Post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the most troubling legacies of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of troops and their families are affected. How do we ensure the help – both medical and financial – is going to those who need it? Well, that requires, one would think, a uniform yardstick so folks …
PTSD
Follow the Money 2.0
It was less than a week ago that we noted General Dynamics had landed a Pentagon contract to help tend to the bruised brains of troops suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury. We took note of it because we’ve seen big defense contractors increasingly move into the medical field in recent years. The latest evidence surfaced Tuesday, …
Ain’t Gonna Study War No More…
There’s a military-history professor down Texas way by the name of Joyce Goldberg who has given up teaching military history after nearly 30 years. Increasingly, she writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, her classes have been filled with recent military veterans more interested in binding their own mental war wounds than …
Follow the Money
Back when I first started covering the military some dozen or so wars ago — in the late 1970s — General Dynamics was busy building the F-16 jet fighter and a plethora of other weapons. But it sold the F-16 line to Lockheed in 1993, and spun off its missile and space divisions, too. It seems to be moving into a different line of …
Back to School
Today seems to be military and veterans’ education commentary day. ROTC is back at Harvard, and both Bloomberg News and Holly Petraeus are railing on the for-profit colleges.
First the good news story: after a 40 years hiatus, ROTC is back at Harvard. The death of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has re-opened doors long closed to the military …
Dispatches From the Third Front: Part II–the Refuge
Nearly every military installation, from our many stateside posts to larger bases in combat zones, have some form of a Morale, Welfare and Recreation center, what the troops call MWR. At Brooke Army Medical Center, the place of refuge is more than just a recreation center; it’s a central part of their healing and journey home. Our trip …
The Buried IED…Here at Home
The military’s fight against improvised explosive devices along roads in Afghanistan and Iraq — which have killed more than 3,000 Americans — has cost more than $20 billion. But that’s only the money spent by the Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO, pronounced ji-dough) to stop them over there. …
Dispatches From the Third Front: Day 1–The Hero
In north San Antonio, just off of Interstate 35, a towering hospital building dominates Brooke Army Medical Center, one of two hospitals–along with the newly unified Walter Reed National Military Center–that treat some of the most grievously wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. BAMC, as the soldiers call it, is one of the …
PTSD Overload
Pity the poor grunt who comes back from war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He goes online to learn how to cope and is overwhelmed. There’s the Real Warriors website, the My Army OneSource, and the Defense Centers of Excellence (as opposed to the military’s other centers of mediocrity) for Psychological Health & Traumatic Brain …
Post-“Don’t Ask” Stress, v. 2.0
Recently I caught wind of an independent study being conducted by the University of Maryland Baltimore County about the effects of DADT on the mental health of those who have been directly affected by the policy. After contacting the man responsible for the project directly, I was able to learn a thing or two about this ground-breaking …
The Human Toll Taken by a Decade of War
Just how worn out are our troops because of non-stop combat since 9/11? To what degree has that contributed to problems like PTSD, family breakups and suicide in the ranks? This week, on Command Post, we discuss the tenacity of U.S. troops, as well as the cracks that can appear after a decade of fighting. Margaret Harrell, a
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Writing the Book on Military Mental Health
The literature of war can be literature — think Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (Civil War), Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (World War I), or Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. And sometimes it’s less lit and more textbook. That’s surely the case with the …
Soldier’s Heart?
My colleague Mark Thomspon has already highlighted the Miller-McCune piece about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder sometimes being thought of as an injury to the warrior’s soul. But I wanted to comment on this one as well. As I have noted here several times I was treated for PTSD both in theater and stateside. I’ve spent a lot of time …