Defense Department Releases Mental Health Assessment Findings
Click above to watch a video of the briefing.
liz | 3:57 PM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
The thing that bothers me about these type of military press release (read: propaganda) is that they give all the people without first hand knowledge of what the reality is this fuzzy feel good delusion that finally they’re making things OK.
There is not one mention of the Navy and Air Force. Yet thousands of members of those two branches are being sent in to do Army jobs, right there in the thick of battle. And most of them are going into it with little or no training for the stiuation or conditions they are about to spend 6 months to a year dealing with.
The majority of the VA facilities in the US are still not up to snuff in properly screening and treating 2 of the most prevalent injuries from this invasion: head injuries and PTSD.
I get very upset about this topic. I have family members that have been there and have experienced a horrific time getting the medical care they not only deserve but that was promised to them. And everytime they encounter problems it is blamed on “budget”. I could just scream!
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