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 …
Military Mental Health
How to Help Our Fellow Vets Succeed
The news is so full of the travails of veterans, that I thought it would be a breath of fresh air of to focus on the successes of some of us—and how to translate that into the success of all.
I went to the promotion of a colleague last week, at the new and gorgeous Fort Belvoir Army hospital in Virginia just south of the …
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The Nitty-Gritty of Women at War
What are the experiences of women at war, and what to tell clinicians about how to help? I have been asked to write a textbook on this subject, so have done another canvass of the literature.
What is striking is how little …
“My mind in the past couple of years has folded on itself. I just went to the Dr. and they said I just tested positive for Dementia.”
The War After the War
The Capitol was shining it its full glory Wednesday, under a beautiful sunny sky, as a crowd gathered in Senate Park to grapple with the vexing problem of PTSD and suicide among the nation’s troops.
The Army, Navy and Air …
The Importance of Instilling Hope
The 4th Annual Department of Defense-VA suicide-prevention conference was a big deal here in the capital last week, with three days of presentations by top officials from the Pentagon and the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services. I put together the first military suicide-prevention conference, back in 2002. A …
A Different Kind of Invisible Wound
A new documentary called The Invisible War, from award-winning filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, exposes a brutal reality that affects far too many within our military community. It also provides an important framework to understand the impact of military sexual assault on those who serve and their families.
It sets the stage for …
Veteran Workers Are Good Workers
Hiring a veteran is not charity. It is good business.
That’s the premise of the new report from the Center for New American Security presented Wednesday at its annual meeting. Drs. Margaret Harrell and Nancy Berglass interviewed representatives from 69 companies. The report listed both the pluses and minuses associated with hiring …
Surprising Numbers…
Couple of stunning numbers involving veterans — 24 and 45, specifically — surfaced over the holiday weekend. Both are worth noting, and pondering:
— A new Gallup poll shows that veterans favor Mitt Romney over President Obama in November’s election by a striking 24-percentage-point margin. What’s more remarkable is that the two …
Never Mind…
Major General Dana Pittard, who blogged that soldiers who kill themselves are selfish, has had second thoughts. Battleland’s own Ron Capps, who served under him, said the comment was”probably the first dumb thing he’s said or done in his career.” Like lawmakers on Capitol Hill who get verbal do-overs all the time, the two-general now …
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 …
“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 …