Brownwood PTSD: Raise your hand if you've never heard of it ? Now ask yourself why ?
AWOL soldier moving on
Hounshell is 'happy with the way things turned out'
By Celinda Emison / emisonc@reporternews.com
June 4, 2006
BROWNWOOD - Jake Hounshell is proud to have served his country. So much so he had his dog tags tattooed on his chest.
Sounds like a typical proud soldier, except that Hounshell served jail time for going AWOL.
Now classified as a veteran of the war in Iraq, Hounshell, 21, is at home in Brownwood after serving 25 days in jail for going AWOL for almost a year and being diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.
Hounshell now says jail was the best thing that ever happened to him and that he is ''happy with the way things turned out.''
''It changed my perspective on things,'' he said.
Despite Hounshell's comments and dog tag tattoo, some veterans think he got off too easy.
Harry Marlin, who was a gunner for the Army Air Corps in World War II, said Hounshell might not have received the same treatment had he been in WWII.
''I know what would have happened to me if I had gone AWOL in wartime,'' Marlin said.
Marlin said he had never heard of post traumatic stress disorder.
''We had a damn good excuse to have it,'' Marlin said. ''I'm sure things are pretty bad in Iraq, but I guess there are certain types of people who aren't cut out for the military.''
Two years ago this month, Hounshell began a 14-month tour of duty with the Army, first to Kuwait and then to Baghdad, Iraq. Hounshell served as a driver and a scout in the first platoon of the 9th Cavalry Division of the First Cavalry.
He earned a commendation for finding makeshift bombs in a vehicle and arresting two insurgents during a routine checkpoint stop. His story was in the military's newspaper, Stars and Stripes.
He also saw a lot of death. One of his fellow soldiers was killed by a roadside bomb right in front of him. Later on, one of his duties was to pick up dead bodies in Iraq and take them to the morgue.
But when Hounshell got home, he could not adjust, so he threatened to drive his truck into an 18-wheeler.
His mother and dad stayed up with him on stormy nights because he believed he was being shot at. There was the night he broke the glass on the front door of his parents' house with his head. Larry and Bobbie Hounshell sought help for their son but to no avail.
Hounshell now admits that he self-medicated with methamphetamine.
''I was having problems coming home from Iraq, and I tried to cure that with dope,'' Hounshell said. ''I tried to cure one problem with another. Then I had to deal with both of them.''
In February, Hounshell turned himself in at Fort Hood and was sentenced to serve 30 days in the Bell County Jail for his offense. The sentence was reduced by five days for good behavior, so Hounshell served 25 days.He said his fellow soldiers did not treat him badly after he returned to Fort Hood to await his sentence.
''They were just worried and wanted to know if I was OK,'' Hounshell said.
He was released on a general discharge on April 1 and came home to Brownwood about a week later.
When he got back to Brownwood, he returned to his job at Brownwood Manufacturing, where he helped make combat uniforms for the Army.
''He is a very good employee,'' said plant manager Debbie Byrd. ''I don't know of anyone here who has treated Jake badly because of his past.''
Hounshell said at first folks in Brownwood pointed and stared when they would see him at places like Brownwood's Red Wagon restaurant.
''At first it was kind of rough,'' Hounshell said. ''But then people started understanding.''
That stint in the Bell County Jail was important, though, because he says it saved his life.
''I had a lot of time to think about what I had done to myself and my family,'' he said. ''I'm clean now and I don't ever want to go back to doing drugs.''
Hounshell solemnly remembers those who served with him and lost their lives in the Iraq war.
He has tattoos on his arm that signify his service in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. But he also has eerie tattoos of skulls.
He said they hold special meaning.
''These are my fallen brothers who died in Iraq,'' he said, pointing to his arm. Another tattoo represents heaven and hell, which Hounshell said he and his family went through.
source: http://reporternews.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4749134,00.html
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Some history of PTSD:
Audie Leon Murphy, son of poor Texas sharecroppers, rose to national fame as the most decorated U.S. combat soldier of World War II. Among his 33 awards and decorations was the Medal of Honor, the highest military award for bravery that can be given to any individual in the United States of America, for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty." He also received every decoration for valor that his country had to offer, some of them more than once, including 5 decorations by France and Belgium. Credited with either killing over 240 of the enemy while wounding and capturing many others, he became a legend within the 3rd Infantry Division. Beginning his service as an Army Private, Audie quickly rose to the enlisted rank of Staff Sergeant, was given a "battle field" commission as 2nd Lieutenant, was wounded three times, fought in 9 major campaigns across the European Theater, and survived the war.
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Despite his success in Hollywood, Audie never forgot his rural Texas roots. He returned frequently to the Dallas area where he owned a small ranch for a while. He also had ranches in Perris, California and near Tucson, Arizona. He was a successful Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racehorse owner and breeder, having interests in such great horses as "Depth Charge." His films earned him close to 3 million dollars in 23 years as an actor. Audie loved to gamble, and he bet on horses and different sporting events. He was also a great poker player. In his role as a prodigious gambler, he won and lost fortunes.
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Audie suffered from what is now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and was plagued by insomnia and depression. During the mid-60's he became dependent for a time on doctor prescribed sleeping pills called Placidyl. When he recognized that he had become addicted to this prescription drug, he locked himself in a motel room, stopped taking the sleeping pills and went through withdrawal symptoms for a week. Always an advocate for the needs of veterans, he broke the taboo about discussing war related mental problems after this experience. In a effort to draw attention to the problems of returning Korean and Vietnam War veterans, Audie Murphy spoke-out candidly about his personal problems with PTSD, then known as "Battle Fatigue". He publicly called for United States government to give more consideration and study to the emotional impact war has on veterans and to extend health care benefits to address PTSD and other mental health problems of returning war vets.
source: http://www.jrotc.org/audie_murphy.htm
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Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier in history at the time of World War II (he received thirty-three awards, including the Medal of Honor), Hollywood actor (he starred as himself in the 1955 film version of his autobiography To Hell and Back, in addition to films such as 1951's The Red Badge of Courage, 1957's Night Passage, and 1960's The Unforgiven), and songwriter (he wrote songs for Dean Martin, among others), suffered from PTSD as a result of his experience in WWII. According to his first wife, actress Wanda Hendrix, he suffered terrible nightmares and always slept with a gun under his pillow. Murphy was one of the first people to actually speak out publicly about PTSD, and during the Vietnam War he called for more government funding to care for the returning veterans and to research the condition.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_stress_disorder
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Fri, May. 19, 2006
Still suffering, but redeployed
Post-traumatic stress doesn't exempt soldiers from 2nd tour
By LISA CHEDEKEL and MATTHEW KAUFFMAN
The Hartford Courant
David Beals, 26, a soldier stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after his first tour in Iraq. He was sent back within a few months for the tour that ended this January. He expects to go back for a third time at the end of this year.
Staff Sgt. Bryce Syverson, 27, of Richmond, Va., landed in the psychiatric unit at Walter Reed Medical Center after a breakdown that doctors traced to his 15-month tour in Iraq as a gunner on a Bradley tank. He was diagnosed with PTSD and depression, and was put on a suicide watch and antidepressants.
Today, Syverson is back in the combat zone, part of a quick-reaction force in Kuwait that could be summoned to Iraq at any time.
Jason Sedotal, a 21-year-old military policeman from Pierre Part, La., was diagnosed with PTSD in early 2005 after he returned from Iraq, where a Humvee he was driving rolled over a land mine. His sergeant, sitting beside him, lost both legs and an arm.
Last September, Sedotal was transferred from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Fort Polk in Louisiana, where he said doctors switched his medication from Prozac to Zoloft, and commanders deemed him ready to redeploy. He has been back in Iraq since October.
Sent back on meds|
Beals, Syverson and Sedotal are among a growing number of troops recycled into combat after being diagnosed with PTSD,
depression or other combat-related disorders -- a new phenomenon that has their families worried and some mental-health experts alarmed. The practice, which a top military mental-health official concedes is driven partly by pressure to maintain troop levels, runs counter to accepted medical doctrine and research that shows re-exposure to trauma increases the risk of serious psychiatric problems.
''I'm concerned that people who are symptomatic are being sent back, which is potentially very bad for them. That has not happened before in our country,'' said Dr. Arthur S. Blank Jr., a Yale-trained psychiatrist who helped to get PTSD recognized as a diagnosis after the Vietnam War.
Although Department of Defense medical standards for enlistment into the armed forces disqualify those who have been diagnosed with PTSD, military officials acknowledge that they are not exempting service members who meet that criterion from going to war. Many of those who are being sent back with such symptoms, such as Syverson, are being redeployed on psychiatric medications known as SSRIs.
Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army Surgeon General, acknowledged that the decision to redeploy soldiers with PTSD was ''something that we wrestle with,'' and partly driven by the military's need to retain troops because of recruiting shortfalls.
''Historically, we have not wanted to send soldiers or anybody with post-traumatic stress disorder back into what traumatized them,'' she said. ''The challenge for us... is that the Army has a mission to fight.''
Ritchie said the military looks at the ''impairment'' level of service members and their responses to medication before deciding whom to redeploy.
''If they're simply -- and I don't mean to minimize it -- but if they're simply having nightmares, for example, but they can do their job, then most likely they're going to deploy back with their unit,'' she said.
But whether the military can even gauge the impairment level of its veterans is in question. A newly released report by the Government Accountability Office found that nearly 4 in 5 troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who were found to be at risk for PTSD, based on responses to a screening questionnaire, were never referred for further evaluation or treatment.
Service members' families and medical experts say the military should not be experimenting with young men and women who have been traumatized by combat.
''When somebody's put on medication and told they have PTSD, it doesn't occur to you they'd want to send them back,'' said Corrine Nieto, a Bakersfield, Calif., mother whose 24-year-old son, Chris, a Marine reservist, was redeployed to Iraq last summer after being diagnosed with PTSD. ''I don't know what they're doing to these kids. I wonder if they do.''
Sedotal said that when he asked a doctor at Fort Polk if his symptoms would ever go away, he was told, ''Sure -- when you get out of there.''
''I don't feel like myself. I can't sleep, I can't be around crowds, I'm just drinking a lot,'' he said during a mid-tour visit home earlier this month, days before heading back to Iraq.
Few statistics|
The military does not track the number of troops with PTSD or other combat-related disorders who have been redeployed after a diagnosis. Overall, more than 378,000 active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops have served more than one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, including about 151,000 Army soldiers and 51,000 Marines, according to the Department of Defense's latest deployment statistics.
Recent studies indicate that at least 18 percent of returning Iraq veterans are at risk for PTSD, while 35 percent have sought mental-health care in their first year home.
The Hartford Courant's research shows that at least seven troops who are believed to have committed suicide in 2005 and 2006 were serving second or third deployments. According to their families, they had exhibited signs of psychological problems between deployments that went undetected by military officials.
''This is an unexplored area,'' said Cathleen Wiblemo, deputy director for health care for the American Legion. ''How are troops going to deal with second and third deployments? Is their reaction going to be more severe?
"I think the VA can look to seeing a lot more mental-health cases," she said. "They haven't gotten the full brunt of these multiple deployments yet."
Ritchie said many troops want to go back with their units for repeat tours, and keeping them home could leave them with ''a stigma'' of failure.
In some cases, the military has taken that point further, suggesting that a return to war could benefit traumatized troops.
But mental-health experts said that while some troops who suffer from combat stress are able to return to the front lines, there is no evidence to suggest that re-exposure to trauma is in any way therapeutic.
'Anybody who says it's a form of therapy to send people back into war,'' said Dr. Jonathan Shay, a Boston-based psychiatrist who counsels Vietnam veterans, ''I don't know what they're smoking.''
source: http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/living/health/14618115.htm
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Returning US soldiers face financial, medical difficulties
Critics say government is 'turning its back' on veterans because of need for money in Iraq.
By Tom Regan | chrisitan science monitor
Wounded US soldiers who have returned home are increasingly finding that they are being referred to credit agencies by the US military because of discrepancies in pay or "failure to pay" for lost equipment.
The Washington Post reported Saturday the story of one soldier, Robert Loria, victim of a bombing in Iraq, who had spent months in an Army hospital. He was not aware that he had not been "downgraded" in his pay scale – once soldiers leave a war zone, their pay goes down.
The last thing on his mind, he said, was whether the Army had correctly adjusted his pay rate ... or whether his combat gear had been accounted for properly: his Kevlar helmet, his suspenders, his rucksack.
But nine months after Loria was wounded, the Army garnished his wages and then, as he prepared to leave the service, hit him with a $6,200 debt. That was just before last Christmas, and several lawmakers scrambled to help. This spring, a collection agency started calling. He owed another $646 for military housing.
The Post reports that the US military recently identified 331 other soldiers who accumulated the same kind of "military debt" after they were wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan. The military says they have forgiven the debt of 99 of the soldiers. The other 232 cases "have not been resolved."
"This is a financial friendly fire," charged Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R) of Virginia, chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, which has been looking into the issue. "It's awful." Davis called the failure systemic and said military "pay problems have been an embarrassment all the way through" the war.
The cause of the problem, according to military officials, is an outdated Defense Department computer system that "does not automatically link pay and personnel records." The Pentagon has been trying to fix the problem since the mid-'90s.
The Roanoke Times writes in an editorial that this is the latest in a string of problems that the Bush administration has had in dealing with soldiers, both full-time military and National Guard and Reserve troops. The Times pointed to a recent cut of a billion dollars in the Veterans Affairs budget, and the problems outfitting soldiers in war zones with proper equipment. The pay issue just compounds the situation.
The GAO found that more than 90 percent of the soldiers in some Reserve and Guard units have incurred payroll errors during deployment. Organizations such as the Wounded Warriors Project in Roanoke are attempting to put aggrieved soldiers in touch with the GAO to provide an accurate accounting of soldiers stuck with debts because of the Army's mistakes. America owes those who serve in uniform, especially the wounded, an enormous debt – not the other way around.
The Northwest Indiana Times reported last week on another soldier who was discharged from the military in the middle of medical treatment for a "line of duty" medical condition, in a case that critics say points to problems with the "new community-based health care initiative designed to help reservists and national guardsmen return home from active duty."
Meanwhile, The San Diego Union-Tribune [registration required] reported that last month veterans' groups criticized a decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs to review 72,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that have occurred between 1999 and 2004. The groups say the move is just an attempt by the government to "cut benefits for older veterans and toughen qualifications for future ones."
The department says the move is a "paper exercise," and that they are not looking to reduce benefits. What they are looking for are the cases where the "supply clerk who never left Fort Polk" is getting PTSD benefits. But veterans' groups say the department's aim is "more bottom line and long range."
"This review is really all about wanting to lower the cost of the war when the veterans come back from Iraq and Afghanistan," said William Rider Jr., president of the La Jolla-based American Combat Veterans of War. "I think certain people in the administration and Congress see veterans as a very large expense every year and they hate it."
But with the VA facing a $2.6 billion shortfall in the coming year, and with the dramatic increase in PTSD cases, other analysts say the government has to do an audit. The Sun-Herald of Biloxi, Miss. reported earlier this month that a recent audit by the Veterans Affairs inspector general of 2,100 randomly selected PTSD cases found that 25 percent lacked the proper documentation.
"The Department of Defense is being eaten out of house and home by health care costs," [Dan Goure, a senior defense analyst at the Lexington Institute] said. "More retirees are going with military medicine, Congress is allowing more National Guard and reservists to enter [the VA system] and the costs are rising. You have to say if you are going to have this kind of ballooning in PTSD benefits, a review is appropriate."
In an interview in early October with The Washington Post, Veterans Affairs Secretary R. James Nicholson said that of the 400,000 troops that have been to Iraq and Afghanistan, 103,000 have been treated in a VA facility. Of that 103,000, he said, 12 percent have been treated for PTSD.
In an editorial for the liberal/progressive truthout.org website, Gene C. Gerard pointed to a study by Col. Charles W. Hoge, M.D., the chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute, published in the June 2004 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The study concluded that close to 20 percent of soldiers who served in Iraq, and approximately 12 percent of those who served in Afghanistan returned home suffering from PTSD. The study found that there is a clear correlation between combat experience and the prevalence of PTSD. The study determined that, "Rates of PTSD were significantly higher after combat duty in Iraq."
Approximately 86 percent of soldiers in Iraq were involved in combat, as were 31 percent in Afghanistan. On average, soldiers engaged in two firefights for each tour of duty. The study indicated that 95 percent of soldiers had been shot at. And 56 percent of soldiers had killed an enemy combatant. An estimated 28 percent were directly responsible for the death of a civilian.... Additionally, 68 percent witnessed fellow soldiers being killed or seriously wounded.
Mr. Gerard writes that although the number of soldiers suffering from PTSD is high, Dr. Hoge's study found that a majority of veterans are not seeking treatment. "Only 40 percent of returning soldiers acknowledged that they need mental health care, and only 26 percent were actually receiving care. As such, the number of veterans approved for PTSD compensation by the VA is relatively small."
Stars and Stripes reports that in early October, Senate Democrats added an amendment to the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriation Act to block Veterans Affairs from conducting the review until the department proves the need for the reviews to Congress. The amendment was passed on a voice vote. But there is no similar language in the House version of the bill, so the question must be decided in conference.
source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1018/dailyUpdate.html
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National Center for PTSD
The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was created within the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989, in response to a Congressional mandate to address the needs of veterans with military-related PTSD. Its mission was, and remains: To advance the clinical care and social welfare of America's veterans through research, education, and training in the science, diagnosis, and treatment of PTSD and stress-related disorders. This website is provided as an educational resource concerning PTSD and other enduring consequences of traumatic stress, for a variety of audiences.
source: http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/
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