Having Eating Them Too & Your Wars: Solving the International Experienced Disaster

We live in a time in which countries are sending unprecedented amounts of allied troops to combat zones in the name of terrorism prevention, the complete price of which is unforeseen and staggering. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has hit record numbers and garnered record focus, and it's the primary culprit for high suicide, homelessness, divorce and substance abuse in international fight veteran inhabitants.

The here and now

Since 2000, the price to allied nations for these military operations has surpassed 5 trillion dollars, and treating those injured both physically and mentally continues to hemorrhage billions. It is approximated that 30% of combat veterans will return showing either partial or complete symptom expression of PTSD.

Combat veterans are glorified for having served their nation in battle, focusing attention on this group, especially where the public sees combat veterans homeless and unsupported in the consequences of their service. Military injury is the biggest statistical group for PTSD, as they can be concentrated within organizations including Veterans Administrations (VAs) and so readily analyzed.

There are far greater amounts of PTSD from youth and sexual trauma than fight injury, yet battle veterans have excessive rates of homelessness and suicide as a result of deficiency of governmental and societal support systems available to satisfactorily cater the currently astronomical inflow of need.

Think of it like this: civilians with PTSD are naturally disperse amongst a nation, states, cities and towns. They often have a construction of friends and family around them. The military operates in large bunches. Their base places are regularly called by soldiers residence. VAs are usually created close to military bases isolating support for combat veterans.

At present there are billions of dollars spent on a ton of programs and studies in an attempt to find and solve the PTSD veteran catastrophe. You might believe progress is being made with all this money spent, yet the results don't reflect the price or effort to date. There are programs that work, and there are known factors with high success rates, yet these are often blown off as a result of backing, time requirements or, worse, as backing keeps going to new trials and plans.

So what are the issues that need to be solved?

Thousands of returning soldiers are suffering complicated, therapy resistant trauma due to multiple operational tours.

VAs are under-equipped to take care of the PTSD quantities that are returning.

The effectiveness of pharmaceuticals is not consistent, causing more problems than they fix for the majority yet being used as the first line treatment protocol.

That is a deficit of powerful systems to treat self medication.

There's a shortage of trauma therapists to effectively treat the number of those affected.

Successful treatments need a decade even, to be really powerful per person.

National impairment systems are stretched with PTSD sufferers to capital limits.

Stigmatization strains reintegration within society both socially and for employment.

Collateral damage is done to the veteran's family.

Difficulties are pretty easy to identify. The preceding list is far from exhaustive in presenting problems for combat veterans with PTSD. I'm an Australian battle veteran, and I do not speak for the whole world's battle veteran community whilst the ideas here are just that. I consider myself fortunate, as Australia has quite an extraordinary battle veteran support system and related programs in place. I trust other battle veterans add their own comments to what they feel could be easy, effective alternatives to the problems that are current.

By no means is the subsequent discussion a complete solution to the preceding problems, and some of the options address and intertwine several of our issue areas that are listed.

Repeated tours extend PTSD complexity

Like a kid within a toxic home environment, encircled by mistreatment with nowhere to go, a soldier resides in a similar situation when deployed within a combat zone. For six to twelve months, this is traumatic for many soldiers as an isolated tour, though when compounded by multiple tours -- such as six on, six off, six on, six off -- the repeated exposure provides little aid towards re-adjustment or successful downtime following a battle tour. Most will stay in an activated and prepared state, understanding they redeploy let alone that they'll most likely start pre-deployment training within 3 months, further reducing downtime.

The simple solution to the entire problem? Cease sending troops into ridiculous wars that make little tactical sense. The deceit, lies and conflicting information from all the recent wars does little towards credibility to support troop deployments. Defend your state; do not invade others. A simple remedy to the whole problem!

Saying that, politicians and secret bureaus can not get enough deceit and power, so troop deployments need to be radically changed to control repeated, extreme exposure to fight. A ratio of 1:3 should be used for all deployments. For every month you spend three months home, reintegrating in social life, training, courses, general duties, family and so forth.

Simply put, most deployments are six month in duration for tactical and economical reasons, making every rotation 18 months residence. That makes a minimum of 15 months to decompress, cope with any emotional dilemmas that present, then begin pre- deployment.

If militaries desire to think long term, then they have to get onboard such turning intervals. Losing seasoned combat veterans works against every military, so looking after them is in the best interest for all involved.

VAs are under-equipped

VAs are way under-equipped to handle the present inflow of PTSD combat veterans. Wait times can be many hours for what should be an one-hour appointment. Also, it can take months just to make that appointment.

Group therapy is failing to treat the individual wounding parts of each battle veteran. Whilst group therapy has value, additionally, it has outcome limits.

VAs in America are under-financed, using over-worked, exhausted, frustrated employees. The alternative is that capital should be focused on the issue, not wasted on diverse options that are experimental. The options are already present -- successful treatments that provide 60 to 80% restoration, with more time.

Money could sensibly be spent letting battle veterans to seek Va-financed therapy through local, private trauma therapists who deliver approved trauma therapy techniques to treat the injury. As that's socialism vs capitalism, that may be hard to hear for some in America. Is every man for themselves really helping the issue? No, no it is not.

In the Uk and Australia, it's helping the issue. Battle veterans dismissed and are not left to be displaced. Instead they have government support in place for treatment and disability backing while seeking treatment. Getting people back and healed to being productive members of society is in every country's greatest long-term interest.

Pharmaceuticals aren't the reply

Shrinks are using pharmaceuticals to treat PTSD with little evidence to support the efficacy of this type of treatment regimen. Pharmaceuticals have an approximate 25% success rate, much less than injury therapies. Sure, they are cheaper than therapy, but they cause way more issues than they fix.

Most combat veterans will be on several medications. Why? So subsequently psychiatrists are prescribing drugs to treat the symptoms that another medication created because one will cause other problems. Seriously? This is a sign of how lousy pharmaceuticals are, in that a pill is being given by the alternative to a difficulty created by a pill. How is this okay? Pharmaceuticals are creating more problems than they solve.

Shortage of successful pre-treatment programs

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a foundational treatment protocol that has history to illustrate and support effectiveness in treating substance abuse with PTSD. Why are billions being spent on experimental, revolutionary, obscure efforts to find other options for treating the veteran catastrophe when the alternatives already exist? Set the billions of dollars toward training staff to deliver the affected combat veterans the techniques. More will get solved in a briefer interval than what's occurring now.

Pre-treatment is not about quitting substance abuse but limiting its use to make therapy overall more effective. Hell, the effectiveness of pre-treatment can be used as a mark towards having total injury treatment paid for at a physician local to the fight veteran.

Shortage of powerful therapists

Therapists are not created equal. This focus on pitching them within a VA and hiring therapists is antiquated, to say the least. You restrict a therapist's potential by exposing them to nothing apart from battle injury to learn and treat injury. Limits become demanded on their learning and techniques. They become desensitized and become less capable of treating their customer.

The remedy isn't to create a military therapist but to support therapists in private practice, where they have a mix of treatments and therefore have a mix of customers they are using and evaluating for effectiveness. Additionally, they'ren't becoming burnt out on the atrocities of combat trauma and aren't being screwed into supply their service for next to nothing.

A good therapist is made by a happy therapist. Pay them nicely. Treat them nicely. Ensure they have diversity of clientele, and ensure they've mandatory exposure to ongoing learning and techniques.

Effective therapies take time

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming (EMDR) took 20 years to grow and evolve into one of the best treatments for injury. The billions being spent towards idiotic studies and plans by governments needs to cease, and we must repurpose this money towards real available treatments that work.

I'm advocating training more therapists in EMDR, Prolonged Exposure (PE), Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT), ACT, and getting these treatments used as first line treatment for PTSD instead of tossing pharmaceuticals around. Using this money to finance the longevity treatment durations needed to effectively alter 60-80% of returning troops suffering PTSD to civilians that are completely healed, functional again. This merely makes sense.

Yes, this is socialism on the job but let's be fair, it is actually needed to treat the veteran crisis happening internationally. The money is being spent but instead of being wasted, it ptsd in soldiers can be used to actually treat the problem, not only look as though something is being done.

National disability stretched to the limits

Disability given to combat veterans has climbs to dizzying highs. Throwing cash at veterans isn't going to solve their problems nor the entire problem. Impairment schemes will eventually break authorities. This issue has far reaching economic impact for all nations concerned, as we are a global market now.

Sure, money needs to be there to support veterans during treatment, but the problem is that money isn't being used towards the treatment and the changed. To reduce the general event of disability, governments have to ensure cash is being effectively spent on providing treatment to the changed. It's fairly simple to get your disability payments you must be attending therapy and actually partaking towards healing. After deemed recovered by the therapist, help towards re-employment training and then full employment opportunities.

Handicap is subsequently used efficiently, and those who are truly resistant after years of therapy then stay on impairment. Keep supplying them the support they need, and you have minimized the burden that is longevity by a minimum of annual backing that is 60%. Well... unless you keep sending troops into idiotic wars, that is.

Reintegration employment stigmatization

A more pressing problem for veterans, especially those who have cured, employable, are functional and are prepared to transition to employment once again, is that PTSD comprehension has now reached companies. These companies have erroneous beliefs of PTSD sufferers and are now discriminating when learning of military history on resumes. Companies are currently asking questions which are not permitted to be asked relating to mental health. They're passing over battle veterans on the premise that PTSD may become an issue about them as a company.

If authorities do manage to alter the current strategy of treating battle veteran PTSD and get their act together , then an awareness media campaign would additionally have to be established -- or incentives to hire span, battle veterans -- to thwart the erroneous stigma connected with PTSD.

Families are collateral damage

The forgotten in all this is the family behind the veteran. They need access to government-assisted support in relation to battle veterans. Parents, siblings and spouses need help in how to best help their affected battle veteran. They need self-care support. They want access to educational tools to help get their combat veteran back on course towards employment and equilibrium, in life.

Family play a larger part in assisting their loved one back to health than therapists, but they can't do it alone. With an approximate 80% divorce rate for serving staff, the PTSD divorce rate is greater. Having battle veterans abandon their family, or vice versa, isn't helping the veteran, family, community or market. A snowball effect occurs with far reaching impact.

Whether on-line support structures are in place for education, access to free copies of popular PTSD relationship books, phone counseling support, even video conferencing and on-line support groups, all of these resources assist supporters to band together, help each other, and help themselves towards helping their veteran.

Conclusion

There are some quite big problems that at present are just getting worse. Matters need to change as the current strategy is a dismal failure. We've effective treatments available. They only need campaigns targeting the stigma of PTSD, money, time and locality enactment for effectiveness: more official resources accessible online and use the truth to blanket the myths that propagate the discrimination and perhaps even motivators to employ combat veterans.

What can you add towards solving the veteran crisis that is PTSD? Do you believe there is a larger issue at play that we haven't mentioned? Please discuss your thoughts and perhaps, just maybe, someone that matters might take initiative and execute the change needed to fix the problem.