Report: Mentally ill troops forced into combat

Report: Mentally ill troops forced into combat
Military not following own rules on deployment, paper says

Saturday, May 13, 2006; Posted: 10:05 p.m. EDT (02:05 GMT)

HARTFORD, Connecticut (AP) -- U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported in its Sunday editions.

The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.

In 1997, Congress ordered the military to assess the mental health of all deploying troops. The newspaper, citing Pentagon statistics, said fewer than 1 in 300 service members were referred to a mental health professional before shipping out for Iraq as of October 2005.

Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year. That number accounts for nearly one in five of all noncombat deaths and was the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.

The paper reported that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 or 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for "extended deployments."


More here: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/13/military.suicides.ap/index.html

Being mentally ill is no longer a barrier to service. Find yourself a rifle and get your ass over to Sadr City!

:grr: Wonder what the yellow-ribbon'ers will have to say about this. Because, for the life of me, I can't see how the hell you can support someone while still supporting a system of leadership that wants to turn them into cannon fodder.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :nuke:

:grr:

I read a story here about three soldiers who were SITTING IN THE PLANE that was going to take them home, and a couple of officers came on board and told them they were staying. Just THINKING about that is enough to make you mentally ill! And what did they THINK was going to happen will all these forced redeployments?

:headbang:
rocknation

:cry:

He said they were sitting on the plane and officers came on and asked them if anyone wanted to stay.
There weren't any volunteers.
I guess now they don't give them a choice.

difficult to cut this down to 4 paragraphs, it's worth reading the full article:
http://www.globegazette.com/articles/2006/05/13/local/doc446554fb06753346610375.txt

that article is really sad, and really indicative of what our troops are going through. We need to end the negative stigma with PTSD. Seeking counseling and mental help shouldn't be something troops are afraid of doing, personally or career-wise.

It is as if General Patton was slapping and sending into combat mentally ill troops. Patton thought that soldiers with obvious symptoms of mental illness were fakers and cowards.

All the officers want is a bunch of warm bodies -- who cares about mental health. War is unhealthy --if a person isn't crazy before seeing the horror that is present day Iraq -- could be they'll end up crazy.

Sad.

If you are sane enough to think you're crazy, you're not. Back to work, boys and girls.

This doesn't even include the ones who came home and had "accidents" with their brand new hot motorcycles, cars and boats or jet skis.

has no respect or compassion for our US soldiers.

Our brave soldiers are objects to them. They are nothing but cannon fodder.

BushCo doesn't care.

Just look at how our returning soldiers are being treated. I heard on the radio today that more than half of the returning soldiers have PTSD and they are not getting access to good mental-health care.

It's just so sick.

If Bush-Bot had his girls over there, I'll bet he'd be finding a way out real quick.

the military today in first place.

I'm talking about many of our poorer Americans who cannot afford college, and they view the military as their only option.

This is how we support our troops?!? :grr:

http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/ats-ap_top15may13,0,4840741.story?coll=sns-newsnation-headlines

This article makes me even more angrier, because the Army's mental health expert basically says that the recruitment shortage/crisis that the Army is facing, is part of the reason for them sending mentally ill people into combat.

"The Army's top mental health expert, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, acknowledged that some deployment practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome back into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage.

"The challenge for us ... is that the Army has a mission to fight. And, as you know, recruiting has been a challenge," she said. "And so we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers' personal needs."

Well, call me crazy here, but I don't think this story is going to do anything to help their recruitment at all.

When you show this level of disrespect for our troops and their mental and physical well being, people will just rush to their local recruting office to sign up, right?! (insert sarcasim)

Definitely shows BushCo's armed forces out of control.

http://www.courant.com/news/specials/hc-mental1b.artmay...

`Jeffrey Was Really Messed Up'
May 14, 2006
By LISA CHEDEKEL, The Hartford Courant DEL CITY, Okla. --

There is not enough guilt to go around here, so intent is each woman in Jeffrey Henthorn's life on owning a piece of the blame.

His sister, Shannon Austill, had found him in the living room, laughing at a CD he had brought back from his first combat tour - images of Iraqi adults and children who had been shot, dismembered, burned beyond recognition.

snip

No, this young soldier didn't have a mental problem, not at all. Ship him back to Iraq where he can represent America! :sarcasm:

both Army and Air Force, Ft. Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base.

Went to lunch at a local diner today with my long-haired hippie freak pinko commie husband (everyone knows us there) and a table of local soldiers who had returned about a week ago were having lunch. There were 6 guys and 2 gals.

We snuck up to the cashier and bought their lunch. Think a freeper would do that?

Not bragging, it's just that, once home, they need all the support they can get. Including psych counseling, big time.

Support our troops - bring them home, and support them then, too.

:patriot:

Remember on M*A*S*H when Dr. Sidney Friedman would come in and put everything right for the combat-weary with his impeccable wisdom?

They're treating these poor troops like a bunch of Klingers.

Full metal jacket refers to the ammunition. Watch the movie again and you'll see 'Pyle' talk about it just before he shoots Gunny and himself.

...on March 01, 2005 called "The Soldier's Heart" <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/>

which showed a young kid who was clearly mentally un-fit to return to his unit, but they sent him back anyway.

The video is still on-line at this link <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/view/>, if you missed it on T.V.

Warning: This is a very difficult video to watch without crying, even for you tough guys.

:(

K&R

...if they survive and return. It was never anti-war protesters who gave me a hard time in the 60s after 3 trips to Vietnam but the Archie Bunkers of America.

Here is a document (an rtf file) from a few years ago from litigation opposing establishment of a transitional home for veterans in the town where I live;
http://www.fortunecity.com/business/telephone/1450/july19appealsupport.rtf The arguments against housing even the most benign of these veterans are disgusting and hardly peculiar to this relativly liberal region; it is certainly worse elsewhere.

I recently returned to the local planning commission to obtain 60 more pages of this sad stuff. These people, a relatively small proportion of these different communities, succeeded in preventing the Vietnam Veterans of California from establishing this home and subsequently prevented another from being established in a different area of town. These "not in our neighborhood" people are generally (if not always) "compassionate conservatives" and demonstrate the same paranoid and self engrossed mentality that allows them to believe that small powerless countries in distant parts of the world pose a threat to us, poor people have all their money as the economy worsens and all of the rest. Eureka is hardly alone in this and a disproportionately large segment of the homeless population is made up of veterans of which, in turn, a disproportionately large fraction are combat veterans with mental and physical repercussions from their combat. Here is one link I found in a quick search to a Common Dreams article on this. It is a year and a half old and I suspect that the stats have worsened since then. http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0112-12.htm A google search ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2006-14%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=percentage+homeless+veterans&btnG=Search )will reveal many sites with information on homelessness among veterans including stats correlating mental distress, length of time in combat etc to their current plight. These men and women are unwanted even on the streets of America. Especially the Republican streets.

The National Coalition of Homeless Veterans, referred to in the above article, is a veterans advocacy group and their home page is here; http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0112-12.htm

I think many young men and women go into battle Republicans and return Democrats...go with visions of glory nurtured by the Chicken Hawks and return with horrible, and unshakable, visions of the practical truth of the matter. A local couple I know went to Walter Reed to interview battered and dismembered soldiers and one of the things they said that disturbed them the most were the yellow ribbon stickers on cars.

In 1983, I moved to Santa Barbara, CA to go to photography school, where I had my first wake-up call to this problem.

Growing up in Norther Indiana, it was too cold for homeless people to survive on the streets in the winter, so I had never really seen a homeless person before, but when I arrived in California, that was the first major thing that I noticed was different, homeless Vietnam Vets sleeping in the parks and near the beach. It was so odd and confusing to me, at the time, that I even too a picture or too (from a respectful distance), I had forgotten about that picture.

I was lucky enough to have grown up after Vietnam, and was too old to sign up in these days of GOP spin, but nothing bothers me more than the hypocrisy of those damn yellow ribbon magnets.

Thank You for your service and the work you did and I suspect are still doing for our past and future forgotten Vets.

Welcome Home brother.:patriot:

And Welcome to DU

Nothing I did in the Navy was to any good cause other than my education of what we do to people. My intentions may have been good but they were just paving material for the road to hell. I have tried to assuage my guilt and karma with good deeds but it is too little and too late. Certainly for the people of America, Iraq and the world. Hitler has been the standard by which all institutional evil is measured but I think we have a new standard of evil with these characters;

Mentally Unfit, Forced To Fight
May 14, 2006
By LISA CHEDEKEL And MATTHEW KAUFFMAN, The Hartford Courant

http://www.courant.com/news/specials/hc-mental1a.artmay14,0,6150281.story

Despite a congressional order that the military assess the mental health of all deploying troops, fewer than 1 in 300 service members see a mental health professional before shipping out. Once at war, some unstable troops are kept on the front lines while on potent antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, with little or no counseling or medical monitoring.

And some troops who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq are being sent back to the war zone, increasing the risk to their mental health.

These practices, which have received little public scrutiny and in some cases violate the military's own policies, have helped to fuel an increase in the suicide rate among troops serving in Iraq, which reached an all-time high in 2005 when 22 soldiers killed themselves - accounting for nearly one in five of all Army non-combat deaths.

The Courant's investigation found that at least 11 service members who committed suicide in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite exhibiting signs of significant psychological distress. In at least seven of the cases, superiors were aware of the problems, military investigative records and interviews with families indicate.

this type of mental tauma. I am sure there are many more troops that experience this than they say.

I can't even imagine what they must be going through. It's bad enough dealing with those types of problems when you are in a safe place, let alone one of the scariest and most violent places on earth.

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Psychological warfare. The soldiers have nowhere to go with the psychological traumatic stress caused by a war that is all about psychological warfare. If they are not treated for the aftereffects ,than they are also not properly trained to go into it.Therefore indicating that the cost of treatment by standards of government is too high.So than the Bush adminstration will not effectively be of a position to cut the vertran adminstration budget if treatment is considered befor hand. Another method of passing the buck. Since poor outdated armorment,result as they say of a underfunded military is also the big concern,than clearly it than must also be obvious that proper training to the ends of psychological warfare would than too be far too costly.And yet they proceed at all cost.At the beginning of this conflict just after 9/11 one question that came up in political concern is ,if we go to war, than who is going to pay for it/ ? Thats the tax dollar issue,the real question I think is who is it that bears the burden ?But at the same time that is a question that practically provides it,s own answer.The average person cannot afford psychotherapy,and the federal government at this time may not want the truth be known.Talk about the tax dollar right? don,t know if it is all spelled right,but ah, the small world requires I go to work.

The only reason anyone thinks it does is that patients tell their counselors they are better as a polite way of ending treatment when they realize that years of sessions are doing nothing but wasting their time and money.

At least that has been my experience.

The only thing that helps is the love and patience of those around you. And it's difficult not to drive those people away when you are like that. And sometimes, when you need them most, you will drive them away for their own good, when you are worried about what a burden you are to them.

If the subsequent loss of productivity of soldiers was taken into account, we would realize that no country can afford to wage war.

And if a monetary value was put on the misery that is caused and all the medical treatments necessary ... well, I'd like to see the pro-war bastards have That added to their taxes.

when those around you have no way to undrstand what it is that is causing the problem ,and the person effected knows what it,s orgins are and no way to identifi with the problem as the problem is deeply rooted,than the only people that know of the problem are those that are effected by the same.You than may be indicating they should stay togather or grin and bear it. No information attainable to the effects of psychological warfare as such a war has not ever been fought. I think that,s the very subject Bush touched on when he said to the people this is not a war that can be eaisly won, these are not soldiers of uniform ,seemingly leaning to the global war on terrorism though focusing on the Iraq elections. I will stop there befor making comparisons to Vietnam. Than there is Gastult though that too is costly.

coffin with their "compassionate incompetence."

"prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring"
anti-depressants + anti-anxiety medication + .50 cal machinegun + DU shells = fun fun fun for everyone

the soldiers have it. The terrible death toll is only the tip of the ice-berg, there are millions of soldiers now who are going to have to live with PSTD for the rest of their lives.

If the forces were to check for it and let every soldier with PSTD go, there would no longer be an armed forces capable of waging war.

This is the wicked truth that is being covered over. These kids are sent to live in fear, seeing mates blown to pieces, and seeing unspeakable things done in retaliation, until they are driven crazy. This is not a war on terror. It's a war of terror, and every soldier sent to fight is another cruel sacrifice to Mammon, the God of Riches for evil oil-mongers.

Thats my point, the soldiers are those that are paying for it .All of those that do not know about long term effects.One day fine, the next day the world turns dark ,cold, and unforgiving. And nowhere to turn for treatment that is real treatment. Or thats the same as having it said to them that the real problem does not exist.The cost.

Redstone

I'd like those commanders to face those families & tell them that they forced a mentally fragile soldier back into the horror of combat - not caring about the consequences. And attend the soldiers funerals. That would be a just punishment.

Sick - sick - sick - sick - sick. :puke:

(meaning the assholes that sent them back.)

All for the FuckingOilWar. I am just so truely disgusted.x(