Ptsd

I'M A SINGLE mother of five who'd like to thank those who helped capture the Kensington rapist. There's an epidemic out there that I know about from personal experience. My heart goes out to the little girl who was raped. I know how the mother is feeling. I have two daughters, and I suffer from depressive thoughts of my own child being raped by someone she knew at age 9. I myself was a victim of a similar incident when I was just 6. North Philadelphia is full of men preying on young girls.

When Joseph Boscarino returned from Vietnam in 1966, it seemed as if the war came home with him. Many of his fellow veterans in his New Jersey hometown battled drug problems and nightmares. Some committed suicide. He says his own twin brother, who went to war the following year, came back a changed person - debilitated by anxiety and delusions. "We were expected to soldier on," Boscarino says. "We did the best we could. " Today, those symptoms are well-known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Of all the things that Alpha Company has had to struggle with since it came home from Iraq, the most pervasive may be post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Of the 126 veterans interviewed or surveyed by The Inquirer, almost half - 46 percent - said they had been treated for PTSD, most at VA hospitals and clinics in the region. Alpha's rate of PTSD is higher than that of most U.S. troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan - partly, no doubt, as a result of its being a frontline combat unit that lost six men. Shelley M. MacDermid, a Purdue University professor who served on a Defense Department mental-health task force last year, said typical PTSD rates among returning veterans were about 14 percent.

Of all the things that Alpha Company has had to struggle with since it came home from Iraq, the most pervasive may be post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Of the 126 veterans interviewed or surveyed by The Inquirer, almost half - 46 percent - said they had been treated for PTSD, most at VA hospitals and clinics in the region. Alpha's rate of PTSD is higher than that of most U.S. troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan - partly, no doubt, as a result of its being a frontline combat unit that lost six men. Shelley M. MacDermid, a Purdue University professor who served on a Defense Department mental-health task force last year, said typical PTSD rates among returning veterans were about 14 percent.

Dr. Steve Silver, a Vietnam vet who served for 26 years as  director of the inpatient PTSD program at the Coatesville V.A. Medical Center, recommends these services and Web sites to veterans and their families.  Also here is information on traumatic brain injury, considered to be the signature injury of the Iraq War. Veterans Administration V eterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom are eligible for two years worth of services from the V.A. after their return (that eligibility may be increased this year)

Aide off Blackwater probe - his brother's an adviser there WASHINGTON - In a stunning move, the State Department official responsible for ensuring the agency operates ethically recused himself yesterday from investigations related to Blackwater Worldwide after admitting to lawmakers that his brother is a member of the embattled security contractor's advisory board. The revelation by Howard Krongard, the department's inspector general, came as Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were defending him from what they said were politically motivated attacks.

JOHN GRANT'S op-ed defense of Commer Glass does a disservice to all veterans who suffer the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. John Grant is an editor of the Veterans for Peace newsletter, in which Mr. Glass admits that he killed two Vietnamese prostitutes, plus an unarmed woman and her baby, before he murdered his ex-girlfriend. Mr. Grant's defense of the indefensible diminishes the ability of average combat vets to gain the support they need for being made whole.

Missing legs, arms, multiple amputations. These injuries are the visual emblems of the war in Iraq. But it is the invisible psychological harm - primarily post-traumatic stress disorder - that is the most pervasive and pernicious injury from this war and that is emerging as its signature disability. Veterans' advocates say it is the number-one issue facing soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The scope of the problem is daunting: 35 percent of Iraq veterans sought psychological counseling within a year of coming home, according to the Department of Defense.

Jeffrey Corcoran was manning a security checkpoint in Baquba, Iraq, on that deadly day in 2003 when four insurgents with AK-47s jumped out of a car and began firing. A lieutenant, "a real nice guy who was more of a friend than an officer," was cut down in the cross fire in front of Corcoran and died. At the time, Corcoran, an infantry mortarman from Strasburg, Lancaster County, didn't have the luxury of sorting out his feelings about what had happened. That came after he left the service in February 2004 - and found he couldn't sleep, concentrate or hold a job. He was angry, physically sick, and uneasy without a weapon.

Are soldiers with psychological injuries cowards? Or are their symptoms - uncontrollable shaking, nightmares, emotional outbursts, flashbacks, intense startle reactions - the result of trauma? What kind of support do people who repeatedly witness atrocities and commit violent acts need? These are the questions with which Des Browne, the British defense minister, has been struggling. After years of debate within his government, Browne has recommended that Parliament grant posthumous pardons this fall to the 306 soldiers shot as cowards by military firing squads during World War I. Browne says that executing these men in 1916 and 1917 was "unjust" because they were suffering from shell shock and should have received treatment, not a bullet through the heart.