The mission of the “Ride 4 the Fallen” is to perpetuate the memory of men & women who have answered the call of duty to serve our great country. Every May thousands of bikers take to the road to honor the fallen. Click Here to register now and create a campaign in your area or join a ride near you. Some of us have no idea what it's like to serve in the Military, or you have served and you know exactly what it is like to serve on foreign soil in war time. You know what it is like to come home after war struggling with night terrors, survivors guilt, memory loss among other things. Those of us who haven't served do not have any idea about the true cost of freedom. Our veterans return home from war unable to use the freedom they fought to protect on American soil. Every day, about 22 veterans lose their battle at home to post traumatic stress disorder. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are simple solutions like completing research, alternative treatments and diagnosing traumatic brain injuries that can help prevent military suicide. Start your own fundraising campaign to help Military Veteran Project fund these types of projects around the world, look for anyone who can help you! Please donate -- anything you can give is a huge help. 100% of the money will be used to fund research and treatment, and while the research is being done the Military Veteran Project, will keep us up to date by sharing stories of the veterans and families we helped. Help carry on the memory of a fallen hero by riding in their honor! Gather your friends, family or reach out to local businesses for support. Create unity in your community by honoring America's fallen and raise funds for treatment & research for suicide prevention. Sign up for Newsletter to get information about events around you or start an event in your community. Join an existing ride near you! Get your shirt now by clicking here
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A Senior NCO went by and the Soldier with PTSD called out for help. The Senior NCO yelled at, told him to suck it up dig deep & drive on, then threw him a shovel. But the Soldier with PTSD could not suck it up and drive on so he dug the hole deeper.
A Senior Officer went by and the Soldier with PTSD called out for help. The Senior Officer told him to use the tools your Senior NCO has given you then threw him a bucket. But the Soldier with PTSD was using the tools his Senior NCO gave him so he dug the hole deeper and filled the bucket. A psychiatrist walked by. The Soldier with PTSD said, “Help! I can’t get out!” The psychiatrist gave him some drugs and said, “Take this. It will relieve the pain.” The Soldier with PTSD said thanks, but when the pills ran out, he was still in the hole. A well-known psychologist rode by and heard the Soldier with PTSD cries for help. He stopped and asked, ” How did you get there? Were you born there? Did your parents put you there? Tell me about yourself, it will alleviate your sense of loneliness.” So the Soldier with PTSD talked with him for an hour, then the psychologist had to leave, but he said he’d be back next week. The Soldier with PTSD thanked him, but he was still in the hole. A priest came by. The Soldier with PTSD called for help. The priest gave him a Bible and said, “I’ll say a prayer for you.” He got down on his knees and prayed for the Soldier with PTSD, then he left. The Soldier with PTSD was very grateful, he read the Bible, but he was still stuck in the hole. A recovering Soldier with PTSD happened to be passing by. The Soldier with PTSD cried out, “Hey, help me. I’m stuck in this hole!” Right away the recovering Soldier with PTSD jumped down in the hole with him. The Soldier with PTSD said, “What are you doing? Now we’re both stuck here!!” But the recovering Soldier with PTSD said, “Calm down. It’s okay. I’ve been here before. I know how to get out. ~Author Unknown After the sixth suicide in his old battalion, Manny Bojorquez sank onto his bed. With a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam beside him and a pistol in his hand, he began to cry. He had gone to Afghanistan at 19 as a machine-gunner in the Marine Corps. In the 18 months since leaving the military, he had grown long hair and a bushy mustache. It was 2012. He was working part time in a store selling baseball caps and going to community college while living with his parents in the suburbs of Phoenix. He rarely mentioned the war to friends and family, and he never mentioned his
Still reeling from the news, Mr. Bojorquez surveyed the old baseball posters on the walls of his childhood bedroom and the sun-bleached body armor hanging on his bedpost. Then he took a long pull from the bottle. “If he couldn’t make it,” he recalled thinking to himself, “what chance do I have?” He pressed the loaded pistol to his brow and pulled the trigger. Mr. Bojorquez, 27, served in one of the hardest hit military units in Afghanistan, the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. In 2008, the 2/7 deployed to a wild swath of Helmand Province. Well beyond reliable supply lines, the battalion regularly ran low on water and ammunition while coming under fire almost daily. During eight months of combat, the unit killed hundreds of enemy fighters and suffered more casualties than any other Marine battalion that year. When its members returned, most left the military and melted back into the civilian landscape. They had families and played softball, taught high school and attended Ivy League universities. But many also struggled, unable to find solace. And for some, the agonies of war never ended. Almost seven years after the deployment, suicide is spreading through the old unit like a virus. Of about 1,200 Marines who deployed with the 2/7 in 2008, at least 13 have killed themselves, two while on active duty, the rest after they left the military. The resulting suicide rate for the group is nearly four times the rate for young male veterans as a whole and 14 times that for all Americans. The deaths started a few months after the Marines returned from the war in Afghanistan. A corporal put on his dress uniform and shot himself in his driveway. A former sergeant shot himself in front of his girlfriend and mother. An ex-sniper who pushed others to seek help forpost-traumatic stress disorder shot himself while alone in his apartment. The problem has grown over time. More men from the battalion killed themselves in 2014 — four — than in any previous year. Veterans of the unit, tightly connected by social media, sometimes learn of the deaths nearly as soon as they happen. In November, a 2/7 veteran of three combat tours posted a photo of his pistol on Snapchat with a note saying, “I miss you all.” Minutes later, he killed himself. The most recent suicide was in May, when Eduardo Bojorquez, no relation to Manny, overdosed on pills in his car. Men from the battalion converged from all over the country for his funeral in Las Vegas, filing silently past the grave, tossing roses that thumped on the plain metal coffin like drum beats. “When the suicides started, I felt angry,” Matt Havniear, a onetime lance corporal who carried a rocket launcher in the war, said in a phone interview from Oregon. “The next few, I would just be confused and sad. Then at about the 10th, I started feeling as if it was inevitable — that it is going to get us all and there is nothing we could do to stop it.” For years leaders at the top levels of the government have acknowledged the high suicide rate among veterans and spent heavily to try to reduce it. But the suicides have continued, and basic questions about who is most at risk and how best to help them are still largely unanswered. The authorities are not even aware of the spike in suicides in the 2/7; suicide experts at theDepartment of Veterans Affairs said they did not track suicide trends among veterans of specific military units. And the Marine Corps does not track suicides of former service members. Feeling abandoned, members of the battalion have turned to a survival strategy they learned at war: depending on one another. Doing what the government has not, they have used free software and social media to create a quick-response system that allows them to track, monitor and intervene with some of their most troubled comrades. Their system has made a few saves, but many in the battalion still feel stalked by suicide. “To this day I’m scared of it,” said Ruben Sevilla, 28, who deployed twice with the 2/7 and now works for a warehouse management company called Legacy SCS near Chicago. “If all these guys can do that, what’s stopping me? That’s what freaks me out the most. I haven’t touched a gun since I got out of the Marine Corps because I’m afraid to.” The morning after Manny Bojorquez tried to shoot himself in 2012, he opened his eyes to sunlight streaming in his window and found the loaded gun on the floor. Through his whiskey headache, he pieced together that his gun had jammed and that he had passed out drunk. A week later, he stood alongside more than a dozen other Marine veterans at Mr. Markel’s funeral in Lincoln, Neb. The crack of rifles echoed off the headstones as an honor guard fired a salute. Mr. Bojorquez offered his condolences to Mr. Markel’s mother after the funeral. He thought about how life seemed increasingly bitter. The thrill of combat was gone. Only regrets and flashbacks remained. Mr. Markel’s mother pressed something into Mr. Bojorquez’s palm at the funeral, a spent brass shell casing from the honor guard. Promise me, she said to him, that you will never put your mother through this. Mr. Bojorquez promised. That began a three-year odyssey in which the deaths of his friends weighed on Mr. Bojorquez, who tried repeatedly to get help from Veterans Affairs but ultimately gave up. “I was lost then. I still am kind of lost,” he said in a recent interview. “I was just trying to look for something that wasn’t there. I was trying to look for an answer that I don’t have — that no one does.” ‘The Forgotten Battalion’In Afghanistan, after the men of the 2/7 realized the scope of their mission, they began calling themselves “the Forgotten Battalion.” In the spring of 2008, they deployed from their base at Twenty-Nine Palms, Calif., to an untamed stretch of Afghanistan surrounding the city of Sangin. Their job was to pacify a Taliban stronghold the size of Massachusetts that had never been controlled by coalition troops, or anyone else. Opium poppies grew in fields as vast as those of corn in the Midwest. Roads were pocked with the rusting hulks of Soviet tanks destroyed in a different war. The Marines were spread out in sandbag outposts, hours from reinforcements, and often outnumbered. With the Pentagon focused on the surge in Iraq, equipment was scant. There was no dedicated air support, few mine-sweeping trucks, often no refrigeration. The only reliable abundance was combat. “Machine guns, mortars, rockets, RPGs, I.E.D.s, constant fighting. It was like the Wild West,” said Keith Branch of Austin, Tex., who was a 20-year-old rifleman who patrolled a village called Now Zad. In that village alone, two Marine platoons fired more than 2,500 mortar rounds, called in 50,000 pounds of explosives from aircraft and killed 185 enemy fighters, battalion documents show. Many of the Marines had deployed to Iraq just eight months before. At least two had been shot by snipers and one was hit by a grenade in Iraq, but they were redeployed to Afghanistan anyway. All three later killed themselves. The I.E.D.s, or improvised explosive devices, plagued patrols. The first convoy arriving in Sangin hit two. In the next two weeks, an I.E.D. hidden in a bicycle killed a medic, an I.E.D. packed in a culvert killed three Marines in a Humvee, and an I.E.D. discovered in a dirt lane killed a specialist trained to defuse the explosives. Manny Bojorquez spent the tour in a village called Musa Qala, where repeated offensives failed to drive out the Taliban. 00:00 00:58Members of the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, deployed in 2008 to serve in an isolated outpost in Afghanistan. Their job was to pacify a Taliban stronghold. By TODD HEISLER, CATHERINE SPANGLER and MARGARET CHEATHAM WILLIAMSPublish Date One evening his squad was patrolling single file across a field when the enemy ambushed it on two sides. As the squad sprinted for cover, Mr. Bojorquez watched a bullet hit a Marine in front of him, who crumpled to the dirt. Mr. Bojorquez and another Marine grabbed the bleeding man and dragged him to a ditch. Pressed against the ground, readying his machine gun, Mr. Bojorquez looked over and saw his teammate Corporal Markel laying down fire — with a steady grin on his face. Together they showered the surrounding fields and houses with bullets, providing cover for a medic. But the enemy pressed harder, another Marine was hit and the outnumbered squad had to pick up and run. “It’s funny. I was never scared. You just act. But it stuck with me,” Mr. Bojorquez said. By the end of the deployment, 20 Marines in the battalion had been killed and 140 had been wounded. Many lost limbs. Some were badly burned; others were so battered by blasts that they can scarcely function day to day. Others returned unscathed, but unable to fall in with civilian life. Members of the battalion say what they brought home from combat is more complex than just PTSD. Many regret things they did — or failed to do. Some feel betrayed that the deep sacrifices made in combat seem to have achieved little. Others cannot reconcile the stark intensity of war with home’s mannered expectations, leaving them alienated among family and friends. It is not just symptoms likesleeplessness or flashbacks, but an injury to their sense of self. Continue reading the main story Where to Call for HelpThe Department of Veterans Affairs maintains a hotline for veterans in crisis that operates 24 hours a day. Call 1-800-273-8255 and press 1. Online, visit veteranscrisisline.net/chat, or send a text message to 838255. “Something happens over there,” said Mr. Havniear, whose best friend from the battalion tried suicide by cutting his wrists after returning home, but survived. “You wake up a primal part of your brain you are not supposed to listen to, and it becomes a part of you. I shot an old woman. I shot her on purpose because she was running at us with an RPG. You see someone blown in half, or you carry a foot. You can try, but it is hard to get away from that.” After Mr. Bojorquez returned home, he started having a recurring nightmare. He was patrolling with his squad when bomb blasts killed everyone but him. As the dust cleared, he looked up to see enemy fighters surging forward. He often sat up in bed, thinking he was choking on his own blood. One Mission’s TollBeginning in 2005, suicide rates among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans started to climb sharply,and the military and Veterans Affairs created a number of programs to fight the problem. Despitespending hundreds of millions on research, the department and the military still know little about how combat experience affects suicide risk, according to suicide researchers focused on the military. Many recent studies have focused on whether deployment was a risk factor for suicide, and found that it was not. The results appeared to show something paradoxical: Those deployed to war were actually less likely to commit suicide. But critics of the studies say most people deployed in war zones do not face enemy fire. The risk for true combat veterans is hidden in the larger results, and has never been properly examined, they assert. “They may have 10 times the risk, they may have 100 times, and we don’t know, because no one has looked,” said Michael Schoenbaum, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The men of the 2/7 overwhelmingly see a tie between combat and their suicide problem. Not only were all of the men who committed suicide young infantrymen who struggled with experiences of killing and loss, they say, but it is possible to trace one traumatic moment forward and see how those involved are now struggling. Noel Guerrero and Manny Bojorquez were best friends in the battalion. As two Mexican-Americans from the Southwest, they bonded in infantry school over a love of Mexican hot sauce. In Afghanistan, they would share bottles sent from home. On one mission, Mr. Guerrero, then a 20-year-old lance corporal, was a machine-gunner atop a truck at the lead of a supply convoy. He said he was good at finding I.E.D.s and over six months had spotted almost a dozen that the battalion was able to avoid. But one day, the truck hit a big one, and the explosion flung him against his gun turret. Mr. Guerrero crawled from the smoking vehicle, his head spinning. He watched his sergeant’s Humvee roll in to help. Then suddenly, another blast swallowed the sergeant’s truck in smoke. The truck shot up 10 feet and came down with a crash, falling to its side. Then, chaos. The driver was trapped and screaming, with his arm caught under the wreckage. A medic in the back was pinned by a seat crushed against the truck’s ceiling. The sergeant was dead. Before Mr. Guerrero could get to his feet to help, enemy fire started thudding into the ground around him. He spotted his machine gun in the dirt, where it had landed after being blown out of the truck, and with his vision still blurred, he began to return fire. Two other Marines, Cpl. Jastin Pak and Lance Cpl. Tanner Cleveland, scrambled into the wreckage. Mr. Pak crouched over the driver, shielding him until a line of Marines could lift the truck enough to free his arm. Mr. Pak and Mr. Cleveland emerged covered with blood, clutching the wounded, then went back for the remains of the sergeant. The platoon was out of body bags, so they stuffed the sergeant’s remains into a sleeping bag. When it was all over, Mr. Guerrero picked up a cigarette that had been blown out of one of the trucks and lit it. After he exhaled, he noticed it was spotted with blood. He smoked it anyway. Since that day, Mr. Guerrero has blamed himself for the ordeal and has tried to kill himself three times. Mr. Cleveland, 26, of Chicago, also tried suicide, and Mr. Pak, of Oceanside, Calif., hanged himself in November. “You come back and try to be a normal kid, but there is always a shadow on you, a dark shadow you can never take away,” Mr. Guerrero, now 28, said in an interview at his home in San Diego. “Now, when I meet someone, I already know what they look like dead. I can’t help but think that way. And I ask myself, ‘Do I want to live with this feeling for the rest of my life, or is it better to just finish it off?’ ” Lacking Data on Suicides The first few suicides struck the men of the battalion as random. It was only over time that they came to see the deaths as a part of their war story — combat deaths that happened after the fact. Cpl. Richard McShan died first. He had survived a truck bomb in Iraq before deploying to Afghanistan. Four months after they returned, in the spring of 2009, he put on his dress uniform after an argument with his girlfriend and shot himself in his driveway. In December 2009, Pfc. Christopher G. Stewart hanged himself from a door in his barracks. In April 2010, Shawn Jensen, a sergeant who had just gotten out of the Marines and moved home to rural Washington State to work in construction, shot himself during an argument with his girlfriend and mother. The Marines tended to chalk up these first suicides to foolish impulses or prewar problems. Then came the death that shook the battalion, and prompted many to ask whether something was wrong not just with the men who killed themselves, but with them all. Continue reading the main story Battalion SuicidesThirteen Marines who deployed with the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment to Afghanistan in 2008 later killed themselves. All were young, low-ranking infantry troops. APRIL 1, 2009 Cpl. Richard McShan, 23 DEC. 23, 2009 Pvt. Christopher G. Stewart, 21 APRIL 3, 2010 Sgt. Shawn Jensen, 27 MARCH 31, 2011 Cpl. Clay Hunt, 28 JULY 1, 2012 Cpl. Jeremie Ross, 25 OCT. 6, 2012 Cpl. Joshua Markel, 25 DEC. 9, 2012 Lance Cpl. Ufrano Rios Jimenez, 23 JAN. 18, 2013 Cpl. Luis Rocha, 23 APRIL 12, 2014 Cpl. Elias Reyes Jr., 27 OCT. 6, 2014 Lance Cpl. Tyler Wilkerson, 27 NOV. 2, 2014 Cpl. Joseph Gellings, 29 NOV. 5, 2014 Sgt. Jastin Pak, 27 MAY 30, 2015 Lance Cpl. Eduardo Bojorquez, 25Cpl. Clay Hunt had been a sniper in the battalion. After he got out of the Marine Corps in 2009 after his second tour, his disenchantment with the war grew, and he sought treatment from Veterans Affairs fordepression and PTSD. He became an outspoken advocate for young veterans, speaking openly about his problems and lobbying for better care for veterans on Capitol Hill. In 2010, he was featured in a public service message urging veterans to seek support from their comrades. At the same time, Mr. Hunt was fighting to get adequate care at the V.A., encountering long delays and inconsistent treatment, according to his mother, Susan Selke of Houston. Friends said Mr. Hunt had felt directionless. “There is so much isolation and lack of purpose. We came home from war unprepared for peace, and we’ve had to find a new mission,” said Jake Wood, who was also a sniper in the 2/7. “He struggled to do that.” Mr. Hunt shot himself in his apartment in Texas in March 2011. He was 28. After years of lobbying by his family and veterans’ groups, Congress in February passed the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, which provides additional suicide prevention resources for Veterans Affairs. “When he died, all the guys, we couldn’t understand it,” said Danny Kwan of San Gabriel, Calif., an ex-corporal who served two tours with Mr. Hunt. “He had done exactly what he had been fighting against.” At the time of Mr. Hunt’s suicide, Mr. Kwan was fresh out of the Marines. One night when he was drunk and despondent over a recent breakup, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. He jerked the gun away as it fired, sending the bullet through a wall. “At the last moment I decided I wanted to live,” Mr. Kwan said. “We all have our demons. Some more than others.” No one knows whether the battalion’s suicide rate is abnormally high or a common trait of fighting units hit hard by combat, because no one monitors troops over time. In an era of Big Data, when algorithms can predict human patterns in startling detail, suicide data for veterans is incomplete and years old by the time it is available. The most recent data is from 2011. The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Pentagon say they have introduced a new system, called the Suicide Data Repository, that is faster and more complete. But Dr. Harold Kudler, chief mental health consultant to the department, said the military and V.A. did not share information that could allow the monitoring of combat units over time. “Might that be a good idea? It might be a good idea,” he said. “But it’s not in our ability to achieve. It’s not our mission.” A Pact to HelpIn December 2012, Marines from the 2/7 converged on a small town in the Central Valley of California for another funeral. A former radioman named Ufrano Rios Jimenez had killed himself with a shot to the heart. Mr. Rios had lost a leg in Afghanistan. Once home, he struggled with PTSD. But he gave up on treatment at the V.A. and turned to alcohol, painkillers and eventually heroin, according to his former girlfriend, Allison Keefer. After the suicide of a friend from the battalion, Jeremie Ross, in July 2012, he quit work and slipped into a deep depression. At the funeral, Mr. Bojorquez stood with the others from the 2/7 as they shook their heads and discussed what to do. A battle-hardened former corporal named Travis Wilkerson spoke up.
Once a fearsome team leader in a deadly sector of Sangin, he was now working as a night manager at a sandwich shop. He was one of several men from the battalion who had changed their lives radically in search of peace, growing a bushy beard and taking a vow of nonviolence. “Real talk, guys, let’s make a pact, right here,” Travis Wilkerson said. “I don’t want to go to any more funerals. Let’s promise to reach out and talk. Get your phones out, put my number in. Call me day or night. I’m not doing this again.” His twin brother, Tyler Wilkerson, who had served in the same platoon, stood next to him. After the Marines, he had become a Buddhist and joined Greenpeace. He said he agreed. Then a three-tour former corporal named Elias Reyes Jr. stepped forward. He had a long ponytail and a degree in philosophy from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was hoping to attend medical school. Enough of this, he said. One by one, the others joined the pact. Just over a year later, Mr. Reyes killed himself. In combat, he had been flattened by explosions several times and seen friends maimed and killed. Back home, he was getting counseling at the V.A., family members said, but faced delays and struggled to find a therapist who he felt understood him. In April 2014, he hanged himself in his apartment. “He was very religious, a Catholic,” his sister, Margarita Reyes, said. “To do what he did, he must have been in so much pain.” News of his death was one more in a mounting pile of problems for Tyler Wilkerson. But in March 2013, he was arrested after he and others trespassed to unfurl giant banners that accused Procter & Gamble, the household products company, of destroying rain forests. In the months that followed, his girlfriend broke up with him and Greenpeace fired him, leaving him alone with wartime memories that he had tried to escape. He fatally shot himself in October 2014, a few weeks before he was to stand trial for the Greenpeace action. “He felt like he had lost everything,” Travis Wilkerson said. “He said his life looked like this endless mountain he couldn’t see the top of.” Other deaths soon followed. A month later, a mortar man who had served three tours at war, Joseph Gellings, killed himself at his home in Kansas. He had tried mental health treatment at the V.A., but gave up after delays and other frustrations, according to his longtime girlfriend, Jenna Passio. Instead, she said, he drank and became reclusive. She eventually left him, taking their daughter. After their breakup, he posted to Facebook, “I’m done with life.” Other Marines texted and called to check on him. “Disregard guys, everything is fine,” he replied. A short time later he shot himself in the head as Ms. Passio looked on in horror. Realizing he was only wounded, he went into a bathroom in his home and shot himself again. It was the friend who had helped Mr. Cleveland pull body parts from a smoldering Humvee in Afghanistan, Jastin Pak. Three days after Mr. Gellings’s death, Mr. Pak, 27, hanged himself from a pine tree in the mountains west of his home. On his desk, Mr. Pak left a completed “stressful incident form” that the veterans hospital in San Diego gave him on his initial visit a few days before. It asked him to list events from combat that were causing him anguish. He filled two pages, starting with the killing of an older man in Iraq who had been unarmed and finishing with placing the remains of the dead sergeant into a sleeping bag. Failed Therapy After the eighth suicide in the battalion, in 2013, Mr. Bojorquez decided he needed professional help and made an appointment at the veterans hospital in Phoenix. He sat down with a therapist, a young woman. After listening for a few minutes, she told him that she knew he was hurting, but that he would just have to get over the deaths of his friends. He should treat it, he recalled her saying, “like a bad breakup with a girl.” The comment caught him like a hook. Guys he knew had been blown to pieces and burned to death. One came home with shrapnel in his face from a friend’s skull. Now they were killing themselves at an alarming rate. And the therapist wanted him to get over it like a breakup? Mr. Bojorquez shot out of his seat and began yelling. “What are you talking about?” he said. “This isn’t something you just get over.” He had tried getting help at the V.A. once before, right after Mr. Markel’s funeral, and had walked out when he realized the counselor had not read his file. Now he was angry that he had returned. With each visit, it appeared to him that the professionals trained to make sense of what he was feeling understood it less than he did. He threw a chair across the room and stomped out, vowing again never to go back to the V.A. In recent years, suicide prevention efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs have focused on encouraging veterans to go to its hospitals for help, but a bigger problem could be keeping them there. In interviews, many Marines from the battalion said they received effective care at the V.A. But many others said they had quit the treatment because of what they considered long waits, ineffective therapists and doctors’ overreliance on drugs. Six of the 13 Marines from the battalion who committed suicide had tried and then given up on V.A. treatment, discouraged by the bureaucracy and poor results, according to friends and relatives. 00:00 01:21After Mr. Bojorquez returned home from Afghanistan, he started experiencing recurring nightmares. A 2014 study of 204,000 veterans, in The Journal of the American Psychiatric Association, found nearly two-thirds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans stopped Veterans Affairs therapy for PTSD within a year, before completing the treatment. A smaller study from the same year found about 90 percent dropped out of therapy. Brain Changes from PTSD can be Permanent…But they don’t have to be!
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects millions of people around the world. In fact, it is estimated that each year 1 out of 30 U.S. adults suffers with PTSD as a result of emotional trauma. This very real and potentially debilitating disorder develops after a traumatic event, such as military combat, rape or assault, or exposure to violence, and is characterized by:
It’s true! Growing up in a chaotic, aggressive environment causes the same brain changes in children as what soldiers experience in war. It can actually change your brain, perhaps for the rest of your life. While emotional trauma in childhood can follow you into adulthood, it doesn’t have to. It all starts with looking at your brain to determine its health. On brain SPECT scans, the pattern of PTSD typically reveals over-activity in multiple areas of the brain—often referred to as the “diamond plus pattern.” This high activity tends to keep the brain on overdrive, increasing anxiety, irritability and interfering with sleep. In this week’s short video, Dr. Daniel Amen and his wife Tana Amen talk about PTSD – the effects it can have and what to do about it! Here’s a quick look at some of the highlights:
If you suspect that you or a loved one has PTSD, come to an Amen Clinic for a comprehensive full evaluation using the Amen Clinics Method. The Amen Clinics Method—developed through 25 years of clinical practice—uses a detailed clinical history, SPECT Brain Scan Imaging to understand brain function, neuropsychological testing and laboratory studies to target treatment specifically to your brain, using the least toxic, most effective means possible. 85% of patients treated with the Amen Clinics Method experience improved quality of life after just 6 months of treatment. An Open Letter..
As you know, the Military Veteran Project is a volunteer-driven charity committed to funding the most promising research to find cures for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury to assist with suicide prevention for PRE & POST 9/11 Veterans. In 2015, reports suggest that 22 veterans + 1 active duty service member lost their lives to suicide on American soil from Post Traumatic Stress or undiagnosed Traumatic Brain Injury. That is 22 too many. The Military Veteran Project is on a mission to decrease military suicides with a goal to end military suicide as we know it through research. We need to get to root of the issue, the brain. With veterans returning home after war with minimal decompression or rehabilitation time, veterans and military families are left trying to cope with the traumatic combat events. Flashbacks, hypersensitivity, nightmares, hyper-vigilance, & insomnia are only a few of the symptoms associated with Post Traumatic Stress, while veterans and active duty service members are fighting a new war within themselves on American soil, government agencies like the Department of Defense and Veterans Administration are facing cutbacks, furloughs and limited on treatment options. 2/3 of veterans suffering with symptoms are being treated with prescription drugs, while the other 1/3 refuse to seek medical assistance. Through research we know here at the Military Veteran Project, lives can be saved. Register for Research HERE In February 2016, The Military Veteran Project teamed up with Housing and Credit Counseling, Inc. and National Foundation for Credit Counseling member agency to assist active duty, reserve, veterans and military families with free housing and credit counseling services. MORE INFO Ask yourself, do I want to help create change and save a life? If the answer is yes, GET INVOLVED now by clicking here. We are excited to share with you that the Military Veteran Project will host the 4th Annual Topeka Veterans Parade! Veterans, wounded warriors, active duty and military families from across the nation will join in festivities the weekend of November 4-6, 2016. MORE INFO Gratefully yours, Melissa D. Jarboe Founder - Military Veteran Project Click here to see original newsletter http://eepurl.com/bSigHX Parade Committee Votes unanimously to have the Topeka Veterans Parade downtown Topeka for 4th year!2/25/2016 Very proud of the Topeka Veterans Parade committee who voted unanimously to continue the Topeka Veterans Parade for the 4th year in a row! Everyone is welcome to attend the event as spectators or participate and be in the parade to show their gratitude to our veterans!
Come to Topeka, Kansas Saturday, November 5, 2016 at 11am! Bring your group to the Capital City of Kansas and march in the Topeka Veteran's Parade at 11am, Staging begins at 9am! Hotel, tourism and travel packages are coming soon; join our email list (below) to receive this information as soon as it’s available! Please feel free to email questions or concerns to contact@militaryveteranproject.org Parade Rules: Please read before registering. Staging: ALL PARADE ENTRIES must enter through 5th & Topeka Blvd- (FOLLOW PARADE REGISTRATION SIGNS) Staging begins at 9am Saturday Morning November 5, 2016 Do I have to register to be in parade? No, you do not but if you want to keep up to date and get information via email click register below. Registration Fees: Registration is free for the 2016 Topeka Veterans Parade. Float Rules: All Floats, cars, trucks, bicycles and registrants must have patriotic theme and will be entered to win the PATRIOTIC ENTRY award, judges will be on 10th street for final judging. Decorations can not obstruct the vision of the driver. Drivers must be licensed. All applicable laws must be followed. Float Rider Rules: Riders are allowed on floats ONLY ON THE PARADE ROUTE. Nothing can be distributed from the float (thrown from the float or handed to the crowd from the float). Walkers can distribute information/candy/etc. by handing it to individuals in the crowd. NO TOSSING CANDY OR OTHER ITEMS IN FRONT OF THE CROWD. Riders/walkers must not get onto or off of the float while the float is moving. Signs/Messages: Please remember that this is a parade to honor military veterans and show our unity as a community to say thank you for their service. The Topeka Veterans Parade Committee reserves the right to request removal of signs and messages. Parade Route: The Parade will begin at 8th & Harrison going towards 10th street taking a left to go by the grand stand towards Jackson Street taking a left on Jackson and then a left on 8th street exiting on Vanburen. Dispersement area will be at 6th & VanBuren. Visit Event Page >> https://www.facebook.com/events/472038973006028/ Visit website for more information >>> http://www.militaryveteranproject.org/topeka-veterans-parade.html The Military Veteran Project is honored to team up with Housing and Credit Counseling, Inc. a National Foundation for Credit Counseling member agency to assist active duty, reserve, veterans and military families with free housing and credit counseling services.
Current and former military personnel face unique financial situations and considerations such as deployment abroad coupled with their need to follow payment schedules in the U.S. These money management challenges often lead to failure to pay household expenses, heavy reliance on mortgage options to finance housing, and significant credit card usage and debt. In fact, 93% of military personnel have a mortgage and 91% have at least one credit card. Furthermore, current and former military credit card users are more likely to have debt than civilians. These challenges continue post-deployment as service members face new financial problems, including over 30% unemployment for veterans between the ages of 18 and 24. As experts in money management, budgeting, and financial education, National Foundation for Credit is well equipped to assist veterans with their unique financial challenges. NCCC aims to provide veterans and current military personnel with the information and tools to evaluate their current financial situations and create targeted plans to solve their financial problems. The Military Veteran Project, Housing and Credit Counseling and National Foundation for Credit Counseling hope to help ease the transition for veterans, service members, and their families by providing the knowledge needed to make the most informed financial decisions possible. Financial stress is a top precipitating factor to military suicide that’s been largely overlooked ever since the military suicide rate began to exceed comparable civilian rates more than a decade ago. The military's all-volunteer force has endured 13 years on a wartime footing through a devastating recession, both of which have contributed to high indebtedness and other financial distress for many soldiers and veterans. In 2013, 479 active-duty troops, reservists and National Guard members killed themselves – most by self-inflicted gunshot wounds or hanging. The official estimate of 22 veteran suicides a day is likely far under-estimated due to lapses in data collection from death certificates. Overall, military suicides account for a disproportionate amount – about a fifth – of all suicides nationwide. WASHINGTON - After a four-year study commissioned by Congress, the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., concluded that there are many programs addressing post-traumatic stress disorder, but no one can tell how effective they are.
"We found in the study that some programs do work, but quite a few service members don't like them and therefore don't go to them," said Elspeth Ritchie with Georgetown University and a former Army colonel. "We looked at established therapies, as well as what I call innovative therapies like yoga and acupuncture," she added. They also studied a procedure called stellate ganglion block where an anesthetic is injected into the neck. SGB has been used to block chronic pain receptors but it also has an impact on those with post-traumatic stress. While promising, "There is still much we don't know, that is one shot enough, two or repeated treatments but at what interval?" said Maryam Navaie with Advance Health Solutions, which conducted its own study on SGB. The Institute of Medicine study concluded that despite all the programs for post-traumatic stress disorder, the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs have no mechanism to collect, analyze or disseminate data as to the quality of PTSD care. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Numbers don't lie, right now we are losing more than 22 veterans a day to suicide, we know at the Military Veteran Project lives can be saved. Research and treatments are being done across the nation at various medical facilities to learn more about the brain and researchers have uncovered new details about what happens in the brain when a mild source of stress generates an extreme response, disproportionate to the stress. Their findings identify possible targets for new alternative treatments and therapies to heal the debilitating stress responses that define post-traumatic stress disorder. People develop PTSD after experiencing severe trauma, which in turn makes them hypersensitive to stress even in situations completely unlike the original trauma. To register as a research candidate, CLICK HERE. Subscribe Get Social Participate Advocate Many people with PTSD struggle in coping with flashbacks. Flashbacks are considered one of the re-experiencing symptoms of PTSD. In a flashback, a person may feel or act as though a traumatic event is happening again. A flashback may be temporary and some connection with the present moment may be maintained, or a person may lose all awareness of what is going on around him, being taken completely back to their traumatic event.
For example, a rape survivor, when triggered, may begin to smell certain scents or feel pain in her body similar to that which was experienced during her assault. People with PTSD may also experience dissociation. Dissociation is an experience where a person may feel disconnected from himself and/or his surroundings. Similar to flashbacks, dissociation may range from temporarily losing touch with things that are going on around you (kind of like what happens when you daydream) to having no memories for a prolonged period of time and/or feeling as though you are outside of your body. Both flashbacks and dissociation may occur as a result of encountering triggers, or a reminder of a traumatic event. To the extent that people are not aware of their triggers, flashbacks and dissociation can be incredibly disruptive and unpredictable events that are difficult to manage. However, you can take steps to better manage and prevent flashbacks and dissociation. These are described below. Know Your TriggersIn coping with flashbacks and dissociation, prevention is key. Flashbacks and dissociation are often triggered or cued by some kind of reminder of a traumatic event (for example, encountering certain people, going to specific places), or some other stressful experience. Therefore, it is important to identify the specific things that trigger flashbacks or dissociation. By knowing what your triggers are, you can either try to limit your exposure to those triggers, or if that is not possible (which is often the case), you can prepare for them by devising ways to cope with your reaction to those triggers. In addition to reducing flashbacks and dissociation, knowing your triggers may also help with other symptoms of PTSD, such as intrusive thoughts and memories of a traumatic event. Identify Early Warning Signs Flashbacks and dissociation may feel as though they come "out-of-the-blue." That is, they may feel unpredictable and uncontrollable. However, there are often some early signs that a person may be slipping into a flashback or a dissociative state. For example, a person's surroundings may begin to look "fuzzy," or someone may feel as though he is separating from or losing touch with his surroundings, other people, or even himself. Flashbacks and dissociation are easier to cope with and prevent if you can catch them early on. Therefore, it is important to try to increase your awareness of early symptoms of flashbacks and dissociation. Next time you experience a flashback or dissociation, revisit what you were feeling and thinking just before the flashback or dissociation occurred. Try to identify as many early symptoms as possible. The more early warning signs you can come up with, the better able you will be to prevent future flashbacks or episodes of dissociation. Learn Grounding Techniques As the name implies, grounding is a particular way of coping that is designed to "ground" you in the present moment. In doing so, you can retain your connection with the present moment and reduce the likelihood that you slip into a flashback or dissociation. In this way, grounding may be considered to be very similar to mindfulness. To ground, you want to use the five senses (sound, touch, smell, taste, and sight). To connect with the here and now, you want to do something that will bring all your attention to the present moment. A couple of grounding techniques are described below.
Seek TreatmentIn the end, the best way to prevent flashbacks and dissociation is to seek out treatment for your PTSD. Flashbacks and dissociation may be a sign that you are struggling to confront or cope with the traumatic event you experienced. Treatment can help with this. You can find PTSD treatment providers in your area through the Anxiety Disorder Association of America website, as well as UCompare HealthCare from About.com. TheInternational Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) also provides a wealth of information on the connection between trauma and dissociation, how to cope with dissociation, and provides links to therapists who treat trauma and dissociation. Source: Linehan, M.M. (1993). Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press. Minneapolis resident Mike MacDonald took up photography on a lark, while he was studying to become an EMT at Inver Hills Community College, but soon realized the visual medium allowed him to explore some of the things that he and other war veterans experienced when reintroduced to civil society. MacDonald served five years in the U.S. Army police corps., and was involved in 250 missions during his year in Iraq.
When he returned, MacDonald continued serving as law enforcement on military bases, where he came face-to-face with more fallout from war among his fellow soldiers, many of whom experienced extreme forms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). MacDonald's project, A Warrior's Reintegration, is meant to raise awareness and make progress on the high rate of suicide among former active-duty military members. Find out more about his work at MacDonald's website. |
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