[exiceJetLip]

Pentagon Study on Ethics & Mental Health of U.S. Combat Troops in Iraq:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline.../05/04/dod.jpg

USA Today took image from the Mental Health Advisory Team (MHAT-IV) report.


Thumbnail of image (alternative link) from DOD report:

[Thigmaswams]

Study reports on mental health, ethics of U.S. combat troops in Iraq

A new Pentagon study shows how the war in Iraq is impacting the U.S. military's most battle-hardened troops.

"Approximately 10% of Soldiers and Marines report mistreating non-combatants (damaged/destroyed Iraqi property when not necessary or hit/kicked a non-combatant when not necessary)," the report, released today, says. "Soldiers that have high levels of anger, experienced high levels of combat or screened positive for a mental health problem were nearly twice as likely to mistreat non-combatants as those who had low levels of anger or combat or screened negative for a mental health problem."

The study showed a correlation between level of combat and mental health problems. "Soldiers and Marines experiencing high levels of combat are three times as likely to screen positive for a mental health problem compared to Soldiers and Marines who experiences relatively low levels of combat," the report says.

Soldiers had lower morale and more mental health problems than their counterparts in the Marine Corps, the report says.

The study, which included more than 1,700 respondents in units that have seen heavy combat, shows a "downwards trend" in marital satisfaction since earlier studies of military personnel in Iraq. A little under 7% of respondents reported drinking alcohol in violation of military regulations, while 1.4% acknowledged taking illegal drugs while they were deployed to Iraq.

Some of the other significant findings, according to a press release from the Defense Department:

• Soldiers who deployed longer (greater than six months) or had deployed multiple times were more likely to screen positive for a mental health issue.

• Less than half of soldiers and Marines would report a team member for unethical behavior.

• More than one-third of all soldiers and Marines reported that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow soldier or Marine.

• Deployment length was directly linked to morale problems in the Army.

• Both soldiers and Marines reported at relatively high rates - 62% and 66%, respectively - that they knew someone seriously injured or killed, or that a member of their team had become a casualty.

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Posted by Mike Carney at 12:39 PM/ET, May 04, 2007 in Iraq | Permalink

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline..._o.html?csp=34

[drmarshallusa]

In case the other links break, here is the URL of the Pentagon's MHAT-IV Report:

http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/new...rt_17NOV06.pdf


For people who can not glean through the 89 pages:

DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS - Begins on p. 76.

CONSOLIDATED RECOMMENDATIONS - Begins on p. 81.

[mashabox]

Deaths Raise Questions About Mental-Health Care

By JENNIFER C KERR

In the three months after Marine Maj. John Ruocco returned from Iraq feeling numb and depressed, he couldn't sleep. He had lost weight. He had nightmares. He was distracted and withdrawn from his two young sons.

One night, he promised his wife, Kim, that he would get help. The next morning, he was dead. The 40-year-old Cobra helicopter pilot, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., had hanged himself.

Veterans groups and families who have lost loved ones say the number of troops struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental-health issues is on the increase and not enough help is being provided by the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department.

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, says that although suicides among troops returning from the war are a significant problem, the scope is unknown.

"The problem that we face right now is that there's no method to track veterans coming home," said Rieckhoff, who served in Iraq as a platoon leader in the first year of the war. "There's no system. There's no national registry."

More than four years into the war, the government has little information on suicides among Iraq war veterans.

"We don't keep that data," said Karen Fedele, a VA spokeswoman in Washington. "I'm told that somebody here is going to do an analysis, but there just is nothing right now."

The Defense Department does track suicides but only among troops in such combat operations as Iraq and Afghanistan and in surrounding areas. Since the war began, 107 suicides during Iraq operations have been recorded by the Defense Manpower Data Center, which collects data for the Pentagon. That number usually does not include troops who return home from war and take their lives.

For service members returning from combat, post-deployment health assessments include a questionnaire with queries about mental health. This year, the Pentagon expanded health monitoring for war veterans to include another screening three to six months after combat.

Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, the Army's acting surgeon general, said the Army is expanding a program started in January at Fort Bragg, N.C., that aims to lessen the stigma associated with PTSD. It brings behavioral health staff directly into primary-care clinics instead of making soldiers go to a separate mental-health facility for help.

This month, a Pentagon task force warned that the military health- care system is overburdened and not sufficient to meet the needs of troops suffering from PTSD and other psychological problems. The panel called for a fundamental shift in treatment to focus on screening and prevention instead of relying on troops to come forward on their own.

Kim Ruocco of Newbury, Mass., said her husband worried about the ramifications of seeking help, personally and professionally. John Ruocco ended his life in February 2005, a few weeks before he was to redeploy to Iraq.

Joshua Omvig, 22, a member of the Army Reserve from Grundy Center, Iowa, also took his own life. In December 2005, he shot himself in front of his mother after an 11-month tour in Iraq.

The Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs is considering a bill named for Omvig. It directs the VA to develop a suicide-prevention program for veterans suffering from PTSD and other depression issues. It unanimously passed the House in March.

The VA declined to comment about the bill or its requirements.

IMPACT

PTSD disability claims to the VA increased from 120,265 in 1999 to 215,871 in 2004. Benefit payments jumped nearly 150 percent to $4.28 billion in the same period, according to a report from an Institute of Medicine committee and the National Research Council.

(c) 2007 Richmond Times - Dispatch. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Story from REDORBIT NEWS:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=953986

[Haremporblape]

"The problem that we face right now is that there's no method to track veterans coming home," said Rieckhoff, who served in Iraq as a platoon leader in the first year of the war. "There's no system. There's no national registry." "We don't keep that data," said Karen Fedele, a VA spokeswoman in Washington. "I'm told that somebody here is going to do an analysis, but there just is nothing right now."
"Well... Isn't that convenient...?"

[Uzezqelj]

Male veterans have higher suicide risk: study

By Will Dunham
June 11, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Male U.S. veterans are twice as likely to die by suicide than people with no military service, and are more likely to kill themselves with a gun than others who commit suicide, researchers said on Monday.

The findings indicate that doctors and others who may treat U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan should be alert for signs of depression and suicidal tendencies, said lead researcher Mark Kaplan of Portland State University in Oregon.

The study tracked 320,890 U.S. men, about a third of whom served in the U.S. military between 1917 and 1994. The rest had no military background.

Those with military service committed suicide at a rate 2.13 times higher than the other men, but did not have a higher risk of dying from disease, accidental causes or murder, the study found.

"This is identifying a problem that deserves more attention," Kaplan said in a telephone interview.

Of the veterans, about 29 percent served in the Vietnam War, 28 percent in World War Two, 16 percent in the Korean War and the rest in other conflicts up through the 1991 Gulf War.

The veterans were 58 percent more likely to have used a firearm to kill themselves than non-veterans who committed suicide. Kaplan said studies show that veterans are more likely to own guns than the rest of the population.

The study was not designed to look at the causes of the higher suicide rate, but veterans, particularly those who saw combat, are at higher risk for mental conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder as well as battle wounds that can cause disabilities.

The research was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Kaplan said because of improvements in medicine since earlier wars, some troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived wounds that may have been fatal in previous conflicts, but have serious physical and mental disabilities that may put them at higher suicide risk.

'THIS WILL PERSIST'

"I don't see anything out there that really bodes well for a decline in the risk for suicide. I think that this will persist," Kaplan said.

Those who committed suicide were more likely to have been white, better educated and older than the other men, the researchers found. The most acute risk was among veterans with some sort of a health problem that made them unable to participate fully in home, work or leisure activities.

Overweight veterans were less likely to have committed suicide than veterans of normal weight, the study said.

The researchers said unlike some previous studies on suicides among U.S. military veterans, theirs did not focus on Vietnam War-era veterans or veterans who get health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs system. They said three-quarters of veterans do not receive health care through VA facilities.

"Regardless of when an individual served in the military, they are at an elevated risk," Kaplan said.

Kaplan said he and fellow researchers Nathalie Huguet, Bentson McFarland and Jason Newsom did not look at suicide among women veterans because there were so few suicide deaths among the group in the data they analyzed.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070611/...de_veterans_dc

[dupratac]

The bill for Agent Orange comes due

POLITICO
By DAVID ROGERS
8/30/10

Age and Agent Orange are closing in on Vietnam veterans, a legacy of hurt for those who served — and a very big bill for American taxpayers.

It’s a world turned upside down from decades ago when returning soldiers had to fight to get attention for deadly lymphomas linked to the herbicide. Now the frailties of men in their 60s — prostate cancer, diabetes, heart disease — lead the list of qualified Agent Orange disabilities, and the result has been an explosion in claims and the government’s liability.

The latest expansion, approved by Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki in October, adds ischemic heart disease and Parkinson’s and will cost at least $42 billion over the next 10 years. The VA estimates 349,000 individuals are already receiving Agent Orange disability benefits, and that number could soon reach 500,000 — or one out of every four surviving Vietnam veterans by the VA’s count.

As the costs rise, so do the questions about the science involved and the box Washington put itself in by failing to address Agent Orange’s impact more directly at the outset.

And because Vietnam service is still such a political minefield for American politicians, the most telling, often edgy debate is among veterans themselves.

“It is what it is. The anecdotal evidence of Vietnam veterans dying and getting diseases earlier is enormous,” said an exasperated Richard Weidman, an Army medic in the war and now legislative director for Vietnam Veterans of America. “I know five people in the VVA leadership alone who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. In no other side of my life have I seen anything like that.”

Yet for many who saw Vietnam firsthand, a 1-to-4 ratio of service-connected disabilities for Agent Orange strains credibility. And this is especially the case when the top conditions are heart disease and diabetes, two illnesses so linked to diet and lifestyle.

“Heart disease is a common phenomenon regardless of potential exposure to Agent Orange,” wrote Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) in a June letter to Shinseki challenging the secretary’s decision. A decorated Marine infantry officer in the war, Webb has since softened his tone after catching heat for his stance. But with his urging, the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 23 on the new regulations, slated to take effect by December.

“I just want to understand the logic of how they decided this latest service connection,” said Webb. “This is a helluva awkward position to be in where I’ve been an advocate all my adult life on veterans’ benefits. I just want to know how they got to this point.”

Backing Webb is Anthony Principi, also a Vietnam veteran, and VA secretary under former President George W. Bush.

“He’s gotten some heat, but how can anyone question his patriotism and what he has done?” Principi said of Webb. “It’s got to be looked at; it’s got to be addressed. ... This is serious. The numbers are dramatic.”

“We’re 40 years later and we need to ask, is there a better way to do this? You want to do what’s right for veterans,” he told POLITICO. “At the same time, you want to protect the integrity of the disability compensation program.”

The convergence of cost pressures now is striking as captured by events on Tuesday this week.

That morning, the VA expects the Federal Register to publish the new Agent Orange rules to implement the latest expansion of benefits, including heart disease coverage. And that evening, President Barack Obama will speak to the nation on the U.S. transition between Iraq and Afghanistan, two fresh post-Vietnam wars with their own legacies of new disability claims ...

FULL ARTICLE

© 2010 Capitol News Company LLC

[Jenisoisy]

Maybe there is something they should look into to try and facilitate the more efficient treatment and care of these guys.

I am not in favor of moving them to camps, but possibly offering the OPTIOPN of getting a nicer place than where they are living, support for their families (at 60, this should not be much for many) and local medical care.

I am just worried that this could quickly devolve into a kind of Vet Hospital Interrment camp that would lose funding as soon as it was out of the public eye.....