Reconstructing how, and perhaps why, something happened is one of the most rewarding kinds of reporting. It’s called a tick-tock in the trade. Nancy Gibbs and I do it in this week’s Time, retracing the lives and military careers of Army captains Michael McCaddon and Ian Morrison to try and shine a light on what drives soldiers to …
PTSD
Captains Courageous
The two soldiers couldn’t have been more different. One was young and handsome enough to be known as “Captain Brad Pitt,” a 2007 West Point graduate trained to deliver ordnance from the Army’s most terrifying flying machine, an AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship. The other was a decade older, a bomb-squad grunt who high school …
Why Is the UK’s PTSD Rate So Much Lower Than the U.S.’s?
Among the most interesting presentations at last week’s DoD-VA Suicide Prevention conference was one titled Time Bombs or Tidal Waves? The View from Blightly. It compared and contrasted the different psychological consequences …
Double-Whammy: PTSD and Substance Abuse
Battleland contributor Bingham Jamison, a Marine who saw action in Iraq and came home the worse for wear, is the subject of a new video by Veterans Healing Initiative. That’s a nonprofit group dedicated to getting veterans treatment for substance abuse and PTSD. “VHI offers support to veterans from all conflicts, of all ages, men and …
Violence and the Military
The suicide rate in the Army is extraordinarily high. However, the Army is extremely good at tracking Soldiers who have committed suicides. There are rich data on these service members. Common factors are a relationship break-up, …
Super-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Not sure whether to laugh, cry or cheer – a veteran from World War II who served in North Africa just got his first VA disability check for PTSD. He’s 92.
Caring for the Caregiver
I am increasingly worried about the toll on my Army medical colleagues still left on active duty. The American public and the media legitimately focus on the enlisted Soldier and those who have borne the brunt of the direct fighting.
But we must also concern themselves with the welfare of the nurses, doctors, medics and other staff …
Memorial Day 2012: Advancing or Retreating?
I posted my first piece on Time’s Battleland a year ago, troubled by the disconnects between the verbal thanks to America’s veterans — and the rising problems with unemployment and homelessness.
This is too reminiscent of
…
The Aftershocks of War
We’ve had a flurry of books written by troops recounting their battles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now come the books detailing the battles fought once they got home.
Mike Scotti served with the Marines in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and saw war’s horrors up close and personal. When he came back home, he gradually felt himself being …
Honor, Stigma…and PTSD
I’m an old guy from the Vietnam era, a psychiatrist who studied violence in the 1960s, who treated survivors of trauma in the ’70s and who helped create and nurture the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder through the …
“Listen Up, General Pittard.”
I want to make a couple quick comments on the furor over Major General Dana Pittard’s blog post that soldiers who kill themselves are being selfish, and his exhortation that those thinking of suicide should just buck up and face their problems like an adult. “Suicide is an absolutely selfish act,” he wrote to his official blog …
Troop Mental Ills: Psychiatric or Organic?
There’s a continuing tension over whether mental disorders are “organic” or “psychological”. The first is easier to define — a brain injury caused by an insult, such as a bullet wound, blow to the head or bomb blast.
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“Positive Activity Jackpot”
Every little thing helps in the Pentagon’s and VA’s war on PTSD, depression and suicide. The latest: the Positive Activity Jackpot app for your Android smartphone (apparently folks with iPhones don’t need such help). It immerses mentally-ailing troops or vets in “pleasant event scheduling” by marrying behavioral therapy to …
