In September 2007, a convoy of armored vehicles carrying private security contractors employed by the firm then known as Blackwater USA approached a large traffic circle in Baghdad. Minutes later, 17 Iraqi civilians in that square were dead, and 24 others had been wounded.
New government research shows that female military veterans commit suicide at nearly six times the rate of other women, a startling finding that experts say poses disturbing questions about the backgrounds and experiences of women who serve in the armed forces.
June marks PTSD awareness month and new statistics show the alarming number of veterans in our country who are dealing with the mental disorder, triggered by experiencing or seeing a traumatic event.
Great Falls Police Sgt. Rich LaBard thought he was having a heart attack, but he didn’t call for an ambulance. The next two hours were scrubbed from his memory; he “came to” at his kitchen table. He was holding a duty roster from the Great Falls Police Department and a phone.
Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, was one of the first scientists to take the anecdotal claims about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness and test them in brain scans. What she found surprised her — that meditating can literally change your brain.
We might think we have a basic understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD: Soldiers in battle see things they’d like to forget, but years later combat memories come back to haunt them. That’s the received wisdom.
At 4 a.m. I am on the path to the local track in California. My headlamp shines through the dark, showing suspended water droplets from the valley’s fog. I pick up my pace to start my 400-meter repeats. Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” blares through my headphones:
Silence like a cancer grows/Hear my words that I might teach you/Take my arms that I might reach you/But my words like silent raindrops fell/And echoed in the wells of silence.
Veterans coming home from war are finding that dogs are one of the best ways to cope with PTSD. But the dogs are very expensive to train and are currently not covered by the Veterans Affairs.
How do you explain combat related post-traumatic stress disorder to your children? It’s hard enough to rationalize the anger, confusion or self-doubt with oneself — or convey how you feel to your spouse or family — but how do you get it across to your son or daughter that what you’re feeling stems from an event long since passed? The answer may lie in the title of Seth Kastle’s children’s book, “Why is Dad so Mad?”
Army Lt. Col. John Thurman lost 26 co-workers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon. He endured severe smoke inhalation while trapped in the building for 25 minutes. He spent a week in the hospital recovering.