Marijuana may not cure the summertime blues, but there are those who think it can cure post-traumatic stress disorder, especially among veterans.
ALBUQUERQUE– Searching to describe his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms, Joseph Callan paused, his gaze momentarily distant.
“I see dead people,” he said, scoffing. “In crowds, I’ll think, ‘that’s Howzer!’ or somebody else,” the former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant explained. “I know they’re dead. I saw them dead. But I feel compelled to confirm it’s not them, to see them from another angle. So I’m ducking through a crowd to get another look at them and it’s always just some random (person).”
How happy is this Veterans Day? Not so happy for too many of the veterans returning to Colorado from tours of duty and repeat return tours of duty in the decade-long wars they’ve been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Colorado…
* Suicide among veterans is an epidemic. More than 6,000 per year. Roughly 18 per day. Neither hawks nor doves care to deal with PTSD. Worse, the Dept of Veterans Affairs is hiding the numbers.
* It’s…
A nasty back and forth erupted in the last hours before the health care reform bill passed last week over whether the bill would cut TRICARE health benefits for veterans.
On the ground in Colorado, the mental health benefits of TRICARE coverage are literally on display from now through June at the Colorado springs Fine Arts Center, the product of an 11-week course called “Military Creative Expressions” for Wounded Warriors– military personnel suffering a variety of physical and mental wounds, including post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
U.S. Sen. Mark Udall vowed Thursday to “hold [Army Secretary-nominee John McHugh] to his commitment” to make sure soldiers receive the best mental health treatment available after questioning the New York congressman at a confirmation hearing before the Senate…
Fort Carson commander Major General Mark Graham talked Monday with Dave Davies on the NPR program Fresh Air about his efforts to get the Army to take suicide and depression more seriously.
Veterans groups fighting to update the definition of combat to ease hurdles for service personnel to tap into health care benefits found an unlikely opponent in U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn. The Colorado Springs Republican’s district includes five military bases — including Fort Carson, which has suffered a rash of murders and suicides attributed to untreated stress and brain disorders.
In this bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, I recently was re-reading part of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s epic history, “Team of Rivals.” Once again it was stunning to see the number of casualties during the Civil War, the dead and wounded in four years of fighting exponentially outnumbering the American men and women killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan over six and a half years of combat.
Jeff Lucey hung himself with a garden hose in his parents’ basement just eight months after returning home from a five-month tour of duty in Iraq.
Despite herculean efforts to get psychiatric help for their son through the Veterans…
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