SPORT / Dave Zirin : The Rockets' Royce White Is Rebel with a Cause

The Houston Rockets' Royce White. Image from Hoopspeak.com.

Mental health revolutionary:
The Houston Rockets' Royce White

White has become a crusader for change, calling out the NBA for disregarding mental illness and treating him like 'a commodity.'

By Dave Zirin / The Rag Blog / February 14, 2013

Read Ron Jacobs' Rag Blog review of Dave Zirin's new book, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down.

This week, the most famous NBA player yet to play in the NBA finally took the court. Royce White, rookie forward for the Houston Rockets, suited up for their D-League team, the esteemed Rio Grande Valley Vipers. In 18 minutes, he had seven points, eight rebounds, and four assists.

But the bigger story was that White played at all. For months, the 21-year-old has been sitting out the season in protest: a rebel with a cause. White has been battling the Rockets over how they would deal with issues surrounding his mental health. The first-round-draft-pick has an anxiety disorder that affects how he handles everything from flying to practices.

He has made it clear amidst an avalanche of criticism that his mental health is more important that his contract or career. Throughout this difficult fall, White has become a crusader for change, calling out not just the NBA for disregarding mental illness and treating him like “a commodity," but also the fans that have sent him "hundreds" of violent and especially homophobic threats. White isn't gay but apparently, for some, caring about your mental health is the equivalent.

Until a recent interview, however, it wasn't clear just how politically thoughtful, serious, and even revolutionary an athlete we have in Royce White. For White, this isn’t just about his struggle or changing how NBA teams treat mental illness. It's about something far greater. In his interview on the ESPN spin-off site Grantland with journalist Chuck Klosterman, White said that the question we are scared to ask in the United States is, "How many people don't have a mental illness?” Klosterman responded, "Why wouldn't we want to talk about that?"

White’s reply is one for the ages:

Because that would mean the majority is mentally ill, and that we should base all our policies around the idea of supporting the mentally ill because they're the majority of people. But if we keep thinking of them as a minority, we can say, "You stay over there and deal with your problems over there."...

[T]he problem is growing, and it's growing because there's a subtle war  --  in America, and in the world -- between business and health. It's no secret that 2 percent of the human population controls all the wealth and the resources, and the other 98 percent struggle their whole life to try and attain it. Right? And what ends up happening is that the 2 percent leave the 98 percent to struggle and struggle and struggle, and they eventually build up these stresses and conditions.

As if this wasn't enough for one interview, White also said that he wants to use basketball as a platform to fight for universal mental health coverage with clinics in every community. He claimed that he is willing to "die for this."

When athletes use their hyper-exalted positions to fight for something greater than themselves they are, consciously or not, laying claim to a powerful tradition. It’s a tradition marked by people like Billie Jean King, Bill Russell, an, of course, Muhammad Ali.

In listening to White, I was reminded of something Ali once said:

All of my boxing, all of my running around, all of my publicity, was just the start of my life. Now my life is starting -- fighting injustice, fighting racism, fighting crime, fighting indecency, fighting poverty. Using this face that the world knows through fame and going out and representing truth.

White as well is that rare person who wants to use his fame to represent truth. There is, of course, an ocean of difference between Royce White and Muhammad Ali in terms of athletic accomplishment and cultural capital. But there’s a subtler difference as well. Ali at his political apex was part of a massive anti-war wave. Even though the boxing establishment and much of the media despised him, he had an army of supporters.

Contrast that to today. There is no wave of people standing up for the rights of the mentally ill. There is no one in mainstream politics talking about the mental health crisis that pulses beneath daily life in this country. There is no one on Capitol Hill pointing out what’s in plain sight every day.

Think about all the massive attention we are paying to gun violence and the absence of attention to what makes people crack and become violent in the first place. Think about the tragic shootings in Chicago and the absence of discussion about the poverty and racism that define the parts of that city where the murders are taking place. Think about the mental stress that precedes so much of the violence in communities around the country.

This is the discussion Royce White wants us to have and the 21-year-old seems like the only person in public life who wants to have it. In other words, if Ali, like no one else, brilliantly rode the rapids of a tumultuous era, Royce White is attempting something far for daunting. He's trying to change the direction of the whole damn river.

This article was also posted at The Nation blog.

[Dave Zirin is the author of the new book Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the SportsWorld Upside Down (The New Press). Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com. Read more articles by Dave Zirin on The Rag Blog.]

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Eric Newhouse : Half of Returning Warriors are Wounded

Photo by RunItsTheFuz / Flickr / Truthout.
Half of vets returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan need medical attention

By Eric Newhouse / Truthout / November 16, 2011

More than half of America's former warriors are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with medical and mental problems that need treatment, according to new statistics from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

"These are unprecedented numbers," said Dr. Sonja Batten, assistant deputy chief of patient services care for the VA Mental Health Division.

But they're surprising numbers, in some ways.

While they bear out the controversial 2008 Rand Report that one soldier in three will return home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression and/or traumatic brain injury (TBI), the TBI component is dramatically less than predicted.

By last June, Batten said, 1.3 million of the two million-plus soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 had left military service and were eligible for VA health care. About 700,000 of them (53 percent) have sought health care from the VA.

While this reflects the difficulties facing today's vets after 24-7 combat and multiple tours of duty, it also reflects the new resources provided the VA by the Obama administration. The president's 2012 budget request for the VA was $132.2 billion, a 23 percent increase since he took office in 2009. That's even more remarkable, considering the collapse of the economy in that period.

But it's still not enough, according to Mike Zacchea, a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel now retired on a medical disability after serving in Iraq, and a staunch member of Veterans for Common Sense.

"Wait times for VA treatment are still way too long," Zacchea said last week. "And this is just the beginning. The VA is going to be overwhelmed by vets from Iraq and Afghanistan for health care, and if the VA can't handle the demand it has now, it's going to be powerless against the tsunami that's yet to come."

Among the returning soldiers, the main complaint was joint pain (neck, back, hips, and knees), all consistent with the kinds of injuries you would expect to find among soldiers with heavy packs jumping in and out of big trucks, said Batten. The VA has treated 396,552 vets for musculoskeletal complaints, about 30.5 percent of the returning soldiers.

But the second largest complaint has been with mental health issues.

According to the VA's not-yet-published statistics, 367,749 Iraqi and Afghan vets have sought mental health care treatment. That's 51.7 percent of the total caseload -- and also 28.2 percent of the returning 1.3 million vets -- a number that's sure to grow larger as those who returned home recently begin acknowledging cases of delayed PTSD. It's common for vets not to begin experiencing combat stress until after the euphoria of being home has waned, typically six months to a year or more.

PTSD was the most common mental health complaint with 197,074 vets receiving treatment, which is about 15 percent of the returning vets. The second most common complaint was depression, with VA treatment provided to 147,659 vets, 11.3 percent of the total returning. Third was anxiety disorder, with treatment provided to 126,673 vets, 9.7 percent of those returning. There's some overlap, with some vets being treated for more than one disorder.

The VA's real surprise is the low number of diagnoses for traumatic brain injury (TBI), which has become one of the signature injuries in the Iraqi/Afghanistan conflict due to the large number of roadside bombs, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Four years ago, the Rand Corporation interviewed 1,965 vets and projected that 19 percent (about 320,000 soldiers at that time) would experience a probable TBI while overseas. But the VA says only 54,070 vets (a little over 4 percent of the returning vets) qualified for that diagnosis.

"That's absurd, preposterous, erroneous," snorted Zacchea, who survived a bomb in a mess hall, almost daily sniper attacks, mortar attacks on his unit's convoy, and a rocket wound during intense combat in Fallujah in 2004/2005. All of those took a huge physical and emotional toll on Zacchea.

As of last June, the VA had data on 544,481 vets whose brains might have been affected by battlefield explosions, according to Dr. David Cifu, national director of the VA's Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation program. Of that number, he said, "19.8 percent have screened positive for a mild TBI (concussion), that is were exposed to explosions that might have caused traumatic brain injury.

"When those 19.8 percent of veterans were evaluated by one of the 100 TBI specialty teams across the nation, approximately one third (or 7.8 percent of the original 544,481) tested positive for TBI with persistent symptoms," said Cifu. "Another approximately 2 percent were found to have a TBI that pre-dated their military service. Those two figures (the 7.8 percent plus the 2 percent) add up to 54,070 veterans."

The difference, said Cifu, is that the Rand Report used the total number of injuries as its TBI figure, while the VA used only the number of vets still showing TBI symptoms a year after their injuries.

"The Rand Report was pretty accurate on the number of those who may have had injuries due to a blast, but didn't take into consideration that many of those may have injuries that will fairly quickly get better over time," said Cifu. "We know that up to 97 percent of those who experience concussions are normal without symptoms within a year. So we're tracking just the people who continue to have difficulties."

But Zacchea charged that the VA is trying hard to deny this disability. "Today's cutting-edge neurology is that any symptoms that last longer than two weeks indicate traumatic brain injury," said Zacchea. "They're using the one-year time frame because that benefits them, but that's just medieval."

Zacchea said he was quickly diagnosed with PTSD after returning from combat, but that he had to fight for his TBI diagnosis. "They wouldn't even let me see a neurologist," he said. So, he took his case to the Yale Medical School, got a private diagnosis of TBI and challenged the VA to disprove it. After a number of verification tests, he was finally granted a TBI diagnosis by the VA in 2008.

His ongoing symptoms include migraine headaches, sensitivity to light and noise, and loss of fine motor skills. "My fingers are numb, and I'm always dropping things," he said. "I have difficulty tying my shoes so I usually wear slip-on shoes." He also has a distinct taste in his mouth. "I've lost most of my taste sensation," he explained, "so I put hot sauce on pretty much everything."

A new book, The Concussion Crisis, concludes that even minor concussions repeated regularly can be harmful, leading to impaired cognition and, ultimately, early-onset dementia among athletes such as boxers and football players, as well as among soldiers. In reviewing the book, Connie Goldsmith wrote:

There is no such thing as a minor concussion. Every concussion is a potentially devastating injury. These stories focus on concussions among athletes of all ages, as well as concussions among soldiers and victims of auto accidents. Some of the stories are heartbreaking: adolescents who suddenly die after what appear to be minor head injuries; boxers and football players with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and dementia; and returning veterans left to wander through the medical system seeking treatment for their unrecognized or misdiagnosed concussions.

Dr. Allen Brown, head of the Mayo Clinic's Brain Injury Unit, defines a TBI as an external mechanical force impacting a body and creating a brain injury. Thus, by definition, every concussion is a TBI and should be part of the medical record.

But in the civilian world, he said, only about 8 percent of brain injuries are severe enough to be labeled a "definite TBI," as opposed to a "probable TBI," which is milder, or a "possible TBI," which is symptomatic. A "definite TBI" involves any of the following: loss of consciousness for more than 30 minutes, post-traumatic amnesia for more than 24 hours, significant loss of motor skills as measured on the Glasgow Coma Scale, or intracranial bruising or bleeding.

Brown agreed with Cifu that "an overwhelming majority" of brain injuries resolve themselves, although repeated injuries increase the risk of significant damage. "It's pretty clear to me that the cumulative effect of any injury increases the risk for secondary problems, including repeated TBIs that could lead to loss of cognition later in life," he said last week. "It may not happen in every case, but the risk is whoppingly high."

And he called the disparity between the Rand Report and the VA's definitions of TBI "one of the most argued-over controversies in medicine."

[Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eric Newhouse is the author of Faces of Combat. His blog, "Invisible Wounds," on vets' mental health issues, is at Psychology Today. This article was published and distributed by Truthout.]

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Jim Turpin : Military Suicides, PTSD at All-Time High

Under the Hood Café near Ft. Hood in Killeen Texas is a place where active duty GIs and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan can discuss the debilitating effects of war. Photo from Under the Hood / Flickr.
Texas' Fort Hood sets the pace:
PTSD and suicides in the military
are at an all-time high

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / October 27, 2010

KILLEEN, Texas -- Even with the spin from the current administration that the “war is over” in Iraq, it is well known that 50,000 combat-ready troops remain in the country. Add to that a recent deployment of 2,000 troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Hood in Texas. At present almost 100,000 troops remain in Afghanistan.

With the total number of U.S. military personnel cycling through both Afghanistan and Iraq at almost 1.8 million, and with the RAND corporation estimating that 18% have PTSD (which is deemed low by some experts), this would put the returning numbers with PTSD at 324,000.

A recent article in The New York Times confirms what the organizers of the Killeen-based GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café have been battling at Fort Hood for the last year and a half: suicides are at the highest point since 2008, with 14 confirmed suicides since the beginning of 2010. In one recent weekend, there were three suicides and one murder-suicide at Fort Hood.

With the population at Fort Hood ranging from 46,000 to 50,000 soldiers at any given time, the rate of suicide is four times the national average, based on Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates of 11.5 suicides per 100,000 people.

The repeated deployment of military personnel who suffer from both physical and psychological wounds has led to these all-time high suicide rates. A recent article in the American Journal of Public Health studied 2,500 New Jersey National Guardsmen and determined “deployed soldiers were more than three times as likely as soldiers with no previous deployments to screen positive for post traumatic stress disorder.”

Despite these staggering statistics, the Fort Hood command continues to find ways to deny soldiers their right to receive necessary mental health services. Several soldiers have come forward recently with reports of harassment, undue punishment, and interference when seeking these necessary services.

A number of examples include:

• The imprisonment of SPC. Eric Jasinski in March 2010. Jasinski, who was suffering from PTSD, refused redeployment to Iraq based on this condition. It was feared that Jasinski's confinement could interfere with his ability to receive his prescribed medications. Eric's attorney James Branum stated, "He was seeing a psychiatrist for his condition and prescribed Zoloft for depression and Trazadone to get to sleep, and they handed him his gun and told him to go back to Iraq."


• The deployment of 50 soldiers from Ft. Hood with physical (knee, back, and shoulder issues due to bomb blasts) and psychological (PTSD/TBI) issues in June 2010 to the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, California. Combat training for those soldiers with verified PTSD and other anxiety disorders runs counterintuitive to generally accepted psychiatric practices.


• Recent reports from soldiers at Ft. Hood suffering from PTSD and substance abuse who are being given extra work loads or are being kept from dealing with additional personal crises at home. Issues they are confronted with include being given medication only (instead of counseling) or being ignored by the chain of command when they request assistance.

Veteran deaths also surge after discharge from the military and are often the result of vehicle accidents, motorcycle crashes, drug overdoses, or other causes. An article this month in The New York Times discusses the huge number of veteran deaths attributed to destructive, risky, and lethal behaviors:

“The data show that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were two and a half times as likely to commit suicide as Californians of the same age with no military service. They were twice as likely to die in a vehicle accident and five and a half times as likely to die in a motorcycle accident. These numbers are truly alarming and should wake up the whole country,” said United States Representative Bob Filner, Democrat of San Diego, who is the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“They show a failure of our policy.”

The Under the Hood Café and Outreach Center, the GI coffeehouse located near Ft. Hood, Texas, the largest military base in the U.S., offers GIs a free speech zone. It provides a non-military environment that allows active duty GIs and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to discuss the debilitating effects of war. Under the Hood offers free referrals for medical and psychological services and legal assistance for those soldiers who are resisting redeployment to war zones.

To benefit its ongoing efforts in support of GIs, veterans, and military families, Under the Hood is having a “Hoodstock Flashback” concert (see graphic below) on Sunday, November 14, from 6-11 p.m. at Jovita’s in Austin. Admission is $10 at the door and includes such artists as Barbara K, Karen Abrahams, Will T. Massey, and Richard Bowden.

[Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

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Dahr Jamail : Eric Jasinski, the Army, and PTSD

Eric Jasinski at benefit for Under the Hood Cafe, May 24, 2010. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.
Ft. Hood's Eric Jasinski:
PTSD soldier punished by army

Jasinski's case is representative of a growing number of soldiers returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are going AWOL when they are unable to get proper mental health care treatment from the military for their PTSD.

By Dahr Jamail / June 7, 2010

[This article about Ft. Hood GI Eric Jasinski and the military's handling of GIs with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was written by Dahr Jamail and distributed by Truthout. See links below for previous Rag Blog articles about Jasinski, PTSD, and the GI anti-war movement.]

Iraq war veteran Eric Jasinski, after seeking treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is being punished by the Army.

Jasinski turned himself in to the Army late last year, after having gone absent without leave (AWOL) in order to seek help for his PTSD. Help, he told Truthout, he was not receiving from the Army, even after requesting assistance on multiple occasions.

He was court-martialed and jailed for 25 days for having gone AWOL, during which time he was escorted in shackles to therapy sessions for his PTSD. After being released from prison, he was informed that he would be given an other-than-honorable discharge, which means he is likely ineligible for full PTSD treatment from the Veterans' Administration (VA) after he leaves the service.

Jasinski enlisted in the military in 2005, and deployed to Iraq in October 2006 as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army. He collected intelligence in order to put together strike packets -- where air strikes would take place.

Upon his return to the U.S. after his tour, Jasinski was suffering from severe PTSD due to what he did and saw in Iraq, along with remorse and guilt for the work he did that he knows contributed to the loss of life in Iraq.

"What I saw and what I did in Iraq caused my PTSD," Jasinski, 23-years-old, told Truthout during a phone interview. "Also, I lost a good friend in Iraq, and I went through a divorce -- she left right before I deployed -- and my grandmother passed away when I was over there, so it was all super rough on me."

Upon returning home in December 2007, Jasinski tried to get treatment via the military. He was self-medicating by drinking heavily, and an over-burdened military mental health counselor sent him to see a civilian doctor, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD.

"I went to get help, but I had an eight hour wait to see one of five doctors. But after several attempts, finally I got a periodic check up and I told that counselor what was happening, and he said they'd help me... but I ended up getting a letter that instructed me to go see a civilian doctor, and she diagnosed me with PTSD," Jasinski explained. "Then, I was taking the medications and they were helping, because I thought I was to get out of the Army in February 2009 when my contract expired."

As the date approached, Jasinski was stop-lossed (an involuntary extension of his contract), an event that he said "pushed me over the edge" because he was told he was to be sent to Iraq within a month.

During his pre-deployment processing, "They gave me a 90-day supply of meds to get me over to Iraq, and I saw a counselor during that period, and I told him,' I don't know what I'm going to do if I go back to Iraq.'"

"He asked if I was suicidal," Jasinski explained, "and I said not right now, I'm not planning on going home and blowing my brains out. He said, 'Well, you're good to go then.' And he sent me on my way. I knew at that moment, when they finalized my paperwork for Iraq, that there was no way I could go back with my untreated PTSD. I needed more help."

Jasinski went AWOL, where he remained out of service until Dec. 11, 2009, when he returned to turn himself in to authorities at Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas.

"He has heavy-duty PTSD and never would have gone AWOL if he'd gotten the help he needed from the military," James Branum, Jasinski's civilian lawyer, told Truthout. "This case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers."

Branum, who is also co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, told Truthout in December, "Our hope is that his unit won't court-martial him, but puts him in a warrior transition unit where they will evaluate him to either treat him or give him a medical discharge. He'd be safe there, and eventually, they'd give him a medical discharge because his PTSD symptoms are so severe."

But the Army scheduled a Summary Court Martial for March 31. At it, Jasinski was sentenced to 30 days in the Bell County Jail in Texas. Laura Barrett, Jasinski's mother, told the Temple Herald Telegram, "This has been a total outrage. I cannot believe my son who is diagnosed with PTSD from his deployment to Iraq would be sent to jail."

Branum submitted a clemency request asking that Jasinski be released on mental health grounds, or that he be transferred to the psych ward at Darnall Army Medical Center to complete his sentence. The Army did not respond.

Branum said, "We, as Americans, need to see how combat vets are treated today. Eric is in jail because he has PTSD and was denied the care he needed. His 'desertion' was an act of desperation, the act of a soldier who had no other options."

Jasinski wrote a letter from the Bell County Jail that said the following:

"When I am taken out of jail back to Fort Hood for any appointments I am led around in handcuffs and ankle shackles in front of crowds of soldiers... which is overwhelming on my mind. My guilt from treating prisoners in Iraq sub-human and I did things to them and watched my unit do cruel actions against prisoners, so being humiliated like that forces me to fall into the dark spiral of guilt. I now know what it feels like to have no rights and have people stare and judge based on your shackles and I feel even more like a monster cause I used to do this to Iraqi people.

"Even worse is the fact that this boils down to the military failing to treat my PTSD but I am being punished for it... I feel as if I am being a threat to others or myself and still the Army mental health professional blow me off just like in 2009 when I felt like I had no choice but to go AWOL, since I received a 5 minute mental evaluation and was stop-lossed despite my PTSD, and was told that they could do nothing for me. The insufficient mental evaluation from a doctor I had never seen before, combined with the insufficient actions by the doctor on 9 April show the Army is not trying to make progress."

Jasinski was released from jail on April 24, having served 25 days of a 30-day sentence. He has since been informed he will receive an other-than-honorable discharge, which means he will not have full health benefits with the Veterans' Administration, and thus little to no assistance from the military for treating his PTSD.

According to the Army, every year from 2006 onwards has seen a record number of reported and confirmed suicides. A 2008 Rand Corporation report revealed that at least 300,000 veterans returning from both wars had been diagnosed with severe depression or PTSD.

Jasinski's case is representative of a growing number of soldiers returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are going AWOL when they are unable to get proper mental health care treatment from the military for their PTSD.

Jaskinski's experience with the military has inspired him to offer advice for other soldiers who need PTSD treatment but are not receiving it.

When asked what he feels the military needs to do in order to rectify this problem, he said, "A total overhaul of the mental health sector in the military is needed... we had nine psychiatrists at our center, and that's simply not enough staff, they are going to get burned out after seeing 50 soldiers each in one day. We need an overhaul of the entire system, and more good psychiatrists, not those just coming for a job, but good, experienced mental health professionals need to be involved."

Chuck Luther, who served 12 years in the military, is a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, where he was a reconnaissance scout in the 1st Cavalry Division. The former sergeant was based at Fort Hood, Texas, where he lives today. Luther told Truthout in November that the military tried to discharge him without assisting him with his PTSD, instead diagnosing him with "personality disorder."

In response, Luther went on to found and direct "The Soldier's Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors."

"The way things are set up right now in the military is that if a soldier gets a chance to go to mental health, which is something military commanders tend to try to prevent from happening in the first place, but if soldiers go, psychologists and psychiatrists address and diagnose their PTSD and write it up, but this does not mean that they will get treatment," Luther explained to Truthout.

At the time, he described a situation very similar to that of Jasinski's.

"The doctors then send it to command, but that doesn't mean the soldiers will get treatment," said Luther. "The soldier can push it up to the commander, but the commander can deny it and that's as high as it gets. Soldiers are listed as not being able to serve by a military doctor, but they are nonetheless medicated and sent out into combat anyway."

"The military is trying to get everybody these 'other-than-honorable discharges' or diagnosing them with 'personality disorder' so they don't have to take care of them after they discharge," Aaron Hughes, an Iraq war vet, told Truthout.

Hughes, a national organizer for the group Iraq Veteran's Against the War, said that Jasinski was already involved in the paperwork process required by the military for him to receive a medical discharge.

"This was underway when he went to jail," Hughes added, "He would do his time for going AWOL, then get a medical discharge. Instead, they are switching this mid-stream and giving him an 'other-than-honorable' discharge, which means he gets no benefits. My main concern is that he did his time and did everything he was supposed to do, and they are still not living up to their side of the bargain."

Kernan Manion is a board-certified psychiatrist who treated Marines returning from war who suffer from PTSD and other acute mental problems born from their deployments, at Camp Lejeune -- the largest Marine base on the East Coast. While he was engaged in this work, Manion warned his superiors of the extent and complexity of the systemic problems, and he was deeply worried about the possibility of these leading to violence on the base and within surrounding communities.

"If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we'll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I've heard so many times, 'I'm not cut out for society. I can't stand people. I can't tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods,'" Manion explained to Truthout. "That's what we're going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional members of society. It infuriates me -- what they are doing to these guys, because it's so ineptly run by a system that values rank and power more than anything else -- so we're stuck throwing money into a fragmented system of inept clinics and the crisis goes on."

"It's not just that we're going to have an immensity of people coming back, but the system itself is thwarting their effective treatment," Manion said.

Jasinski told Truthout that his previous commander, who he referred to as Captain Floer, told his mother that Jasinski was "faking my PTSD symptoms," since "the job he held {in Iraq] was behind a computer."

While in jail, Jasinski was denied access to his regular therapy sessions. He was taken periodically to other sessions, but he told Truthout, "The mental health center on Fort Hood told me I had to wait for more help."

At a later session at the same center, Jasinski said,"I was told upon my follow-up visit that my suicidal ideations were all in my head and was sent on my way."

"Again the military is casting its soldiers aside, and shows no mercy for soldiers or their families," Jasinski told Truthout, "I do not want their money, but I want them to at least acknowledge and act upon the problems in order to repair the broken system. I want them to take action instead of worrying about public relations."

[Houston native Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last five years.]

Source / Truthout

Also see:

• Eric Jasinski: Treating PTSD With Jail Time by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / April 23, 2010
• PTSD and the Military : Soldiers Go AWOL to Get Help by Dahr Jamail / The Rag Blog / Dec. 13, 2009
• More articles by Dahr Jamail on The Rag Blog.

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PTSD and the Military : Soldiers Go AWOL to Get Help

Photo illustration by Jennifer Clampet / USAG Wiesbaden Public Affairs.
Military health care inadequate:
GI's go AWOL for PTSD treatment

By Dahr Jamail / December 13, 2009

MARFA, Texas -- With a military health care system over-stretched by two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more soldiers are deciding to go absent without leave (AWOL) in order to find treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Eric Jasinski enlisted in the military in 2005, and deployed to Iraq in October 2006 as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army. He collected intelligence in order to put together strike packets -- where air strikes would take place.

Upon his return to the U.S. after his tour, Jasinski was suffering from severe PTSD from what he did and saw in Iraq, remorse and guilt for the work he did that he knows contributed to the loss of life in Iraq.

"What I saw and what I did in Iraq caused my PTSD," Jasinski, 23, told IPS during a phone interview, "Also, I went through a divorce -- she left right before I deployed -- and my grandmother passed away when I was over there, so it was all super rough on me."

In addition, he lost a friend in Iraq, and another of his friends lost his leg due to a roadside bomb attack.

Upon returning home in December 2007, Jasinski tried to get treatment via the military. He was self-medicating by drinking heavily, and an over-burdened military mental health counselor sent him to see a civilian doctor, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD.

"I went to get help, but I had an eight hour wait to see one of five doctors. But after several attempts, finally I got a periodic check up and I told that counselor what was happening, and he said they’d help me... but I ended up getting a letter that instructed me to go see a civilian doctor, and she diagnosed me with PTSD," Jasinski explained, "Then, I was taking the medications and they were helping, because I thought I was to get out of the Army in February 2009 when my contract expired."

As the date approached, a problem arose.

"In late 2008 they stop-lossed me, and that pushed me over the edge," Jasinski told IPS, "They were going to send me back to Iraq the next month."

During his pre-deployment processing "they gave me a 90-day supply of meds to get me over to Iraq, and I saw a counselor during that period, and I told him "I don’t know what I’m going to do if I go back to Iraq."

"He asked if I was suicidal," Jasinski explained, "and I said not right now, I’m not planning on going home and blowing my brains out. He said, ‘well, you’re good to go then.’ And he sent me on my way. I knew at that moment, when they finalized my paperwork for Iraq, that there was no way I could go back with my untreated PTSD. I needed more help."

SPC Eric Jasinski suffers from severe PTSD.
When Jasinski went on his short pre-deployment leave break, he went AWOL, where he remained out of service until December 11, when he returned to turn himself in to authorities at Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas.

"He has heavy duty PTSD and never would have gone AWOL if he’d gotten the help he needed from the military," James Branum, Jasinski’s civilian lawyer who accompanied him to Fort Hood, told IPS. "This case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers."

Branum, who is also co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, added, "Our hope is that his unit won’t court-martial him, but puts him in a warrior transition unit where they will evaluate him to either treat him or give him a medical discharge. He’d be safe there, and eventually, they’d give him a medical discharge because his PTSD symptoms are so severe."

He’s turning himself in "because he is not a flight risk and wants to take responsibility for what he’s done," Branum stressed.

"It’s been a year, I want to get on with my life and go to college and become a social worker to help people," Jasinski said of why he is turning himself in to the military at this time. "I want to get on with life, and I don’t want to hide."

Kernan Manion is a board-certified psychiatrist, who treated Marines returning from war who suffer from PTSD and other acute mental problems born from their deployments, at Camp Lejeune -- the largest Marine base on the East Coast.

While he was engaged in this work, Manion warned his superiors of the extent and complexity of the systemic problems, and he was deeply worried about the possibility of these leading to violence on the base and within surrounding communities.

"If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we’ll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I’ve heard so many times, ‘I’m not cut out for society. I can’t stand people. I can’t tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods,’" Manion explained to IPS. "That’s what we’re going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional members of society. It infuriates me -- what they are doing to these guys, because it’s so ineptly run by a system that values rank and power more than anything else -- so we’re stuck throwing money into a fragmented system of inept clinics and the crisis goes on."

"It’s not just that we’re going to have an immensity of people coming back, but the system itself is thwarting their effective treatment," Manion explained.

According to the Army, every year from 2006 onwards there has been a record number of reported and confirmed suicides, including 2009.

There has also been an escalation of soldier-on-soldier violence, as the November 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hassan indicates. In 2008 there was also a record number of suicides for the Marine Corps.

Jasinski’s case is representative of a growing number of soldiers returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are going AWOL when they are unable to get proper mental health care treatment from the military for their PTSD.

A 2008 Rand Corporation report revealed that at least 300,000 veterans returning from both wars had been diagnosed with severe depression or PTSD.

Jaskinski’s experience with the military has inspired him to offer advice for other soldiers who need PTSD treatment but are not receiving it.

"Do not, do not let a 5-10 minute review by a military doctor determine if you go to Iraq," he told IPS. "Even if you have to pay out of pocket, go civilian to a doctor... the military mental health sector is so overwhelmed, they won’t take care of you. Go see a civilian, and hopefully that therapist will help you... even then I’m not sure that will help... but you have to take that chance."

When asked what he feels the military needs to do in order to rectify this problem, he said: "A total overhaul of the mental health sector in the military is needed... we had nine psychiatrists at our center, and that’s simply not enough staff, they are going to get burned out, after seeing 50 soldiers each in one day. We need an overhaul of the entire system, and more, good psychiatrists, not those just coming for a job, but good, experienced mental health professionals need to be involved."

Source / IPS

Thanks to Fran Hanlon / The Rag Blog

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Harm's Way : Escalation and the GI Suicide Crisis

Mental health and the suicide rate:
Sending soldiers into harm's way

By Michael Anthony / The Rag Blog / December 4, 2009

President Obama recently stated that sending more troops into harm’s way in Afghanistan is a solemn decision -- one that he would not rush. As a veteran, I find the decision to send troops into harm’s way without an effective military mental health program in place beyond solemn. It’s deeply disturbing. Keeping soldiers mentally fit should be as important as keeping them physically fit.

Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started, nearly 2,000 active-service soldiers have killed themselves, according to a report by the San Antonio Express-News earlier this year. Even more alarming is the fact that every day, five active-duty service members attempt suicide. In the past eight years, that means up to 14,000 have felt their life is not worth living.

The government doesn’t want you to know this. In the spring of 2008, CBS news journalist Armen Keteyian exposed a Veterans Administration cover up of suicide stats. The reporting revealed that every day, 18 veterans kill themselves and roughly 1000 attempt suicide each month. The VA’s head of Mental Health had claimed there were only 790 attempts in all of 2007, a far cry from the reality.

Among all veterans, over the eight years we’ve been at war in the Middle East, the statistics point out that roughly 50,000 have committed suicide, with upwards of 44,000 attempting suicide. These figures only represent data gathered since 2001; this has been an ongoing and persistent problem since Vietnam -- and the numbers go up each day.

Recently, the Army made a big deal about giving $50 million to fund a five-year research project on military suicide. In their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Linda J. Bilmes and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz figured the cost of the Iraq war at $12 billion a month. That means we spend more than $16 million an hour.

If you do the math, the $50 million that went to suicide research is what we spend every three hours in Iraq.

The day after Christmas this year will mark our 3,000th day at war. At this point, we’ve heard a lot about suicide bombers, but what about suicide? Regardless of anyone’s feelings about our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, these soldiers deserve much more than three hours of our time.

[SPC Michael Anthony is the author of Mass Casualties: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception and Dishonor in Iraq (Adams Media, October 2009). The book is drawn from the personal journals of SPC Anthony during his first year of service in Iraq.]

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Special Delivery : Ft. Hood GI Gives Letter to Obama

Pfc. Michael Kern. Photo from Cynthia Thomas / Under the Hood Cafe.
Stopping by the barracks:
GI Michael Kern hands Obama IVAW letter

What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers, are broken.

By Victor Agosto / The Rag Blog / November 11, 2009

President Obama visited Fort Hood today [Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009]. He dropped by Michael Kern's barracks. Michael handed President Obama a letter, saying, "Sir, IVAW has some concerns we'd like for you to address." Obama then dropped his hand and went on to speak to the next soldier. The secret service then took possession of the letter:

President Obama:

In your recent comments on the Fort Hood tragedy, you stated "These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil." Sir, we have been losing these brave Americans on American soil for years, due to the mental health problems that come after deployment, which include post-traumatic stress disorder, and often, suicide.

You also said that "We will continue to support the community with the full resources of the federal government." Sir, we appreciate that -- but what we need is not more FBI or Homeland Security personnel swarming Fort Hood. What we need is full mental healthcare for all soldiers serving in the Army. What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers, are broken.

You said "We will make sure that we will get answers to every single question about this terrible incident." Sir, one of the answers is self evident: that a strained military cannot continue without better mental healthcare for all soldiers.

You stated that "As Commander-in-Chief, there's no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for." Sir, we urge you to carry out your promise and ensure that our servicemembers indeed have access to quality mental health care. The Army has only 408 psychiatrists -- military, civilian and contractors -- serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world. This is far too few, and the providers that exist are often not competent professionals, as this incident shows. Military wages cannot attract the quality psychiatrists we need to care for these returning soldiers.

We ask that:

1. Each soldier about to be deployed and returning from deployment be assigned a mental health provider who will reach out to them, rather than requiring them to initiate the search for help.
2. Ensure that the stigma of seeking care for mental health issues is removed for soldiers at all levels-from junior enlisted to senior enlisted and officers alike.
3. Ensure that if mental health care is not available from military facilities, soldiers can seek mental health care with civilian providers of their choice
4. Ensure that soldiers are prevented from deploying with mental health problems and issues.
5. Stop multiple redeployments of the same troops.
6. Ensure full background checks for all mental health providers and periodic check ups for them to decompress from the stresses they shoulder from the soldiers they counsel to the workload they endure.

Sir, we hope that you will make the decision not to deploy one single Fort Hood troop without ensuring that all have had access to fair and impartial mental health screening and treatment.

You have stated on a number of occasions, starting during your campaign, how important our military and veterans are to this nation. The best way to safeguard the soldiers of this nation is to provide ALL soldiers with immediate, personal and professional mental health resources.

-- Iraq Veterans Against the War

Also see:

• Alice Embree : Here's to the Soldiers of Fort Hood by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / Nov. 6, 2009
• Dahr Jamail : Ft. Hood Shootings Reflect Problems in U.S. Military by Dahr Jamail / The Rag Blog / Nov. 5, 2009
• At Army Base, Some Violence Is Too Familiar by Michael Ross and Ray Rivera / The New York Times / Nov. 9, 2009
• Video of Amy Goodman interviewing IVAW's Michael Kern and journalist Dahr Jamail on Democracy Now

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Another Good Reason to Ban War: Troops' Children Suffer

Mental Health Problems Growing for Troops' Kids
July 7, 2009

Children of U.S. military troops sought outpatient mental health care 2 million times last year, double the number at the start of the Iraq war, and there was also an alarming spike in the number of military kids actually hospitalized for mental health reasons.

Internal Pentagon documents show the increases, which come as the services struggle with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a shortage of therapists.

From 2007 to 2008, some 20 percent more children of active duty troops were hospitalized for mental health services, the documents show. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, inpatient visits among military children have increased 50 percent.

The total number of outpatient mental health visits for children of men and women on active duty doubled from 1 million in 2003 to 2 million in 2008. During the same period, the yearly bed days for military children 14 and under increased from 35,000 to 55,000, the documents show.

Overall, the number of children and spouses of active duty personnel and Guard and Reserve troops seeking mental health care has been steadily increasing as the military struggles with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year's increase in child hospitalizations coincided with the ''surge'' of tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops into Iraq to stabilize the country.

However, reasons for the treatment increases are not clear from the documents. Besides the impact of service members' repeated tours in overseas war zones -- and the severe economic recession that has affected all American families -- the military has been encouraging troops' family members to seek mental health help when needed.

The military plans additional research.

Still, the statistics seem to reinforce the concerns of military leaders and private family organizations about the strains of the wars. Along with issues of separation, some families must deal with injuries or the deaths of loved ones.

Military families move, on average, nearly every three years, which adds additional stress.

''Army families are stretched, and they are stressed,'' Sheila Casey, wife of Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. Army chief of staff, told a congressional panel last month. ''And I have often referred to them as the most brittle part of the force.''

Evidence of domestic violence and child neglect among military families, as well as an increase in suicide, alcohol abuse and cases of post-traumatic stress, are all troubling signs, Mrs. Casey told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee. She and other military spouses testified that gaining access to mental health care is a problem.

At summer camps organized by the National Military Family Association for about 10,000 children, most of them kids of deployed soldiers, there have been more anecdotal reports this year of young people taking medication, and showing signs of severe homesickness, anxiety, or depression, said Patricia Barron, who runs the association's youth initiatives.

Barron, a military spouse, said her organization is participating in a study on deployments and families. She said much is still unknown about the effects.

''If it continues to happen, you have to wonder how this is affecting them,'' Barron said. ''In the long run, you have to wonder if there isn't going to be detrimental effects that might hang on for a long period of time.''

The shortage of mental health professionals isn't just isolated to the military. But the problem is more pronounced because of the increase in demand, both on the home front and in the war zones.

About 20 percent to 30 percent of service members returning from war report some form of psychological distress.

There are efforts under way to encourage the military, the Department of Veterans Affairs and state and local agencies to share mental health resources. Also, there have been incentives offered to encourage military spouses to enter easily transferrable fields such as health care.

In recent years, there's been an increase in funding in areas such as education, housing and child care devoted to improving the quality of life for military families. First lady Michelle Obama has said helping military families is a priority.

* * * * *
On the Net:

National Military Family Association: www.nmfa.org

Military Home Front: www.militaryhomefront.dod.mil

Source / AP / New York Times

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Texas : Mental Health Care a Disgrace

Farhat Chishty, right, spends time with her mentally retarded son Haseeb Chishty at Denton State School in Denton, Texas, Jan. 16, 2008. In 2002 Haseeb nearly died after a beating by a care worker and is now confined to a wheelchair and unable to feed himself or use the bathroom. Photo by Donna McWilliam / AP.

Texas has more mentally disabled patients in institutions than any other state, and the federal government has concluded that the state’s care system is stubbornly out of step with modern mental health practices.

December 3, 2008

DENTON, Texas - For more than a century, thousands of mentally disabled Americans were isolated from society, sometimes for life, by being confined to huge public hospitals.

In at least one place, they still are.

Texas has more mentally disabled patients in institutions than any other state, and the federal government has concluded that the state’s care system is stubbornly out of step with modern mental health practices.

Critics allege that Texas remains stuck in an era when the mentally disabled were hidden away in large, impersonal facilities far from relatives and communities.

“In Texas, it’s like a time warp,” said Jeff Garrison-Tate, an advocate who wants to close the 13 hospitals called “state schools” and move patients into group homes.

For the third time in three years, the criticism has attracted the attention of the Justice Department, which on Tuesday accused Texas of violating residents’ constitutional rights to proper care.

Investigators found that dozens of patients died in the last year from preventable conditions, and officials declared that the number of injuries was “disturbingly high.”

In addition, hundreds of documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that some patients have been neglected, beaten, sexually abused or even killed by caretakers. Inspection reports also describe filthy rooms and unsanitary kitchens.


‘Institution capital of America’

Many of the nation’s mental hospitals were first built in the 1800s, when they were often called insane asylums. But by the 1960s, most experts concluded that patients fared better in smaller, community-based settings.

The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities says large care facilities — usually those with at least 16 residents — “enforce an unnatural, isolated, and regimented lifestyle that is not appropriate or necessary.”

Because of those concerns, eight states have abolished large institutions for the mentally disabled. Another 13 states closed most of their largest facilities, leaving just one open in each state.

But Texas has remained “the institution capital of America,” said Charlie Lakin, director of the Research and Training Center on Community Living at the University of Minnesota.

The 13 facilities in Texas house nearly 5,000 residents — more than six times the national average.

On a per-capita basis, Texas has 20.4 people per 100,000 in large institutions, Lakin said. The national average is 12.2 people.

Other states with large populations such as New York and California — which have rates of 11.2 and 7.5 people, respectively — rely far less on large institutions.

‘Warehousing’ patients

Federal law requires the mentally disabled to be treated in “the most integrated setting” possible — a factor that led to the Justice Department rebuke of Texas.

Laura Albrecht, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, said the agency is expanding community-based services. Texas officials say keeping the facilities open is a matter of preserving as many treatment options as possible.

But critics allege that “warehousing” patients in large institutions invites abuse. Patients are isolated from their families and communities, making regular contact with loved ones more difficult. And caretakers often get overwhelmed by the large numbers of patients, Garrison-Tate said.

In Texas, officials verified 465 incidents of abuse or neglect against mentally disabled people in state care in fiscal year 2007. Over a three-month period this summer, the state opened at least 500 new cases with similar allegations, according to federal investigators.

An AP investigation earlier this year revealed that more than 800 state employees have been fired or suspended since the summer of 2003 because they abused, neglected or exploited mentally disabled residents.

And in the one-year period ending in September, as many as 53 deaths in the facilities were due to potentially avoidable conditions such as pneumonia, bowel obstructions or sepsis, the Justice Department said. Some families tell horror stories of their loved ones in the state facilities. For instance, Michelle Dooley said her son spent three months in the Austin State School, which she described as a place of “dingy yellow floors and patients running around without any clothes on.”

During his time there, he refused to leave his bed and often languished in his own excrement, she said.

Dooley eventually moved her son into a group home in Denton where treatment costs average about $50,000 per year — roughly half as much as the costs at state schools, Garrison-Tate said. Medicaid often picks up most of those costs.

“It was just horrible,” Dooley said. “If he goes back to a state facility, he will shut down and die.”

At the San Angelo State School, inspection reports from 2007 took note of scuffed walls pocked with holes, rotting food, dirty kitchens, broken furniture and missing shower curtains.

More seriously, two employees were fired after throwing a resident into a pool while he was wearing a restraint jacket. The employees had made a bet with the resident that he would be unable to dunk another resident under water. When he lost the bet, the employees restrained him and threw him in the water, according to the reports.

Other families say they are happy with the state care.

Neil Davidson said his daughter Susan, who has cerebral palsy and is mentally retarded, has flourished during her 10 years at the Lubbock State School.

“I’m very impressed with the level of care she has received,” Davidson said. “As far as I am concerned, it’s Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood. Everybody is looking out for everybody else.”

‘Happy, homelike atmosphere’

A visit to the Denton State School, the largest in Texas, reveals a sprawling campus spread across well-kept lawns. Superintendent Randy Spence described the place as a “happy, homelike atmosphere.”

“The vast majority of our employees love the people they work with,” said Cecilia Fedorov, another spokeswoman for the Department of Aging and Disability Services. “They think of them as extended family.”

But Denton is also the site of Texas’ most notorious case of state school abuse.

In 2002, a care worker repeatedly kicked and punched a resident in the stomach and groin. Haseeb Chishty nearly died after that beating. He is now confined to a wheelchair and unable to feed himself or use the bathroom.

“It got to the point where it was fun beating him, torturing him,” said former care worker Kevin Miller, who is now serving 15 years for aggravated assault.

In a statement videotaped by Chishty’s lawyer, Miller said he and many of his fellow care workers used methamphetamines, cocaine and Oxycontin on the job.

Chishty’s mother filed a lawsuit against the facility, but it went nowhere. In Texas, government entities are all but immune from lawsuits.

Trouble in closing schools

Some critics want to close the state schools. But because the Texas Legislature created each one, only lawmakers can close them.

Many of the institutions are large employers in small towns, and they often pay more than other jobs in rural areas. Lawmakers fear taking action that would lead to layoffs, Garrison-Tate said.

“Even if we said we wanted to close all state schools, the community resources aren’t there at this time,” said state Rep. Larry Phillips, chairman of a legislative committee studying the facilities.

Kelly Reddell, the lawyer whose client’s son was beaten nearly to death, said the state is not doing right by its mentally disabled.

“The very nature of the institutional setting, I think, creates the environment for the abuse to take place,” she said. “How in the world can you think this system is the best and it makes sense?”

© 2008 The Associated Press.

Source / AP / MSNBC

Thanks to Wayne Johnson / The Rag Blog

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Is Surfing the Internet Altering your Brain?

A functional MRI brain scan shows how searching the Internet dramatically engages brain neural networks (in red). The image on the left displays brain activity while reading a book; the image on the right displays activity while engaging in an Internet search. Image: UCLA / Reuters.
'We're seeing an evolutionary change. The people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge are the ones who master the technological skills and also face-to-face skills.'
By Belinda Goldsmith / October 27, 2008

CANBERRA -- The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.

Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California who specializes in brain function, has found through studies that Internet searching and text messaging has made brains more adept at filtering information and making snap decisions.

But while technology can accelerate learning and boost creativity it can have drawbacks as it can create Internet addicts whose only friends are virtual and has sparked a dramatic rise in Attention Deficit Disorder diagnoses.

Small, however, argues that the people who will come out on top in the next generation will be those with a mixture of technological and social skills.

"We're seeing an evolutionary change. The people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge are the ones who master the technological skills and also face-to-face skills," Small told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"They will know when the best response to an email or Instant Message is to talk rather than sit and continue to email."

In his newly released fourth book "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," Small looks at how technology has altered the way young minds develop, function and interpret information.

Small, the director of the Memory & Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and the Center on Aging at UCLA, said the brain was very sensitive to the changes in the environment such as those brought by technology.

He said a study of 24 adults as they used the Web found that experienced Internet users showed double the activity in areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning as Internet beginners.

"The brain is very specialized in its circuitry and if you repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others," said Small.

"We are changing the environment. The average young person now spends nine hours a day exposing their brain to technology. Evolution is an advancement from moment to moment and what we are seeing is technology affecting our evolution."

Small said this multi-tasking could cause problems.

He said the tech-savvy generation, whom he calls "digital natives," are always scanning for the next bit of new information which can create stress and even damage neural networks.

"There is also the big problem of neglecting human contact skills and losing the ability to read emotional expressions and body language," he said.

"But you can take steps to address this. It means taking time to cut back on technology, like having a family dinner, to find a balance. It is important to understand how technology is affecting our lives and our brains and take control of it."

Source / Reuters

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Emerging from the Drug War Dark Age : A Psychedelic Drug Revival

Alex Grey's Oversoul.
LSD and other psychedelic medicines make a comeback
By Charles Shaw

After a 40-year moratorium, credible research for treating illnesses and addictions with psychedelic compounds has made a miraculous comeback.

The return flight from Switzerland was a mix of hope and solemnity for Rick Doblin, the only American to attend the funeral of Dr. Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD who had just died at the age of 102. Doblin, a Harvard-educated Ph.D and founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, an organization that conducts legal research into the healing and spiritual potentials of psychedelics and marijuana, had spent his entire career trying to break through the virtually impenetrable wall of obstinacy that surrounds psychedelic compounds and their potential benefits to society.

More than anyone else in his field, Doblin is all too familiar with what he refers to as the "40-year-long bad trip" that researchers like him have faced in dealing with the fallout from the introduction of LSD and other psychedelic compounds to the Western psyche in the mid 1960s. This 40-year intellectual Dark Age, Doblin says, has been characterized by "enormous fear and misinformation and a vested interest in exaggerated stories about drugs to keep prohibition alive."

We've all heard the tales of kids jumping off rooftops because they think they can fly, of otherwise normal people taking a single hit of LSD and "going insane," and of course the all-pervasive myth of the "acid flashback." Although there were acid casualties, most were rare or aberrant tragedies, most often occurring in individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions who never should have taken LSD in the first place. Most of the tales are apocryphal at best, intentional propaganda meant to discourage use.

An Era of Censorship

Why would our government embark on this 40-year Inquisition to burn the psychedelic prophets at the stake and wipe clean from the Earth the true history of psychedelic culture, as if it were the secret of the Holy Grail and the Merovingian dynasty? Why has the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s -- one of the most powerful revolutions in human consciousness in all of history -- been reduced to pejorative tales of tie-dyed morons skipping through Golden Gate Park in an orgy of self-indulgence? Why would something that the government claims does not deserve respectable attention be the recipient of such Draconian repressive measures? Could it be because, like the secret of Mary Magdalene, the truth could bring the whole order crashing down?

The answer, my friend, blew away in the wind. The extent to which LSD fomented the cultural revolution of the 1960s has all but disappeared in a miasma of drug war propaganda. But do not be fooled. This was no hippie-dippy bullshit. In its time, LSD was more dangerous to the ruling order than Mao, Che or the Founding Fathers themselves. As the New York Times obituary for Hofmann read, "[LSD] was no hustler from a shotgun lab in Tijuana, after all, but a bourgeois revolutionary, born into establishment medicine and able to travel the world and enter societies from the top down, through their most hallowed institutions."

The U.S. government threw everything but the kitchen sink at getting (certain) Americans to stop "turning on," launching the drug war that eventually locked up millions of drug users. They handed down ridiculously disproportionate federal sentences to LSD makers that would have made Pablo Escobar commit suicide. But it wasn't the "turning on" part that they feared, for there are many benefits to having a population otherwise occupied in a false reality. No, it was the "tuning in" and "dropping out" part that kept them awake at night.

Although it may be difficult for the uninitiated to understand at face value, LSD and other psychedelic compounds can have a profound life-altering affect on the user that, more often than not, serves to connect them (or reconnect, as the case may be) to the universal compassion and love for life that is inherent in our species. It invariably causes them to question the validity of the status quo, to examine their life and what surrounds them in terms of beliefs and values.

And in this epoch of industrial civilization, the last thing a corporate culture that survives on war, aggression and consumer spending needs is a consciously awakened population of people who inexorably choose to leave said culture in droves because they see it is killing the planet, themselves, and each other. This is precisely, to the letter, the meaning of "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out."

But even for those who would call this hyperbole, what was lost in all the derision and urban myths about LSD and other psychedelic compounds like ayahuasca, peyote, psilocybin and iboga -- plant medicines thousands of years old -- was the fact that they are miraculously powerful medicines, with the ability to effectively treat, and in some cases, cure some of the most debilitating illnesses and disorders plaguing humanity: addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and migraine and cluster headaches. They are also effective palliatives for the sick and dying.

Something with such legitimate potential to heal can only be kept in the bottle for so long. In fact, these transcendent therapies are now ebbing back into mainstream respectability. Doblin will be the first to tell you that times are changing, driven by too much government repression, too much scientific orthodoxy, and, perhaps more than any other factor, our culture's desperate need to learn how to handle what he calls our "collective emotional state."

"We talk about the veterans suffering PTSD, but it's really a culture-wide phenomenon," he said. "We're at a place where technology and the structure of contemporary life have taken us so far away from our emotions as to create pathological conditions. The systemic violence and selfishness and greed that are in our society need treatment."

Doblin was one of the first to break through that wall of obstinacy and challenge the Inquisition. He got the U.S. government to approve clinical trials of MDMA-assisted therapy for returning veterans and victims of violent crime or abuse who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In many ways it was this Newtonian breakthrough that finally challenged the orthodoxy that reigned over the 40-year Dark Age. Western governments had to ask themselves what was more important to them: their irrational and erroneous drug propaganda, or the possibility that the millions of lives they had devastated by war, violence and iniquitous economic policies might actually be repaired. In this, the seeds of a psychedelic renaissance were planted.

A Return to Respectability

Much greater than usual media attention accompanied the most recent World Psychedelic Forum held in March in Basel, Switzerland, the home of Albert Hofmann. A headline in the May issue of the staid British medical journal The Lancet -- known for challenging the Pentagon's Iraq casualty numbers -- read, "Research on Psychedelics Moves into the Mainstream."

The Lancet article identified a number of early-stage clinical trials being conducted on various "anxiety and neurotic disorders" using psychedelic compounds. As previously mentioned, Doblin and MAPS are conducting three parallel studies in Israel, Switzerland and the United States on the use of Ecstasy for treating PTSD. MAPS has also funded the work of controversial Harvard researcher John Halpern and Yale researcher Andrew Sewell, who are studying LSD and psilocybin as treatments for cluster headaches. (Information about their research is available on clusterbusters.com and Erowid, an online clearinghouse for reliable data on virtually every psychoactive plant and chemical known to humans.)

Harvard University, which conducted the last legal research on LSD in the mid-1960s and was the site for one of Halpern's studies on the effects of MDMA on dying cancer patients, is once again considering clinical trials to support Halpern's research.

And in a major milestone, on May 13 of this year, Swiss doctor Peter Gasser administered the first legal dose of LSD in more than 36 years. It was for a study of anxiety in palliative care, which helps terminally ill patients transition more peacefully -- and with as little pain as possible -- into death.

Other complexes like addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder are being treated with what are called the "shamanic plant medicines": ayahuasca, the Amazonian vine preparation whose psychoactive component is dimethyltryptamine (DMT); peyote, the North American cactus whose psychoactive component is mescaline; and iboga, an African rainforest shrub.

Addiction is one of the most important new fields of study, not only because of the sheer numbers of afflicted, which the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates at 23.6 million persons a year at a cost of $181 billion. According to a newly released report from the World Health Organization, the United States is the world's most addicted society. Of those who are lucky enough to get treatment, half eventually go back to heavy use, and 90 percent suffer brief or episodic relapses for the rest of their lives. This makes the search for an effective and long-lasting new treatment more attractive -- and more pressing -- than ever.

The Healing Potential of Psychedelics

Unlike other treatments, which have shown pitifully low success rates, psychedelic-assisted therapy focuses on the emotional context under which a patient suffers addiction, not the use of the drugs themselves. "This," says Tom Roberts, a professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University and the co-editor of a new two-volume compilation, Psychedelic Medicine, "is what makes them uniquely effective. They allow negative ideas and feelings -- where most addictions have their origins -- to surface into consciousness. With the guidance of a mental health professional, the person can let them go." Once these negative feelings are gone, Roberts says, the person no longer feels the need to deaden them with drugs or alcohol.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy for addiction pokes a hole in conventional wisdom about drug use, which goes something like this: If, under American law, all illegal drugs are bad for you, how can you then treat an addiction to one drug with another purportedly dangerous drug? This shortsighted line of thinking has been keeping psychedelic compounds illegal in spite of evidence pointing to their benefits.

Indigenous peoples have been using psychedelics as traditional medicine for thousands of years. Ayahuasca and peyote have been used to treat toothaches, pain in childbirth, fever, breast pain, skin diseases, rheumatism, diabetes, colds, blindness, parasites and more. They have also been used as spiritual medicines to cure emotional disorders. Native Americans use peyote to treat the astronomical rates of alcoholism found on the reservations, reportedly with great success, although hard figures are difficult to obtain due to the legal protections given to the Native American Church.

And Western scientists have known of the healing capabilities of psychedelics for decades.

In 1954 two chemists, D.W. Woolley and E. Shaw, published an article in Science magazine that argued that the neurochemical serotonin was the likely culprit behind most major mental disorders, writes Dirk Hanson in Addiction: A Search for a Cure. The worst of the bunch were depression, drug addiction and alcoholism. Woolley and Shaw also confirmed in their study that the most powerful known manipulator of serotonin was LSD because it had an "eerily" similar chemical structure.

Later in the '50s, a well-known LSD "apostle" named Alfred Matthew "Captain Al" Hubbard started peddling the idea that LSD might hold considerable psychotherapeutic potential. With the assistance of Aldous Huxley and other prominent acid-taking intellectuals, Hubbard gave LSD to Canadian researchers Abram Hoffer, Ross Mclean, and Humphrey Osmond, who studied it as a treatment for alcoholism, while a similar study was conducted at the Stanford Research Institute.

Later, Stan Grof worked with street-level addicts while Timothy Leary conducted psilocybin therapy on prisoners. Even Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was an acid enthusiast, promoting LSD as a "gateway to an accelerated spiritual awakening." Wilson noticed that the turnaround in alcoholics did not happen until they hit bottom, and LSD, because it surfaced difficult emotions, hastened an alcoholic's bottom and helped them avoid more catastrophic bottoms.

The therapy is reinforced through the "afterglow" effect of a "transcendent psychedelic event" (a trip), which Psychedelic Medicine says is "characterized by an elevated and energetic mood and a relative freedom from concerns of the past and from guilt and anxiety." There emerges an "enhanced disposition and capacity to enter into close relationships." The "afterglow" usually lasts anywhere from two weeks to a month and then gradually fades into a series of memories that are thought to continue affecting attitude and behavior.

All of these researchers stress that psychological professionals must guide psychedelic sessions, and that full recovery is only possible through continued therapy.

"After 40 years of review," Doblin takes great care to mention, "we can accurately say it's not a miracle cure." Psychedelic-assisted therapy has powerful healing potential, he says, but "does not work for people who don't really want to look at their inner conflicts."

[Charles Shaw, a Chicago-based writer, is a regular contributor to AlterNet. He is the former editorial director of the Conscious Choice publications and a contributor to Reality Sandwich and the Huffington Post. He is currently writing Exile Nation, a drug war memoir.]

Source / AlterNet / Posted July 11, 2008

Thanks to radman / The Rag Blog

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Foster Kids In Texas Get Lots of Meds

Copyright © Illustration by Olaf Hajek.
They get 'three times the amount of psychotropic meds as their non-fostered Medicaid counterparts'
By Craig Malisow / August 4, 2008

As if they weren’t getting shafted enough, foster kids on Medicaid in Texas are receiving at least three times the amount of psychotropic meds as their non-fostered Medicaid counterparts – without any proven benefits.

This is according to a study led by Julie Zito, a professor of pharmacy and psychiatry at the University of Maryland-Baltimore, and published in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The findings were based on the review of 32,135 Texas foster care kids enrolled in Medicaid between September 2003 and August 2004. More than 75 percent of the medications were used “off-label,” meaning not for their prescribed purposes.

“When two-thirds of foster care adolescents receive treatment for emotional and behavioral problems, far in excess of the proportion in non-foster care population, we should have assurances that the youth are benefiting from such treatment,” Zito testified in May, before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

She also testified that “Poverty, social deprivation, and unsafe living environments do not necessarily justify complex, poorly evidenced psychopharmacologic drug regimens.”

Read Zito’s complete testimony here.

Source / Houston Press

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