Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs, which promotes its special programs to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in returning soldiers, spends little on those programs in some parts of the country, and some of its efforts fail to meet some of the VA's own goals, according to internal reports obtained by McClatchy Newspapers. In fiscal 2006, the reports show, some of the VA's specialized PTSD units spent a fraction of what the average unit did. Five medical centers - in California, Iowa, Louisiana, Tennessee and Wisconsin - spent about $100,000 on their PTSD clinical teams, less than one-fifth the national average.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is looking for a few good men and women to volunteer for a battle it's waging at home — against disease. Actually, more than a few are needed. Officials overseeing health care for the nation's veterans are undertaking what may be the largest effort of its kind in the nation, to collect medical records and blood samples from a million former service members for a bank of genetic information. The idea is to give researchers enough DNA and other data to link specific genes to mental and physical maladies, from post-traumatic stress disorder to heart disease, and eventually develop new preventive measures or treatments.

SAN DIEGO -- None of this is really happening, but the experience is almost overwhelming in "virtual Iraq." The Humvee plows along a desert road. The engine rumbles underfoot, and Blackhawk helicopters whirl overhead. A sandstorm blows in, and insurgents pop up and start to shoot with sickening blasts that shatter the windshield. Is that the smell of burning rubber? Those sensations of war are being fed into a special helmet, goggles and earphones. They are conjured by a computerized virtual reality developed in part by gaming engineers and psychologists at the University of Southern California and being tested, among other places, at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.

Clay Dell "Skip" Edmonds, a retired mechanic who served in Vietnam with the Marine Corps, died Feb. 4 of Agent Orange-related leukemia at his Woodbine home. He was 63. Mr. Edmonds was born in Baltimore and raised in Lansdowne. He attended Woodlawn High School. "He was 17 and forged his mother's name in order to join the Marine Corps in 1965," said his wife of 14 years, the former Jeanie Pickett. He was assigned as a tank mechanic to an infantry unit in Vietnam. "He volunteered for three tours of duty during the Vietnam War," said a daughter, Taryn Wilson of Bel Air. Mr. Edmonds was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1977 and remained an active reservist until 1994.

Jacob Mendes Da Costa, a U.S. Army surgeon during the Civil War, was among the first to study them: battle-weary warriors who sweat profusely, startle easily and exhibit irregular heartbeats. Baffled, he and others dubbed the affliction "soldier's heart." It would be the first of many labels that doctors would give to stress-related illnesses in subsequent years: shell shock, battle fatigue, war neurosis - even battered wife syndrome, as symptoms began showing up off the battlefield. Now, nearly 150 years after doctors first began puzzling over stress-related sickness, scientists are finally uncovering clues to its biological roots.

Combat leaves many wounds. Some soldiers will heal and go on. Others will sustain injuries that change their lives. And some will be haunted by physical and psychological problems induced by the fear, grief and sheer horror of war. To minimize long-term suffering, hundreds of military therapists and counselors have been shadowing U.S. combat troops in Iraq. Their tactic has been to step in quickly when troops need help and get them back to their units as soon as possible. "We see them as soldiers having a normal amount of stress in an abnormal situation," said Maj. Timothy Patterson, an Ohio psychiatrist and a reservist stationed in Iraq.

People think you're supposed to just bounce back and be OK. Is there someone out there who can tell me how I am supposed to do that?" - INEZ GRAHAM, who escaped from the North Tower of the World Trade Center before it collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001; the 45-year-old New Jersey woman has been diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder

Maryland should be proud of leading the nation with a law that bars schools from automatically giving test scores and student contact information to military recruiters. Students do not need pressure from recruiters for making a career choice that could harm them, perhaps even take their life or cause them to have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that can be worse than death. PTSD could cause perpetual depression and/or suicide. There are more life affirming career choices that we should encourage our youth to pursue.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The nightmares that tormented Sgt. Walter Padilla after returning home from Iraq in 2004 prompted extensive treatment by Army doctors, an honorable discharge from the military and a cocktail of medications to ease his suffering. But Padilla, 28, could not ward off memories of the people he had killed with a machine gun perched on his Bradley fighting vehicle. On April 1, according to the authorities and friends, he fatally shot himself in his Colorado Springs home.

It was with a sunken heart that I read about Charles Whittington's ordeal with the Community College of Baltimore County in "A Fight for Freedom" (Nov. 21). Although tragically disturbing, Mr. Whittington's English class essay eloquently and concisely states his struggle to which our nation must pay closer attention. It doesn't take a mental health expert to understand warriors' addictions to the adrenaline and emotions they must to rely upon in order to survive — not only in direct combat, but while under the daily threat of attack in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Baltimore Sun's coverage of Charles Whittington's suspension from the Community College of Baltimore County ( "Campus Bars Veteran over Combat Controversy," Nov. 22) is a painful example of our failure as a community to serve those who have served our country. Eloquently, painfully and without hesitation, Mr. Wittington wrote of his feelings as a combat veteran in his college essay. He reminded the readers that he was lawfully trained to kill. He reminded them that he didn't leave that training behind in Iraq and that he did not receive training to handle the "stress and addictions" of war. In short, he spoke the truth — about war and about his experience as a soldier and a veteran.

It was with a sunken heart that I read about Charles Whittington's ordeal with the Community College of Baltimore County in "A Fight for Freedom" (Nov. 21). Although tragically disturbing, Mr. Whittington's English class essay eloquently and concisely states his struggle to which our nation must pay closer attention. It doesn't take a mental health expert to understand warriors' addictions to the adrenaline and emotions they must to rely upon in order to survive — not only in direct combat, but while under the daily threat of attack in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both sides have rested in the murder trial of Mary C. Koontz, accused of killing her husband a year ago. The judge presiding over the case, Thomas J. Bollinger Sr., sent the jury home for the long weekend after the last witness testified Friday morning. He asked them to return on Tuesday, when they will hear closing arguments before they begin deliberations. Two mental health experts, one for the defense, the other for the prosecution, provided dueling assessments Thursday of the sanity of the 60-year-old defendant.

Maryland should be proud of leading the nation with a law that bars schools from automatically giving test scores and student contact information to military recruiters. Students do not need pressure from recruiters for making a career choice that could harm them, perhaps even take their life or cause them to have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that can be worse than death. PTSD could cause perpetual depression and/or suicide. There are more life affirming career choices that we should encourage our youth to pursue.

Perhaps no one could have anticipated that the stresses of his job as an Army psychiatrist counseling traumatized veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with his own conflicted feelings about Islamic terrorism and dread of being deployed to a war zone, would result in Maj. Nidal Hasan standing accused of killing 13 and wounding 38 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood Army base in Texas last week. The factors that cause certain men and women to snap under pressure are as unpredictable as they are devastating to the individuals involved and those around them.

WASHINGTON -It was a diverse group of veterans that showed up last Monday morning at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Two retired generals, a blind man, three men with prosthetic legs and one in a wheelchair. They gathered in the historic Roosevelt Room, where Teddy Roosevelt's Medal of Honor is displayed in a corner. For some, it was their first visit to the West Wing. When President Barack Obama came into the room, he shook their hands, thanked them for their service and asked each for his opinion.

People who believe their anxieties exceed the everyday worries that touch most everyone can get a free evaluation tomorrow at the conference center of the Sheppard Pratt Hospital.The service is part of National Anxiety Disorders Screening Day, in which about 150 mental health centers across the country will be offering free consultations; dispensing information about symptoms and available treatments and -- when needed -- making referrals to specialists.Anxiety disorders include phobias, obsessive-compulsive behavior, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder -- constant, unrealistic worry that affects a person's ability to complete daily activities.

In hindsight, it's tempting to think we should have known 20 years ago that PTSD was not a weird new disease born in southeast Asia. Unnamed until recently, it's been recognized at least as far back as Shakespeare, according to Baltimore psychiatrist Alan Peck.In "Henry IV, Part I," Lady Percy complained to her husband, Hotspur, about his pallor, his melancholy, his sleep disturbed by dreams of war so frightening "that beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow."The English diarist Samuel Pepys also recorded nightmares and other sleeping difficulties after the London fire of 1666, Dr. Peck said, and Charles Dickens, describing himself as weak and not quite well months after a railroad accident, was never able to ride a train again.