This video from the USA is called Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health chief, tried to cover up rising number of veteran suicides.
By Naomi Spencer:
US: Veteran turned away from military hospital commits suicide
28 July 2008
On July 7, a Navy veteran suffering from psychological problems hanged himself after being turned away from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Spokane, Washington. A July 20 report by the Spokesman-Review notes that the death of Lucas Senescall was the sixth suicide this year of veterans under care of the Spokane Veterans Administration (VA).
In spite of lawsuits, legislation and countless pledges from officials for improved care, thousands of US veterans who return from occupied Iraq and Afghanistan bearing profound mental trauma continue to be denied adequate treatment. According to data from the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, the VA is currently treating 325,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, including nearly 134,000 for mental health problems.
One in four veterans wait for over a month to see a VA doctor, and the average waiting period for disability payments is six months, VA and Veterans Benefits Administration data suggest.
By Barbara Ehrenreich in the USA:
The Suicide Solution
…
Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock‘s brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. “All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once,” Scurlock told a gathering of the National Assocition of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in 2007. According to the Los Angeles Times, lawyers in the audience backed him up, “describing clients who showed up at their offices with cyanide, or threatened, ‘If you don’t help me, I’ve got a gun in my car.'”
This Iraq vet was killed in a SWAT shootout after his local VA delayed his health care for over six months.
NYT: ‘SMALLER MILITARY HOSPITALS PUT PATIENTS AT RISK’ “These small and underused hospitals are the focus of an evolving Pentagon plan to scale back the system — entirely separate from the scandal-plagued veterans health system — by converting some of them into either outpatient clinics or birthing centers. The downsizing plan has not been made public, but Winn was among the hospitals listed in a draft distributed internally last spring and obtained by The Times.” This graphic details complication rates at each of the hospitals. [NYT]
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Advocates Seek Aid For Homeless Female Veterans
By ANN MARIE SOMMA | Courant Staff Writer
July 27, 2008
CAROLINE CONTRERAS was sexually assaulted 20 years ago by fellow servicemen while she was at Fort Dix, N.J. She says the incident led to a downward spiral into substance abuse and eventually homelessness. When she reached out to the VA, she says, no housing was available for her. (SHANA SURECK / HARTFORD COURANT / June 10, 2008)
Caroline Contreras says a rape at Fort Dix, N.J., 20 years ago derailed her military career and sent her on an inexorable path of addiction and homelessness.
But what the 48-year-old veteran says she remembers most painfully is how her government let her down when she finally sought help.
Last year, Contreras showed up at the U.S. Veterans Administration facility in West Haven homeless and ready to sober up and deal with the trauma of the sexual assault by fellow servicemen.
She completed the VA’s substance abuse treatment program, restored her self-worth after working with a therapist and shed her destructive coping skills. When she was ready to leave the program to rebuild her life, the VA had no place to send her.
Women-only shelter beds in the state were full. Transitional housing wasn’t available. The best the VA could offer her was a bus ticket to a shelter in Massachusetts.
“It brought me back to the way I felt when I was raped,” Contreras said. “I was insignificant. I wasn’t worthy. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the respect of a male veteran.”
Every day, female veterans who are homeless in the state confront barriers in a VA system where services and housing options for women lag in comparison to their male counterparts.
Veteran advocates say the VA needs to address the national disparity as 200,000 female veterans return home from Iraq and Afghanistan, many with combat-related stress and military sexual trauma — risk factors for homelessness.
“Folks are surprised when you tell them about homeless female veterans. You typically don’t think of women as veterans, nevermind homeless veterans, but it’s a real problem that is starting to get attention,” said Natalie Matthews, director of policy and information at CT Coalition to End Homelessness.
There are an estimated 8,000 homeless female veterans nationwide. Veterans advocates say women account for about 4 percent of the total homeless veteran population, meaning about 200 of the estimated 5,000 homeless vets in Connecticut are women.
Of the 550 transitional housing programs for male veterans in the country, only 300 can accept women, said Pete Dougherty, the director of homeless veterans programs at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The VA recognizes the problem and is making available more grants outside the VA system to develop more transitional and supportive housing programs for homeless women veterans, Dougherty said.
“We need more programs for women veterans and the VA has identified women as a priority for funding,” Dougherty said.
Federal lawmakers have awoken to the problem.
Several bills introduced in Congress include development of affordable housing for female veterans and linking the VA with the Department of Defense to identify returning soldiers who are at risk for homelessness.
But even as the wheels of government begin to slowly turn, homeless women veterans in Connecticut continue to struggle to find accommodations.
Joy Kiss, who runs Home For the Brave in Bridgeport, turns away women veterans looking for a room in the all male, 33-bed transitional home.
“There is no place to refer them to in Connecticut. I know there is housing in Massachusetts,” said Kiss, who has plans to open some type of supportive housing for women in Bridgeport.
At Columbus House in New Haven, a community-based transitional housing unit for 12 men and eight women, the turnover rate for beds is slow.
Residents stay on average a year, getting the skills and counseling they need while waiting for a housing voucher to move into their own apartments.
“There are waiting lists for transitional housing because things move at a snail’s place as people wait to move on to permanent housing,” said Alison Cunningham, the director of Columbus House.
“A woman is going to have a harder time whether she is a veteran or not, and I anticipate this is going to get worse before it gets better,” she said.
At the state veterans home in Rocky Hill, where male veterans live in dormitory-style barracks, there is room for about only 20 women in a separate, secure wing. The home cannot take in women with children, said Linda Schwartz, the state commissioner of veterans affairs.
“During my military service, we weren’t allowed to have children and be in the military. Now 70 percent of women veterans have children and we need to address the issue,” said Schwartz, who served in Vietnam as a combat nurse.
Schwartz said the state has paid to house women veterans with children who sought help at the home. She is looking to convert vacant homes on the Rocky Hill campus into transitional housing.
“It’s only going to grow,” Schwartz said. “People don’t realize that when people come home from war or out of the military, it’s a big adjustment and some don’t hit the ground running.”
Establishing Support
The plunge to homeless becomes harder to stop when the individual’s support system collapses.
For Gladys Twarkins, an Air Force veteran of the Iraq War, it was triggered by the loss of her East Hartford home to a real estate scam and an injury during an air raid in southern Iraq. She slept in her car when she returned to Connecticut in 2005. Now she sleeps on her ex-husband’s couch.
Shortly after she returned from Iraq, she told a clinician at the Newington VA that it was getting too cold to sleep in her car and that she needed a room temporarily.
“I asked her if she could get me in [the veterans home in Rocky Hill]; she gave me an application,” said Twarkins, 53. She never filled out the application.
Air Force veteran Nissa LaPoint says a sexual assault at the Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts disconnected her from her support system and she became homeless.
In 2006, LaPoint, 33, was sleeping in her car at a rest stop on I-395 when she called then-Congressman Rob Simmons for help. The blankets she had wrapped around her were frozen to the window. Simmons, a decorated Vietnam veteran, sent an aide to her rescue. She eventually found housing with the help of John March, a state service officer for the American Legion.
“I got off active duty and they pretty much sent me on my way,” LaPoint said. “When I joined, the recruiter told me the Air Force was a better way of life. I took that opportunity. He also told me the VA would always have a place to stay, a roof over my head.”
For Johanna Montalvo, who joined the National Guard in Puerto Rico, her descent was touched off by drugs and the death of her father. She lives at the Friendship Center shelter in New Britain in rooms segregated from homeless men. She wants to move to a shelter or transitional housing closer to the VA in West Haven, where she attends counseling sessions.
“There are a lot of us out there and the VA doesn’t know what’s going on,” said Montalvo, 35. “We could be out in the streets, in crack houses, corners of prostitution, and we’ll find female veterans.”
Kate Kelly, who works with women veterans for the Connecticut VA, said it took her six months to secure a housing voucher for a female veteran with three children living in a shelter.
Yet she doesn’t think women veterans are being shortchanged.
“They have the same opportunities as women in the general population. The reality is that it is going to be tough either way if you are male or female veteran,” Kelly said.
Finding Success
Ultimately, Contreras did not board the bus to a shelter in Massachusetts. She ended upinsteadat the Beth-El Center, a shelter in New Milford, where she stayed until she received a housing voucher.
Today, she lives in an apartment in West Haven and returns to Beth-El every week to work as a residential counselor. She’s become an advocate for women veterans, speaking out against the lack of housing in the state. She’s spoken to groups in Washington, D.C., and community events in the state. Her goal is to see transitional housing for women veterans built in the state.
“It’s an awful feeling when you’ve made up your mind to rebuild your life and you have nowhere to go,” Contreras said.
Contact Ann Marie Somma at asomma@courant.com.
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-femalevets0727.artjul27,0,2506691.story?track=rss
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[Sorry, this comment had been stopped by ultra zealous anti spam software. I am restoring it here]
Email : smallrevolution@peoplepc.com
Author : MC Kean
URL : http://www.patrickdodd.com
Body:
Not only are women not provided the mental health care they need to deal with MST, but the V.A.M.C.s do not respect women\’s request for female only care providers during intimate procedures and while under anesthesia. Women suffer medical rape in the form of exams and procedures being performed by male students, residents, fellows, and other trainees, against their will and knowledge. Then after they are so disrespected and violated by medical rape they are left in the care of men while still under anesthesia where they may well be violated again. 60% of men report that they will rape if they know they can get away with the crime, that no one will know, yet no security is provided to protect women under anesthesia from such violations, in fact medical staff encourages such abuse when they disrespect our autonomy and violate our rights to exclude males when we are sedated or having intimate exams/procedures.
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POLICE VIOLENCE: NYPD COP SHOWN CLUBBING CUFFED VET, TAKING CALL, THEN GOING ON THE ATTACK AGAIN
Harvin said he told the cop he served 3 1/2 years in the 101st Airborne Division, including six months in Iraq. . . . It didn’t matter to him. He said I was a disgrace.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/07/30/2008-07-30_cop_shown_clubbing_cuffed_vet_taking_cal-1.html
VETS: BANK WON’T PAY DEATH BENEFITS
Just days after their son was killed by a Taliban rocket while serving in Afghanistan, Steve and Joy Retmier went to Downey Savings and Loan in Hemet to deposit two government bereavement checks to help pay for his funeral. But once inside, they said, a teller put a hold on the checks for 10 days until they could be authenticated. The funeral was in five days.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-me-retmier1-2008aug01,0,3748409.story
GI RESISTANCE
HIS FATHER’S HERO
“I think my son is a hero,” Erich continued. “There are many Iraqis who were not killed because of what he did, and many GIs whose lives were saved because of it. He made a tremendous service to his country by standing up and bearing witness to the ‘bait-and-kill’ war crimes.”
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/military_resister_0731/
WHY HE RAN
“I’d be willing to go to prison because I know I did the right thing, and I can sleep at night and my conscience is still good.”
http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A315781
ACTIVISTS WANT PORTLAND TO BE A SANCTUARY FOR AWOL SOLDIERS
15,000 servicemen and -women are AWOL.
http://wweek.com/editorial/3437/11296/
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WHY THEY SPEAK OUT
[B]ecause of what they’ve experienced, they believe staying silent would make them complicit in a war that has killed some 4,100 U.S. soldiers and as many as 1.2 million Iraqis.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080731/NEWS/807310340
ANTIWAR MOVEMENT
STOP WAR ON IRAN: AUGUST 2 MASS MARCH IN NYC
Assemble 12 p.m. at Times Square
http://stopwaroniran.org/aug2.shtml
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(CHICAGO) — National Guard and Reserve combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to develop drinking problems than active-duty soldiers, a new military study suggests. The authors speculate that inadequate preparation for the stress of combat and reduced access to support services at home may be to blame.
The study, appearing in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first to compare Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ alcohol problems before and after deployment.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1832093,00.html
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hi
get me posting
tell about you
potar erik
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Hi potar erik, what is your comment on the blog post which started this thread?
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Every veteran suicide is a “mission accomplished” for the U.S. Government.
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I read some of your posts and I enjoyed reading them. Thank you for sharing. I’ll keep on visiting your blog and hope to read more topics and informations!
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