Veterans routinely given psychiatric drugs even without diagnosis of mental disorder [suicides on the rise]

A major indicator of the deteriorating quality of conventional medical care in the U.S. [& other countries, red]  is its growing reliance on pharmaceutical drugs as a catch-all for pain and disease management. 

And a new study published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry shows that this dire situation is only worsening, as many conventional doctors are no longer even properly diagnosing patients but instead just handing out medications willy-nilly in order to get patients out the door.

This is definitely true for millions of American veterans currently taking psychiatric drugs, many of whom have alleged mental conditions that were never clinically diagnosed. According to a new report out of Yale University, roughly one-third of all U.S. veterans between the ages of 65 and 85 currently taking psych drugs never received any sort of mental health diagnosis. As it turns out, less than 40 percent of those taking such drugs but not getting mental health treatment from a specialist have a legitimate mental illness diagnosis.

Veterans With PTSD Caught in The System

An unfortunate industry trend on the rise is the number of veterans involved in the criminal justice system – approximately 10 percent of people who are incarcerated at any one time are estimated to be veterans. 

With many of them suffering from PTSD, mental illnesses or substance abuse problems, several national initiatives and treatment programs have surfaced to help prevent unnecessary incarceration when possible.

One of the biggest trends to surface is the move toward using more evidence-based, recovery oriented treatments instead of the old “psychiatric treatment as usual” model. The VA system has made a concentrated effort to train clinicians in evidence-based therapies for PTSD and other mental disorders. One of the evidence-based treatments is called “Prolonged Exposure Therapy” which was developed by Dr. Edna Foa and others specifically for the treatment of PTSD. Another is Cognitive Processing Therapy. Both treatments include elements of exposure to the traumatic memories but their names really explain what they do.

As with any systematic change, there are roadblocks to overcome. One of them has been hiring enough qualified clinicians to be able to offer the evidence-based therapy, which is more intense than other treatments. Another roadblock is getting those clinicians trained and certified to offer the therapies. Yes, the VA requires certification in addition to the required license. There has also been some resistance to change from clinicians who are being asked to change the way they have been doing the job for many years. At Kaplan University, for example, professors are making a concerted effort to educate students on the shift by sharing real world experiences from mental health service through discussion boards and live seminars, allowing students to hear about veteran issues, forensic concerns and the latest in mental health treatment.

A systematic barrier that one might not know about is the regulation that prevents VA clinicians from providing treatment to veterans while he or she is incarcerated. That makes it even more important to reach veterans prior to incarceration, prevent incarceration if appropriate, and engage them in treatment after release.

In order to reduce the unnecessary incarceration of veterans, the VA began an initiative called the “Veterans Justice Outreach Initiative.” The initiative uses a sequential intercept model that attempts to connect with veterans before, during, and after involvement with the justice system. Veterans Justice Outreach Specialist do outreach to veterans who are incarcerated (pre-conviction) and work with veterans after being released. They also provide education to law enforcement, court personnel, and probation officers regarding the treatment options available to veterans through the VA system. read more

Mind-Control Scientists Successfully Implant False Memories

The race to decode the brain continues. A wild array of new possibilities are opening in the field of mind control. 

The mind control of the future forgoes all pretense at indirectly altering perception through media and politics, or even mind-altering drugs and environmental toxins. The mind control of the future goes straight into direct programming.

This direct programming could take place in a number of ways, from gadgets that create a brain-computer interface, to magnetic manipulation via "neural dust," to the direct uploading of the contents of our brain and the subsequent hacking of our minds in the digital realm.

Memory research is a key component of this as well. Our memories help us form our identity: who we are relative to where we have been. Positive or negative lessons from the past can be integrated into our present decisions, thus enabling us to form sound strategies and behaviors that can aid us in our quest for personal evolution. But what if we never knew what memories were real or false? What if our entire narrative was changed by having our life's events restructured?

Current research on mice indicates a disturbing quest by technocrats and reductionists to interfere with this human cognition and even deliberately plant false memories.

The military already has openly discussed a desire to erase the memories of soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is seen as a viable solution, rather than investigate and ameliorate the horrific events which have put soldiers into stressful situations to begin with. Multi-tour soldiers are more suicidal than ever before, and military researchers would like to rewire their brains, as opposed to rework our current understanding of war and peace.

Damn the ethics; science continues full throttle, largely at the behest of military ideology and funding. The proverbial canary in the coal mine has transformed into a mouse in a laboratory. Apparently, until humanoid robots can be released full force, they need to create the best human facsimile possible.

Once again MIT is in the picture.

In a supposed attempt to understand why people can have memories of things that never happened, or divergent reports of the same documented event, the upshot of recent experiments with mice is that it is in fact possible to implant false memories of events that never have happened. Beyond that, researchers can implant fear:
The researchers place a mouse in a brand new environment. As the mouse explores this environment (Place A), new memories are created in the hippocampus (the region of the mammalian brain that we know is deeply involved with memory formation). In Place A, the mouse has the time of its life. The mouse is then relocated to a different environment (Place B). While in Place B, the neuroscientists stimulate the memory of Place A using optogenetics . . . while simultaneously delivering electric shocks to the mouse’s feet, causing fear and pain. Then, when the mouse is returned to Place A, it freezes in fear. This is because the mouse’s brain has somehow confused the fear of electric shocks in Place B with its memory of Place A — in other words, a false memory has been created.
What you have just read is a form of trauma-based mind control.

Of additional note is that scientists employed a virus to change "the neuron’s DNA so that they produce a protein switch that is sensitive to light. Then, when these neurons are struck by light (a hole is drilled in the mouse’s skull and a laser is shot into that region of the hippocampus), the memory is turned on."

A literal on/off switch to produce fear.

This is part of the grand future of neuroscience, which is receiving funding from the $100 million BRAIN project in the U.S., and another $1.3 billion committed by Europe.  We are already seeing some very unethical applications.

We would do well to weigh the positives and negatives while we still have the capacity to freely form and communicate our own thoughts; because the next step is on the horizon . . .  and it looks rather grim for anyone who values human emotion:
The next step, of course, is to actually do something with these findings. The research group would like to use its memory manipulation technology to fix/treat undesirable brain function, such as anxiety and depression. Being able to delete or reprogram bad memories, a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, would probably make short work of many mental woes. Perhaps more excitingly, though, is the potential to directly encode new memories into our neurons — kind of like when Neo learns to fly a helicopter in The Matrix. That’s probably a few years away yet, though.
Probably...

MIT Research Paper:
“Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus”: DOI: 10.1126/science.1239073 –

Main source:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162364-mit-successfully-implants-false-memories-may-teach-us-how-human-brains-form-false-memories

Additional Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jul/25/false-memory-implanted-mouse-brain
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/researchers-successfully-implant-mice-false-memories
http://faculty.mercer.edu/spears_a/studentpages/falsememories/clairesteinbeck.htm


Nicholas West

Brain Researchers Find a Link Between Sound and Fear

Those who have been through combat know that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be triggered by sounds as benign as thunder, taking them back to experiences on the battlefield that would rather be forgotten. 

The same is true of others who have been through trauma – deep emotions can be set off by sounds that are non-traumatic in their essence, but result in feelings of great fear or anxiety. Until now, scientists didn’t know what caused this in the brain.

A team of researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has discovered how sound can be translated in the brain and distorted to dredge up fearful emotions. The senior author of the study, which was published in Nature Neuroscience, Maria N. Geffen, PhD, states: “Emotions are closely linked to perception and very often our emotional response really helps us deal with reality.”  This also means that emotions can alter our experience of reality. She goes on to say:

“ . . .the fear response helps you escape potentially dangerous situations and react quickly. But there are also situations where things can go wrong in the way the fear response develops. That’s what happens in anxiety and also in PTSD — the emotional response to the events is generalized to the point where the fear response starts getting developed to a very broad range of stimuli.”


To break down what happens in the brain, what we hear is attached to our emotions through the auditory cortex, a part of the brain that mitigates auditory plasticity. Utilizing mice to investigate how hearing different frequencies were linked to emotional learning, or Pavlovian conditioning, scientists observed what happened in this particular area of the brain. The mice were observed to see how certain sounds would cause them to have a particular emotional response when repeatedly exposed to a sound that was either ‘safe’ or ‘potentially dangerous.’ The scientists in charge of the study, Mark Aizenberg, PhD and Geffen, designed a series of tasks meant to teach increasing levels of emotional discrimination.

What became interesting while observing the rats as they responded to the scientists’ experiments was how their emotional perception affected their ability to hear properly. A direct link was established through this observation, to the connection of sound and perception of the world. This has not been previously documented in other studies.

Geffen explains:

“The animals presented with sounds that were very far apart generalize the fear that they developed to the danger tone over a whole range of frequencies, whereas the animals presented with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response. Following the fine conditioning task, they figured out that it’s a very narrow range of pitches that are potentially dangerous.”

She continues:

“There was a relationship between how much their emotional response generalized and how well they could tell different tones apart,” says Geffen. “In the animals that specialized their emotional response, pitch discrimination actually became sharper. They could discriminate two tones that they previously could not tell apart.”

All of this was mediated by the auditory cortex. While the specific of emotional learning originate in the amygdala, and sub-cortical areas of the brain, Geffen explained how their hypothesis is that amygdala and cortex alter “subcortical auditory processing areas”. She said that the sensory cortex, while responsible for the changes in frequency discrimination, is not necessary for the development of emotional responses. This is a puzzle.


Studies will now be aimed at understanding exactly how the emotional learning takes places in victims of PTSD, where generalized fear is the norm. Once the link between auditory plasticity and generalization of fear is understood more fully, it might be possible to retrain the brain to be more fearless with a different set of sounds, or new emotional programming.

Additional Sources:

Eurekalert

NeuroScienceNews


Christina Sarich

Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war

Iraq war veteran Daniel Somers committed suicide following an arduous battle with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that was caused by his role in committing “crimes against humanity,” according to the soldier’s suicide note.

Somers was assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad which saw him involved in more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, in addition to his role in conducting interrogations.

Somers’ suicide note is a powerful indictment of the invasion of Iraq and how it ruined the lives of both countless millions of Iraqis as well as innumerable US troops sent in to do the dirty work of the military-industrial complex.

“The simple truth is this: During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity,” wrote Somers. “Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I take some pride in that, actually, as to move on in life after being part of such a thing would be the mark of a sociopath in my mind. These things go far beyond what most are even aware of.”
Somers also complains about how he was forced to “participate in the ensuing coverup” of such crimes.

Somers’ death serves to refocus attention on the fact that military veterans are committing suicide in droves after being afflicted with PTSD as a direct result of committing atrocities while in combat.

As Somers highlights in his note, 22 military veterans commit suicide every single day. Amongst active-duty soldiers, more than one a day commit suicide, a figure that surpassed the number of US troops killed in combat in Afghanistan.
“And according to some experts, the military may be undercounting the problem because of the way it calculates its suicide rate,” reports the New York Times, adding that experts cannot understand “the root causes of why military suicide is rising so fast.”
However, the root causes are laid bare in Somers’ suicide note. US troops are being ordered to commit atrocities so vile that the only way many of them can cope with the horror of what they have done is by killing themselves.


Examples of atrocities aided directly or indirectly by US troops in Iraq include;

- Orders to slaughter “all military age men” during some operations;
- Torturing detainees – many of whom had never engaged in combat and were totally innocent - at grisly prison camps across the country;
- Raping and torturing children at the infamous Abu Ghraib detention facility while they shrieked in terror. Women forced to watch later begged to be killed.
- Sodomizing detainees with chemical lights and broom sticks;
- Indiscriminately firing upon and killing journalists and children from the air;
- Massacring entire groups of unarmed Iraqis, including children and the elderly in Hadith.
“This is what brought me to my actual final mission. Not suicide, but a mercy killing,” wrote Somers, adding that him living “any kind of ordinary life is an insult to those who died at my hand.”
Read Somers’ full suicide note below, obtained by Gawker and published with his family’s permission.

———————————————————–

I am sorry that it has come to this.
The fact is, for as long as I can remember my motivation for getting up every day has been so that you would not have to bury me. As things have continued to get worse, it has become clear that this alone is not a sufficient reason to carry on. The fact is, I am not getting better, I am not going to get better, and I will most certainly deteriorate further as time goes on. From a logical standpoint, it is better to simply end things quickly and let any repercussions from that play out in the short term than to drag things out into the long term.
You will perhaps be sad for a time, but over time you will forget and begin to carry on. Far better that than to inflict my growing misery upon you for years and decades to come, dragging you down with me. It is because I love you that I can not do this to you. You will come to see that it is a far better thing as one day after another passes during which you do not have to worry about me or even give me a second thought. You will find that your world is better without me in it.
I really have been trying to hang on, for more than a decade now. Each day has been a testament to the extent to which I cared, suffering unspeakable horror as quietly as possible so that you could feel as though I was still here for you. In truth, I was nothing more than a prop, filling space so that my absence would not be noted. In truth, I have already been absent for a long, long time.

My body has become nothing but a cage, a source of pain and constant problems. The illness I have has caused me pain that not even the strongest medicines could dull, and there is no cure. All day, every day a screaming agony in every nerve ending in my body. It is nothing short of torture. My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. Simple things that everyone else takes for granted are nearly impossible for me. I can not laugh or cry. I can barely leave the house. I derive no pleasure from any activity. Everything simply comes down to passing time until I can sleep again. Now, to sleep forever seems to be the most merciful thing.
You must not blame yourself. The simple truth is this: During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I take some pride in that, actually, as to move on in life after being part of such a thing would be the mark of a sociopath in my mind. These things go far beyond what most are even aware of.
To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. They offer no help, and actively block the pursuit of gaining outside help via their corrupt agents at the DEA. Any blame rests with them.

Beyond that, there are the host of physical illnesses that have struck me down again and again, for which they also offer no help. There might be some progress by now if they had not spent nearly twenty years denying the illness that I and so many others were exposed to. Further complicating matters is the repeated and severe brain injuries to which I was subjected, which they also seem to be expending no effort into understanding. What is known is that each of these should have been cause enough for immediate medical attention, which was not rendered.

Lastly, the DEA enters the picture again as they have now managed to create such a culture of fear in the medical community that doctors are too scared to even take the necessary steps to control the symptoms. All under the guise of a completely manufactured “overprescribing epidemic,” which stands in stark relief to all of the legitimate research, which shows the opposite to be true. Perhaps, with the right medication at the right doses, I could have bought a couple of decent years, but even that is too much to ask from a regime built upon the idea that suffering is noble and relief is just for the weak.

However, when the challenges facing a person are already so great that all but the weakest would give up, these extra factors are enough to push a person over the edge.
Is it any wonder then that the latest figures show 22 veterans killing themselves each day? That is more veterans than children killed at Sandy Hook, every single day. Where are the huge policy initiatives? Why isn’t the president standing with those families at the state of the union? Perhaps because we were not killed by a single lunatic, but rather by his own system of dehumanization, neglect, and indifference.
It leaves us to where all we have to look forward to is constant pain, misery, poverty, and dishonor. I assure you that, when the numbers do finally drop, it will merely be because those who were pushed the farthest are all already dead.

And for what? Bush’s religious lunacy? Cheney’s ever growing fortune and that of his corporate friends? Is this what we destroy lives for?
Since then, I have tried everything to fill the void. I tried to move into a position of greater power and influence to try and right some of the wrongs. I deployed again, where I put a huge emphasis on saving lives. The fact of the matter, though, is that any new lives saved do not replace those who were murdered. It is an exercise in futility.

Then, I pursued replacing destruction with creation. For a time this provided a distraction, but it could not last. The fact is that any kind of ordinary life is an insult to those who died at my hand. How can I possibly go around like everyone else while the widows and orphans I created continue to struggle? If they could see me sitting here in suburbia, in my comfortable home working on some music project they would be outraged, and rightfully so.
I thought perhaps I could make some headway with this film project, maybe even directly appealing to those I had wronged and exposing a greater truth, but that is also now being taken away from me. I fear that, just as with everything else that requires the involvement of people who can not understand by virtue of never having been there, it is going to fall apart as careers get in the way.

The last thought that has occurred to me is one of some kind of final mission. It is true that I have found that I am capable of finding some kind of reprieve by doing things that are worthwhile on the scale of life and death. While it is a nice thought to consider doing some good with my skills, experience, and killer instinct, the truth is that it isn’t realistic. First, there are the logistics of financing and equipping my own operation, then there is the near certainty of a grisly death, international incidents, and being branded a terrorist in the media that would follow. What is really stopping me, though, is that I simply am too sick to be effective in the field anymore. That, too, has been taken from me.
Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. Abandoned by those who would take the easy route, and a liability to those who stick it out—and thus deserve better. So you see, not only am I better off dead, but the world is better without me in it.

This is what brought me to my actual final mission. Not suicide, but a mercy killing. I know how to kill, and I know how to do it so that there is no pain whatsoever. It was quick, and I did not suffer. And above all, now I am free. I feel no more pain. I have no more nightmares or flashbacks or hallucinations. I am no longer constantly depressed or afraid or worried
I am free.

I ask that you be happy for me for that. It is perhaps the best break I could have hoped for. Please accept this and be glad for me.



Paul Joseph Watson

Dutch veterans in trouble are finally compensated

Hundreds of Dutch militairy veterans who served outside The Netherlands -for example for UN peacekeeping operations- & who are physically and/or mentally  [ptsd]  wounded received in october 2012 a significant financial compensation for their disablement & loss of income due to this.

 

 After 8 years of fun&games between the veterans' lawyers & the Dutch DOD the latter decided not to go to court but to pay each veteran an amount of taxfree cash according to the percentage of woundedness.

In example: a wounded veteran who has 50% of any war-related disablement/injury receives €65.000 & another few hundred € disablementpension  monthly.

Now we can put that war also behind us, finally.

Also positive to mention is  that the DOD's care by the veteransinstitute & de basis are constantly improving their help for veterans in trouble of any kind.

In my case that resulted -years ago- in intervening in the situation with help to find a good psychologist & psychotherapist, communications with my [former] employer, solving my 'funny' living situation and help with financial problems. I don't really like to admit it now but in that period I couldn't even function for 50% in all facets of life at that time. These things have changed my quality of life radically to the positive.

Something less positive is that right before this DOD's decision they changed the parameters of the examinationtests for troubled veterans with as result that most veterans dropped on their disablementpercentage mostly significant. A doctor told me this personally they had to do this. 
As if someone knew upfront that this could save the DOD a lot of money. Millions of euro's that is.

For those veterans who experience the following symptoms I can offer for free some easy 2 page  do-it-yourself tips how to handle -or even better- to get totally rid of ptsd:

- Communication & or obediance trouble at work or @ home, even getting fired/divorced.

- Financial trouble.

- Less & less need for social contacts.

- Headaches & sleepingproblems.

- Very tired & low on energy.

- Alcohol & or drugsuse/abuse.

- When hearing certain sounds like a jet fighter or firecrackers going off or smelling something 'funny' an instant reliving of past grim nasty events.

- Short fuse or even agressiveness.

- When someone points out to you that you might have ptsd, responding in denial at first.

There might be more but these were mine, all of them. And these 'adventures'  kept me in a loop almost impossible to escape from as it seemed at that time.
Remember to seek always professional help for physical or mental problems.

The selfhelp tips are written by Drake Bailey who served a tour in Vietnam with the rank of Corporal. 
A very special thanks to him!

(In The Netherlands this is named EMDR-therapy to my experience)

No one saves us but ourselves

No one can and no one may

We ourselves must walk the path

Buddha

Other posts from Boddhi:

People Worldwide claim their Sovereignty [updated, thanks to Beatrix stepping down]

How big is your world?

What a strange planet [email to my homeplanet]