd jump out of bed and run around the house with a gun," he says. "I'd wake up at night with cold sweats."
'A safe environment'
A recent Defense Department study of combat troops returning from Iraq found that soldiers and Marines who need counseling the most are least likely to seek it because of the stigma of mental health care in the military.

By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
Jesus Bocanegra is waiting for the VA to process his disability claim.

One in six troops questioned in the study admitted to symptoms of severe depression, PTSD or other problems. Of those, six in 10 felt their commanders would treat them differently and fellow troops would lose confidence if they acknowledged their problems.
A report this month by the Government Accountability Office said the VA "is a world leader in PTSD treatment." But it said the department "does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans while still providing for veterans of past wars." It said the department hasn't met its own goals for PTSD clinical care and education, even as it anticipates "greater numbers of veterans with PTSD seeking VA services."
Harrison, who was a school counselor and Army Reservist from Wheeling, W.Va., before being called to active duty in January 2003, thinks cases of PTSD may be even more common than the military's one-in-six estimate.
He is on the leading edge of the effort to help these veterans back home. Harrison and other counselors invite Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to stop in to talk. Often, that leads to counseling sessions and regular weekly group therapy. If appropriate, they refer the veterans to VA doctors for drug therapies such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.
"First of all, I let them talk. I want to find out all their problems," he says. "Then I assure them they're not alone. It's OK."
Fifty counselors from the latest war is a small number, considering the VA operates 206 counseling centers across the country. Their strategy is to talk with veterans about readjustment before they have problems, or before small problems become big ones. The VA also has staff at 136 U.S. military bases now, including five people at Walter Reed, where many of the most grievously injured are sent.
The toughest part of helping veterans, Harrison says, is getting them to overcome fears of being stigmatized and to step into a Vet Center. "They think they can handle the situation themselves," he says.
Vet Centers provide help for broader issues of readjustment back to civilian life, including finding a job, alcohol and drug abuse counseling, sexual trauma counseling, spouse and family counseling, and mental or emotional problems that fall short of PTSD.
More than 80% of the staff are veterans, and 60% served in combat zones, says Al Batres, head of the VA's readjustment counseling service. "We're oriented toward peer counseling, and we provide a safe environment for soldiers who have been traumatized," he says.
"A Vietnam veteran myself, it would have been so great if we'd had this kind of outreach," says Johnny Bragg, director of the Vet Center where Harrison works. "If you can get with the guys who come back fresh ... and actually work with their trauma and issues, hopefully over the years you won't see the long-term PTSD."
In all cases, the veteran has to be the one who wants to talk before counselors can help. "Once they come through the door, they usually come back," Harrison says. "For them, this is the only chance to talk to somebody, because their families don't understand, their friends don't understand. That's the big thing. They can't talk to anyone. They can't relate to anyone."
source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-02-28-cover-iraq-injuries_x.htm?POE=click-refer