via: NIMH
For the second time in less than a year, the National Institute of Mental Health and its researchers have been honored by the White House. On August 25th, NIMH and eight suicide prevention organizations were named recipients of the administration’s Champions of Change initiative. here is what I thought of this God Bless America This announcement bothered me on so many levels. I wondered, how much is this collaboration costing? So I found out.
via NIMH: NIMH and the U.S. Army have entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to conduct research that will help the Army reduce the rate of suicides. NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Army Secretary Pete Geren, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. signed the MOA on October 23, 2008.
via Army STARRS a nonprofit website:
For the second time in less than a year, the National Institute of Mental Health and its researchers have been honored by the White House. On August 25th, NIMH and eight suicide prevention organizations were named recipients of the administration’s Champions of Change initiative. here is what I thought of this God Bless America This announcement bothered me on so many levels. I wondered, how much is this collaboration costing? So I found out.
via NIMH: NIMH and the U.S. Army have entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to conduct research that will help the Army reduce the rate of suicides. NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Army Secretary Pete Geren, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. signed the MOA on October 23, 2008.
The MOA allows for a $50-million, multi-year study on suicide and suicidal behavior among soldiers, across all phases of Army service. It will be the largest single study on the subject of suicide that NIMH has ever undertaken.
The joint project will strengthen the Army’s efforts to reduce suicide among its soldiers by identifying risk and protective factors for suicidal thinking and behavior. It will help the Army develop more effective intervention programs and target them where they are most needed.
Benefits of the study will go beyond the Army. The study’s findings will also inform our understanding of suicide in the U.S. population overall, and may lead to more effective interventions for both soldiers and civilians. Every year, an average of 30,000 Americans die by suicide.
Specific details of the project are still being worked out in the NIMH Division of Services and Intervention Research.
STARRS The Army Study to Access Risk and Resilience in Service Members at NIMHvia Army STARRS a nonprofit website:
Army Study To Assess Risk and Resilience in Service members
Army STARRS is the largest study of mental health risk and resilience ever conducted among military personnel.
Beginning in 2011, Army STARRS investigators will look for factors that help protect a Soldier’s mental health and those factors that put a Soldier’s mental health at risk. Army STARRS is a five-year study that will run through 2014; however, research findings will be reported as they become available so that they may be applied to ongoing health promotion, risk reduction, and suicide prevention efforts. Because promoting mental health and reducing suicide risk are important for all Americans; the findings from Army STARRS will benefit not only servicemembers but the nation as a whole.
Army STARRS Preliminary Data Reveal Some Potential Predictive Factors for Suicide
Early examination of data from the U.S. Army’s Total Army Injury and Health Outcomes Database (TAIHOD) has revealed potential predictors of risk for suicide among soldiers. Preliminary results were provided by researchers leading the ongoing Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS). Army STARRS, a partnership between NIMH and the U.S. Army, is the largest study of mental health risk and resilience ever conducted among military personnel.
The TAIHOD database includes information from Regular Army soldiers (not Guard or Reserve Component soldiers) and covers the period between 2004 and 2008. Army STARRS researchers compared data on all suicides, accidental deaths, and combat deaths in an effort to identify patterns and predictors among the three types of deaths.
The following findings are preliminary. They involve relatively few descriptive predictors and do not account for complex events or interactions. Researchers plan to do additional work with a much larger historical dataset and with survey data from the All Army Study and the New Soldier Study (two Army STARRS components) to test these initial findings.
The main preliminary findings include the following: read here.
What is missing?
Any mention of the psychotropic drugs used to "treat" symptoms of PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc. as being a factor deserving consideration. I find it strange that on the Army STARRS website there is no mention of prescription drugs AT ALL-- that I could find. I would imagine that the TAIHOD database should also be collecting the information about psychotropic drug treatment that the troops are receiving; what drugs and combinations of drugs are prescribed, to those who have attempted or committed suicide/homicide; as well as information about illicit drug and alcohol use. It is more than strange, (to say the least) that these relevant factors are apparently not being investigated.
Now this is a study that is attempting to determine what factors make an individual resilient; factors such as ethnicity, gender, deployment history are being examined. The psychotropic drugs prescribed to our troops is a factor, although it is apparently not one being considered. Psychotropic drugs are still being used as "first line treatment" for symptoms of PTSD, in spite of the fact that this "Standard Practice" in known to be ineffective and costly: it is fiscally, socially and medically unsound; yet it is still Standard Practice.
via Next Gov:"The Veterans Affairs Department continues to issue contracts to purchase an anti-psychotic drug to treat post-traumatic stress disorder despite research showing the drug, risperidone, is no more effective than a placebo."read Va Awards... for debunked PTSD drug
summary:
This Champions of Change award is given shortly before the half way point of a six year joint collaboration. In the three years since the Army approached the NIMH, the suicide rate has doubled among Military personel. We still are losing high numbers of sons and daughters, who have served Our Country to suicide---strangely, the ineffective and unsafe teratogenic drugs prescribed to troops that are known to cause suicide, are not a factor being investigated.
The fact that psychotropic drugs known to cause suicide are not a factor considered relevant to this joint endeavor, means that the NIMH deserves special recognition:
for changing nothing, is not an earned Award.
via Borepatch: Semper Fi
Thank you for your service to the United States of America Sergeant Meyer!
via The Marines page Medal of Honor
“I am extremely pleased by the news that the President has announced that he will award the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Dakota Meyer.
Sergeant Meyer embodies all that is good about our nation's Corps of Marines. He is a living example of the brave young men and women whose service, fidelity and sacrifice make us so proud.
Sergeant Meyer's heroic actions on September 8, 2009 in the Ganjgal village in Afghanistan serve as an inspiration to all Marines and will forever be etched in our Corps' rich legacy of courage and valor.
Speaking on the behalf of all Marines, I congratulate Sergeant Meyer on this auspicious news and look forward to his award ceremony here in Washington, DC in mid-September.”
— General James F. Amos, 35th Commandant of the Marine Corps
This isn't about me. If anything comes out of this for me, it's for those guys."
Sgt. Dakota Meyer
Sgt. Dakota Meyer
7 comments:
Becky,
I got my hair cut today.
The woman who cut my hair and I were talking...
She told me she was involved in a relationship with a soldier who had served a tour in Iraq.
She said that after his tour, he was seen by a psychiatrist, and given the label of "PS..something"... She said she "Couldn't remember." I asked her, "PTSD?" She said, "Yeah, that's it."
She went on to tell me how he didn't adjust too well after his combat, but "Didn't say much"... "Doesn't like to talk about it."
All of this I understood, but this part I didn't... She said that he was told he "could not be around firearms of any kind" because he was considered "not stable"... And then, a few months later, she said that he was given an offer to "re-enlist" with a ten thousand dollar bonus check.
I like to study history, especially World War 2 history... We have NEVER seen so many young men and women served at this level... Multiple tours of duty... Again and again and again and AGAIN.
And we wonder why these guys have problems when they come home?
Re: the conversation at the Great Clips... She said her boyfriend didn't like being seen as different than others, but didn't like to talk about the war... When I asked her about whether some of his fellow soldiers were being placed on drugs, she said, "Oh, yeah." I asked her about whether they were being labeled with such things as "bipolar"... She said, "A bunch of them."
I always carry a business card with my blog address on it, and I gave it to her... I told her, "Tell him I said to avoid those drug-using psychiatrists like the plague... and use the links on the site to find some things that work... and toss the labels out the window... Tell him I said we appreciate his service, and that we know he can strong again."
I have a very simple question (although I don't have the answer), "What in the hell is wrong with this picture?"
Help me get my head around this... None of it makes any sense! What's next, NAMI and the Dept of Defense putting out an all-points alert to family and friends on how important it is for service members to remain, "compliant?"
Is that next?
What country are we living in?
This is NOT the same country I grew up in!
I don't get this crap!
Duane
Duane,
I feel the same way--this is not the Country I grew up in either.
The troops doing so many tours of duty, is I think relatively new--although I had friend years ago who had done three tours as a gunner in the Marines in Viet Nam.
It is well known that the effects of trauma are cumulative. This war the threats from people and cars which are sources of explosive devices--I have read accounts from vets; and been told by one Veteran, that he was afraid to go outside---because there were people and cars...
This may explain why some people (even family members) have been killed by traumatized Veterans who mistake them for the enemy...of course being given psychotropic drugs which are ineffective and known to cause humans to become homicidal and suicidal is a known, if not acknowledged, factor...
I am disappointed--to say the very least--that we as a Country, are not doing better by our returning Veterans--it ain't right, any day of the week...
my Dad served in WW II. He was saying the same thing the other night at dinner.
(waving to Becky and Duane)
It seems to me that it's the number of tours for many of these people who are serving.
The other thing is that we ought to stop beleiving that any ONE thing works, including "talk therapy" for people who do not want to talk!
Silence is communication.
Same as any other.
We ought to respect it!
What's wrong with not talking?
What's wrong with coming home and finding a place again, building some friendships, starting a new life?
It seems to me we ought to be using more inclusion... welcoming these folks home. And the labels.... don't even get me started!
It's disgusting that healthy young people prior to being in a war theater are suddenly "bipolar" upon return... Absolutely disgusting!
My grandad served in the First World War.. He took some shrapnel to his kidney. He was left for dead, put in a pile of 'dead' soldiers until a Medic heard him underneath a stack of fellow soldiers. He was only 17 years old. He tried to sneak in the U.S. Army at 16, and they caught him... Joined up with the Canadian Army to fight the Kaiser's boys in Europe... long story.
I think about that Medic, and realize that our entire family, four generations later would not have been here, had it not been for him. I reminded our entire family last Thanksgiving when I led the family in a prayer (with four generationsl present).
I support our troops, but the death is almost too much to bear. There seems to be no end, and these are our BEST young men and women.
Wave to Susan and Becky.
Thanks for caring.
Duane
I can only imagine what these young men and women go through...and as for caring--there is no way to turn that off. I wouldn't if I could.
A triple shot from Eisenhower:
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"
"I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Wave to Susan and Duane
Becky
Quick-note, I agree with you that this war is unique in its intensity, in terms of IEDs and threat from civilian populations. You make a good point.
In terms of number of deployments, the men and women of Fort Hood, here in Texas have paid enormously, with some of them serving a bunch of tours.
All I know to do sometimes is to thank them and pray for them.
Duane
Oops,
I like Ike.
Duane
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