Exposing The Truth

Report: Half of All Americans to be Diagnosed with Mental Health Problems

December 15, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

According to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness during their lifetime. Published on Sept. 2 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the report highlights the diagnosis crisis that is currently ongoing in the United States and elsewhere.

The monetary empire of antispsychotics became obnoxiously apparently in 2008, becoming the top-selling therapeutic class prescription drug in the United States and grossing over $14 billion in sales. Surpassing even pharmaceuticals used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux, antipsychotics quickly became the most profitable pill to push on patients. Even more disturbing, is the health-damaging effects of the pharmaceuticals given to mental health patients, often leading to side effects that are far worse than the original symptoms.

In 2005, it was found that link between Prozac and suicidal behavior was kept a secret. The BBC even reported in as early as the year 2000 that Prozac ‘led to suicide’. Oftentimes killers will end their own lives after shootings, or attempt to force the cops to kill them. This is essentially a form of suicide with a mixture of murderous tendencies. If Prozac can drive someone to suicide, could it also drive someone to end someone else’s life? Paxil, an anti-depressant drug, was found to be linked to violent behavior in 2006. The link incited multiple lawsuits, and brings up questions as to whether or not similar drugs have the same effects. Anti-depressants have horrible side effects, but about the even more hardcore drugs, such as the drugs that many of the other killers were taking?

Nearly every shooter in recent times has been loaded up on harmful pharmaceuticals, arguably driving them to commit the horrendous acts that they have become known for. Loughner is most likely no exception. With children worldwide, particularly in foster homes, being dosed up with insane amounts of psychotropic drugs, it is a large concern. Prozac has even been found in the drinking water. Taking pharmaceuticals that lead to extreme thoughts of suicide and violent behavior is a recipe for disaster.

Source: https://naturalsociety.com/report-half-of-all-americans-to-be-diagnosed-with-mental-health-problems/

Filed Under: Big Pharma, Drugs, Health, Medical Industry, Mental Illness, Suicide

Four Ways to Improve Mental Health and Clarity

December 15, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

By Anthony Gucciardi

Half of all United States citizens will be diagnosed with a mental illness within their lifetime, and chances are that their doctor will prescribe them a pharmaceutical to ‘treat’ the condition. Of course the antipsychotic or anti-depressant drugs that the doctor prescribes can ultimately lead to suicidal thoughts, type 2 diabetes, and an overall shortened lifespan. In addition, new research has shown that your mental health is actually influenced by your gut health.

The role of bacteria in your gut goes way beyond the stomach and intestines, majorly affecting the state of your brain. A disruption in natural gut bacteria can easily result in symptoms of mental illness, as research has shown using lab mice. Changes in the normal gut flora of the mice led to both behavioral and cognitive changes, making them less timid and more adventurous. Very similar to the symptoms of ADHD, where children start to misbehave seemingly-abruptly.

“It may be that those changes in gut bacteria not only contribute to the generation of gut symptoms, like diarrhea or pain, but may also contribute to this altered behavior that we see in those patients,” said researcher Stephen Collins.

So how can you restore and maintain your gut health to ensure that you have optimum mental health and clarity?

1. Eliminate or severely limit sugar consumption

Inflammation is the most common cause of poor digestion and overall gut health. Sugar is a leading cause of inflammation, with the average American consuming 100 grams of sugar each day in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. Of course, 50% of high fructose corn syrup has also been found to contain toxic mercury, which will wreak havoc on your body. Sugar will also feed the yeast and bad bacteria in the intestinal tract, leading to an imbalance between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of gut bacteria. When you have too much ‘bad’ bacteria, digestive conditions arise.

Limit your sugar consumption to 16 grams per day or less and watch your gut health drastically improve along with your mental health and clarity.

2. Eat probiotic rich foods or take a powerful probiotic supplement

In order to restore the balance of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bacteria, you need to replenish your good bacteria through the intake of probiotics. This can be done through natural foods or high quality supplementation, though you may consuming such foods to be a challenge. Fermented food items such as sauerkraut, tempeh, miso or kefir are all rich sources of probiotic bacteria. There are countless probiotic supplements out there, but most either contain toxic fillers or do not even reach the gut due to improper capsule production. I personally take and recommend Latero-Flora, it’s free of fillers and will make it through the stomach acid into the gut.

3. Chew your food

Not only does properly chewing your food lead to fat loss, but it can also help to preserve and restore your gut health. Chewing your food until it is nearly a liquid will allow your digestive system to work less, and won’t leave undigested pieces of food to float around your digestive tract.

4. Cleanse your colon

By age 40, the average person has an estimated 10 to 20 pounds of compacted fecal matter stuck in their intestinal tract. This is a result of undigested food buildup, mostly from dairy and meat products. Left to rot, the compacted matter often compromises the health of the colon, which severely hinders your ability to fight off disease. As a result, an unhealthy digestive system is often impacted with mucus, toxins, and unwanted waste. This can trigger conditions such as:

Bloating
Weight problems
Mood swings
Constipation
Back Pain
Headaches

The most effective way of eliminating this buildup is through cleansing the colon without the use of harsh laxatives. Many colon cleansers use extremely powerful laxatives to simply eliminate the contents of your stomach, but this does almost nothing. An oxygen-based colon cleanser is a very effective way to eliminate toxic buildup from your colon and subsequently restore gut health.

Source: https://naturalsociety.com/4-ways-to-improve-mental-health-and-clarity/

Filed Under: Food, Health, Mental Illness

Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Crops Leading to Mental Illness, Obesity

December 15, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

By Mike Barrett

It seems that the good bacteria found in your gut may actually be destroyed with every bite of certain food that you eat.

While antibiotics typically hold first prize in depleting the body’s gut flora levels, there may be a new culprit looking to take the spotlight which you may know as genetically modified food.

Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Crops Leading to Decreased Gut Flora

A formula seems to have been made to not only ruin the agricultural system, but also compromise the health of millions of people worldwide.

With the advent of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops, resistant superweeds are taking over farmland and public health is being attacked. These genetically engineered crops are created to withstand large amounts of Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide, Roundup. As it turns out, glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is actually leaving behind its residue on Roundup Ready crops, causing further potential concern for public health.

According to Dr. Don Huber, an expert in certain science fields relating to genetically modified foods, the amount of good bacteria in the gut decreases with the consumption of GMO foods. But this outcome is actually due to the residual glyphosate in animal feed and food.

Dr. Huber states that glyphosate residues in genetically engineered plants are responsible for a significant reduction in mineral content, causing people to be highly susceptible to pathogens.

Although studies have previously found that the beneficial bacteria in animals is destroyed thanks to glyphosate, a stronger connection will need to be made regarding human health for this kind of information to stick.

Poor Gut Flora Means Poor Health

As awareness grows, more and more people are realizing that poor gut flora often means poor health. Without the proper ratio of good bacteria to bad bacteria, overall health suffers and you could be left feeling depressed. In fact, poor gut health has been directly tied to mental illness, which may explain the influx of people being diagnosed with a mental illness. Not only that, but obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome have all been tied to poor gut health.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/monsantos-roundup-ready-crops-leading.html

Filed Under: America, Biotechnology, Food, Health, Mental Illness, Monsanto Tagged With: GMO, Obesity

With Traumatic Brain Injuries, Soldiers Face Battle For Care

December 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER and DANIEL ZWERDLING

At the rapidly expanding base in Fort Bliss, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, the military is racing to build new homes for 10,000 additional soldiers. Cranes stack prefabricated containers like children’s blocks to erect barracks overnight. Bulldozers grind sagebrush desert into roads and runways.

Just down the street from the construction boom squats a tan, featureless building about the size of a convenience store. Completed nearly a year ago, it remains unopened, the doors locked.

Building 805 was supposed to house a clinic for traumatic brain injury, often called the signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, it has become a symbol for soldiers here of what they call commanders’ indifference to their problems.

“The system here has no mercy,” said Sgt. Victor Medina, a decorated combat veteran who fought to receive treatment at Fort Bliss after suffering a brain injury during a roadside blast in Iraq last June. Since the explosion, Medina has had trouble reading, comprehending and doing simple tasks. “It’s struggle after struggle.”

Previously, NPR and ProPublica reported that the military has failed to diagnose brain injuries in troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mild traumatic brain injuries, which doctors also call concussions, do not leave visible scars but can cause lasting mental and physical problems.

At Fort Bliss, we found that even soldiers who are diagnosed with such injuries often do not receive the treatment they need.

Most specialists say it is critical for patients who show lingering effects from head trauma to get intensive therapy as soon as possible. In the civilian world, such therapy is increasingly seen as the best way to minimize permanent damage, helping to retrain the mind to compensate for deficits.

Yet brain-injured soldiers at Fort Bliss have had to wait weeks and sometimes months just to get appointments with doctors, medical records show. Many have received far less therapy than is typical at well-regarded civilian clinics. In some instances, Fort Bliss medical officers have suggested that the soldiers are malingerers or that the main root of their cognitive problems is psychological.

Getting Care For Traumatic Brain Injury

“Here you have all these soldiers looking for help, and it was just getting swept under the carpet,” said Sgt. Brandon Sanford, 28, a dog handler who survived two roadside blasts in Iraq. Sanford endured a year of balance problems and mental fog before Fort Bliss officials sent him for cognitive therapy. “I served my country. I’ve got an injury to prove it.”

It is impossible for civilians to know how Fort Bliss’ care for brain-injured soldiers compares in quality or scale to that of other bases. Base officials would not give NPR and ProPublica data on how many soldiers are being treated there and the Pentagon would not provide this information for bases elsewhere.

Fort Bliss — the third-largest base in the U.S. military and a vital nerve center for deploying and returning troops — is supposed to be among the best. In 2007, the Pentagon designated it as one of 20 bases nationally that would develop augmented treatment programs for traumatic brain injury.

Yet while base commanders have spent more than $3 billion to expand and improve Fort Bliss over the past several years, they have directed just $5 million to facilities and clinicians to treat TBI. The program had no full-time director until October 2009. A neuropsychologist was hired only recently, after a two-year search.

Fort Bliss’ commander, Maj. Gen. Howard Bromberg, declined repeated requests for an interview. Col. James Baunchalk, the base hospital’s commander, acknowledged that the TBI program had encountered some delays, but said that it now had 12 clinicians — four full-time and eight part-time — who were delivering comprehensive care.

“I honestly believe that we’ve done a good job of meeting the needs for the community,” Baunchalk said.

He promised in April that Building 805 would open by the end of May, saying they were just waiting until computer cabling was installed.

Apparently, they missed their deadline. As of early June, the clinic to screen soldiers for traumatic brain injury had not opened its doors to a single patient.

The Soldiers

Traumatic brain injuries are among the most common wounds sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shock waves from bombs can pass through helmets and through the brain. Secondary trauma can occur when soldiers are thrown up against vehicles or walls, shaking the brain again.

Officially, the military says about 150,000 soldiers have suffered some form of brain injury since the wars began. But a 2008 Rand study suggests the toll is much higher, perhaps more than 400,000 troops. The most common type are so-called mild traumatic brain injuries. Most people recover quickly from such injuries, but studies have shown between 5 percent and 15 percent of patients may suffer long-term problems.

NPR and ProPublica interviewed more than a dozen soldiers at Fort Bliss who are among that so-called miserable minority. All were diagnosed by military doctors with at least one mild traumatic brain injury. All had persistent symptoms, ranging from headaches and vertigo to difficulties with memory and reasoning.

They described the bewildering ways in which their injuries had changed them. A sergeant who once commanded 60 men in battle got lost in a supermarket. A soldier who once plotted sniper attacks could no longer assemble a bird house. Most of them did not want their names used, for fear of harm to their military careers.

All felt the treatment they received was inadequate. At leading neurocognitive rehabilitation centers, some patients with mild traumatic brain injury often receive three to six hours a day of therapy for months from teams of highly trained specialists.

By contrast, many soldiers at Fort Bliss attended two to four hours of cognitive treatment per week. For some soldiers, weeks passed by with little or no treatment. The therapists who provided the soldier with speech and occupational therapy for their brain injuries sometimes had only minimal training in cognitive rehabilitation, records show.

Staffing shortfalls also meant soldier had long waits before beginning rehabilitative therapies. While clinical research is still developing, the consensus recommendation of a group of military and civilian experts convened by the Pentagon last year was to provide rehabilitation therapy as promptly as possible.

“The longer you go without therapy, the greater likelihood there is of falling into what I would call a mental disuse syndrome, where the brain is not being used at the same level,” said Keith Cicerone, a leading rehabilitation researcher and the director of neuropsychology at the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey. The brain “is in essence going to develop bad habits.”

Sgt. Raymond Hisey, 32, a convoy driver in the 1st Armored Division, survived a roadside blast in Iraq in July 2009. He remained in the field, but endured constant headaches and balance problems. His short-term memory suffered and he struggled to think of words to express himself.

When he returned to Fort Bliss in October, he was diagnosed as having suffered a mild traumatic brain injury and was prescribed several courses of therapy. But a speech therapist cancelled several appointments, he said, and he clashed with the occupational therapist. Hisey was suddenly left without any treatment at all for his symptoms.

“You just get lost in the system,” he said. “I could have pushed more, sure. But people kept saying it gets better over time. I thought I was just losing my damn mind, to be honest with you.”

Fort Bliss is supposed to provide treatment to troops at smaller bases in the surrounding area. But one such soldier who developed headaches and balance problems after working on a mining detail in Afghanistan was told that no therapists could make regular trips to see him. Instead, the soldier, whose base was about an hour away from Ft. Bliss, was given antidepressants, which he did not take. He recently deployed for a second tour.

“As much as the military is making of TBI and the effects it’s having on the soldiers and their families, I think for something as big as Fort Bliss, there’d be more people” to treat it, said the soldier, a specialist who did not want his name used for fear of damaging his career. “I was told there were no resources, no facilities.”

Baunchalk, the hospital commander, said he had never heard such complaints from soldiers or their spouses. Soldiers were often reluctant to seek care, he said, because they perceived a stigma attached to traumatic brain injury.

“It’s tough for them to step forward and say … I need some help,” he said. “I don’t think we have that many soldiers who have fallen through the cracks.”

Several soldiers told NPR and ProPublica, however, that they and their families had reached out to base commanders, sent e-mails to generals throughout the Pentagon, and even written to members of Congress, pleading for care.

When their efforts proved futile, they felt abandoned. Nobody paid attention, they said, to a soldier with an injury that nobody could see.

“No one listens to the soldier,” said Sgt. William Fraas, an 18-year military veteran and Bronze Star recipient who struggled for nearly two years to get help for problems with his balance and vision. “They are there and they are crying for help.”

The Neurologist

Fort Bliss soldiers struggling with the effects of brain injuries were often sent to Capt. Brett Theeler, the base’s sole neurologist. Theeler, records show, sometimes blamed psychological disorders rather than blast wounds as the likely source of soldiers’ cognitive problems.

Sgt. Victor Medina suffered brain damage when an IED hit his truck in Iraq. Even after he was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, he found he had to fight to get adequate care.

A convoy commander in the 121st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, Sgt. Victor Medina can see the moment he suffered his invisible injury. He was rumbling down a highway in southern Iraq June 2009 in a convoy of fuel, ammunition and supplies. Just behind him, in another armored troop carrier, one of Medina’s soldiers was videotaping. Suddenly, the screen shakes. Black smoke jets into the air. Noise, swearing, confusion erupts.

A roadside bomb had exploded directly beside Medina. Metal slag ripped through his vehicle’s heavy armor, destroying radio equipment and blowing open Medina’s door.

Outwardly, Medina did not appear seriously injured. But in the weeks and months that followed, his mind began to fail him. He slurred his words, then started stuttering. An avid reader, he struggled to get through a single page. A punctilious soldier, he began showing up late for missions.

Medina was sent to Germany in August, where Army doctors diagnosed him as suffering from a traumatic brain injury. But when he returned to Fort Bliss for treatment, he and his wife, Roxana, found themselves fighting for care.

Medina had his first appointment with Theeler a month after his return to Ft. Bliss. Afterwards, Theeler wrote that Medina had “multiple cognitive symptoms including poor concentration, short-term memory loss, and difficulty multi-tasking.” Theeler said those symptoms were “possibly” related to lingering effects from his concussion, but were “likely” caused by “chronic headaches” and “anxiety.” He wrote that Medina’s stuttering was probably caused by anxiety, too.

After a follow-up session with Medina in December, Theeler wrote: “I am concerned that he may be slipping into a cycle of playing the sick role.” He pointed to the fact that Medina was using crutches — apparently unaware that a physical therapist had asked Medina to use the crutches because of back pain.

To Medina, 34, a tall, broad-chested man with an intense stare, Theeler’s words were insulting. Once praised by superiors for his leadership abilities, Medina worked relentlessly to overcome the staccato stutter that had made him difficult to understand. He was fighting to get better, fighting to remain in the Army. He said he felt was being labeled a liar.

“You have all these values that you live for and fight for. And you go to the medical side and you don’t see those values,” Medina said. “I can understand being injured by insurgents. But I can’t understand being injured by my own people.”

Other soldiers had similar experiences with Theeler.

By the time Spec. Ron Kapture got to Fort Bliss in July 2009, he had suffered six concussions in which he was knocked unconscious from blasts, according to medical records and his own recollections.

He was suffering headaches on a daily basis. He noticed that he could no longer do simple mental tasks. Before joining the Army, Kapture had gone to vocational school to learn cabinet making. After returning from Iraq, he struggled to put together a bird house with his son.

“It took us about a month,” said Kapture, 28. “I could build a whole living room full of furniture in a day seven years ago. It took me a month to build a bird house. That is frustrating stuff.”

Brandon Sanford performs balance exercises at Mentis while physical therapist watches

Brandon Sanford performs balance exercises at Mentis while physical therapist Tess Tiscareno watches.

Five months after his return, Kapture finally got an appointment to see Theeler after making repeated requests. Theeler noted that Kapture had a history of “mild concussions,” but blamed his cognitive problems on “chronic headaches, sleep disorder and underlying mood anxiety disorders and depressions,” records show.

Kapture received counseling and medication for post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, but his problems with memory and concentration persisted. He had planned to make the Army his career, but became so embittered at the handling of his care that he is applying for a medical dismissal.

“If that’s the best help they … can give us, then God help us all,” Kapture said. “If that’s the best they have to offer, I feel sorry for the guys coming home.”

In an interview at the base, Theeler declined to comment on individual cases, even in cases where soldiers had signed a waiver of their privacy rights. He said, more generally, that he understood why soldiers like Medina and Kapture were frustrated. Mild traumatic brain injury can be difficult to pinpoint as a cause for soldiers’ problems since there are no readily available biological markers to indicate that a concussion has occurred, he said.

Theeler said he concentrated on treating soldiers’ symptoms regardless of the cause.

Soldiers “say, ‘Sir, what’s wrong with me?’” Theeler said. “We’re honest. I say, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong.’ This is an area that we’re working very hard at to get our hands around . I don’t know the answers.”

The PTSD Clinic

Some doctors and soldiers at Fort Bliss said medical commanders have placed a higher priority on treating post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological condition, than on mild traumatic brain injury.

The recently completed Building 805 sits empty at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. It was supposed to house a clinic for traumatic brain injury. Instead, it has become a symbol for soldiers here of what they call commanders’ indifference to their problems.

As evidence, they point to the fate of two clinics. While Building 805 remains unopened, the base has poured money and effort into an experimental PTSD clinic that has attracted widespread attention within the military, including a visit from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Known as the Restoration and Resilience Center, the clinic offers intensive, six-month-long treatment for chronic PTSD sufferers, including controversial techniques such as reiki, in which practitioners hover their hands over patients’ bodies to improve the flow of “life energy,” according to a pamphlet distributed at the center.

Brain injuries and PTSD sometimes share common symptoms and co-exist in soldiers, brought on by the same terrifying events. Neuropsychologists said that treatments for the conditions can differ, however. A typical PTSD program, for instance, doesn’t provide cognitive rehabilitation therapy. Someone with nightmares associated with PTSD might be prescribed sleep medication, which could leave a brain-injured patient overly sedated without having a therapeutic effect.

One doctor at Ft. Bliss said that base commanders’ focus on the PTSD clinic resulted in soldiers not getting adequate treatment for brain injuries.

“The way our philosophy is in this hospital … we took away their belief that they truly have something,” said the doctor, who did not want his name used for fear of retaliation from commanders. “I don’t think we gave them the opportunity to heal and that’s what I find really disgusting.”

Some soldiers said they spent months receiving PTSD treatment while their cognitive problems went unaddressed.

A portrait of William Fraas in his room at Mentis in El Paso.

William Fraas is seen in his room at Mentis in El Paso. Fraas is a Bronze Star recipient who survived several roadside blasts in Iraq. He can no longer drive, or remember simple lists of jobs to do around the house.

Sgt. William Fraas, 38, the sergeant who was awarded the Bronze Star With Valor, served three tours in Iraq, helping to train the Iraqi soldiers as part of the 101st Airborne Division, 320th Field Artillery. He was given his medal after rescuing an Army major and six Iraqi soldiers pinned down by gunfire. Driving in his Humvee, he used to keep track of the roadside bombs with a black grease pencil on the windshield. After 10, he stopped counting.

When he was sent home to Fort Bliss in 2008, he was diagnosed with PTSD and entered the experimental clinic. He spent eight months there before being cleared to return to active duty.

But Fraas realized he was still having problems. He was constantly dizzy. He had debilitating headaches. He would call his wife when driving, so she could keep him oriented and awake.

He began having blackouts. Once, he awoke to find his 12-year-old son struggling to lift him after he collapsed in front of his home computer.

“They have these meetings for PTSD. But nowhere did they tell you anything about TBIs. We had no idea what was going on,” he said. “It feels like my head is loose. Like my brain is loose. Like it’s rattling inside my head.”

William Fraas in Baghdad in 2006 on his second of three tours of duty in Iraq.

Courtesy of William FraasWilliam Fraas is seen in Baghdad in 2006 on his second of three tours of duty in Iraq. The photo was taken outside the Italian Embassy after the Italians invited U.S. troops over for pizza.

Finally, last summer, Fort Bliss doctors sent him to see a physical therapist at the base to improve his balance. But the appointments were irregular. And with his inability to drive, he had trouble getting around the sprawling base. A case manager who was supposed to coordinate his care asked one of Fraas’ friends if he was faking it. A second case manager never even contacted him.

After putting nearly 20 years into the military, he was stunned.

“I could not get help. I called and called and called. I was hurting,” he said. “It was just terrible. I’m a senior non-commissioned officer and I couldn’t get help. I couldn’t help anywhere.”

Mentis

Some Fort Bliss soldiers have discovered that if they protest long and loud enough about their care, base commanders occasionally will pay to send them for help — outside the military.

On a hot afternoon earlier this spring, Sgt. Brandon Sanford was digging a small trench in the black soil of a rose garden at Mentis, a private neurological rehabilitation facility perched on the mountains just outside of El Paso.

He was installing an irrigation drip line as part of a therapy program designed to help him follow instructions. He set in one line, then covered up the trench. Then, looking down, he suddenly realized that he had failed to install the second drip line he was holding in his hand.

It was a typical problem for a brain-injury patient. Concentration deficits can make even simple tasks complex and confusing. Sanford immediately began pulling up the first line, digging again.

“That can be frustrating,” the therapist overseeing the exercise said sympathetically.

“Never,” said Sanford cheerfully. “I ate my Wheaties this morning.”

Almost two years ago to the day, Sanford, a dog handler working with the 4th Infantry Division, was inside his Stryker troop carrier near Taji in central Iraq when a bomb exploded. The blast sent Sanford and his dog, Rexo, hurtling against the walls. Both were awarded the Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds they received in the explosion. Although dazed, Sanford shrugged off the headaches and dizziness he experienced and continued working.

When Sanford returned to Fort Bliss in January 2009, he began having seizures, along with continued headaches and balance problems. He saw the base neurologist, Theeler, who diagnosed him as having “shaking syndrome,” medical records show.

He entered the PTSD clinic, received counseling and was released, but was still so mentally foggy he couldn’t understand his 10-year-old son’s math homework. His wife would open the cupboard where they kept cleaning supplies and find that her husband had put the milk carton next to the bleach. Sanford’s wife and mother badgered military commanders unrelentingly until, nearly a year after his return from Iraq, they finally sent him to Mentis.

There, Sanford is an in-patient: he spends eight hours a day, five days a week, on rehabilitation exercises. He goes on weekly outings to help him navigate the noise and confusion of public spaces, such as shopping malls. And he practices real-world tasks, like following cooking recipes — or laying out plans for a garden.

Today, Sanford said that he is able to finish making meals more quickly. He can now perform two tasks at once, instead of only one. He is getting better at managing his own medications and his balance has improved.

“You can only do so much sitting inside a hospital. It was like pulling teeth from a tiger to try to get in here. Once I got in here, it was like a whole new ray of light.”

Eric Spier, Mentis’ medical director, said he has asked the military to send him more patients. But base commanders have sent only a few dozen in almost three years.

“I’ve made sure to tell everyone I can tell that I’m ready to help, but that’s all I can do,” Spier said. The base has not sent “very many. It’s surprisingly few.”

Fraas and Medina now attend sessions at Mentis. They praised the facility, but expressed disappointment that they had had to go outside the Army to receive help.

Medina started in February. The staff at Mentis say his reading and concentration abilities are improving. His growing optimism is apparent in the blog he has started to chronicle his recovery.

“I might be slower right now, but I think it’s all going to get better and I want to go back to what I love doing, which is soldiering,” Medina said. “It’s what I love to do.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2010/06/09/127542820/with-traumatic-brain-injuries-soldiers-face-battle-for-care

Filed Under: America, Health, Mental Illness Tagged With: Injured, Soldiers, Treatment

‘Death And After In Iraq’

December 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Jess Goodell enlisted in the Marines immediately after she graduated from high school in 2001. She volunteered three years later to serve in the Marine Corps’ first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit, at Camp Al Taqaddum in Iraq. Her job, for eight months, was to collect and catalog the bodies and personal effects of dead Marines. She put the remains of young Marines in body bags and placed the bags in metal boxes. Before being shipped to Dover Air Force Base, the boxes were stored, often for days, in a refrigerated unit known as a “reefer.” The work she did was called “processing.”

“We went through everything,” she said when I reached her by phone in Buffalo, N.Y., where she is about to become a student in a Ph.D. program in counseling at the University of Buffalo. “We would get everything that the body had on it when the Marine died. Everyone had a copy of The Rules of Engagement in their left breast pocket. You found notes that people had written to each other. You found lists. Lists were common, the things they wanted to do when they got home or food they wanted to eat. The most difficult was pictures. Everyone had a picture of their wife or their kids or their family. And then you had the younger kids who might be 18 years old and they had prom pictures or pictures next to what I imagine were their first cars. Everyone had a spoon in their flak jacket. There were pens and trash and wrappers and MRE food. All of it would get sent back [to the Marines’ homes].

“We all had the idea that at any point this could be us on the table,” she said. “I think Marines thought that we went over there to die. And so people wrote letters saying ‘If I die I want you to know I love you.’ ‘I want my car to go to my younger brother.’ Things like that. They carried those letters on their bodies. We had a Marine that we processed and going through his wallet he had a picture of a sonogram of a fetus his wife had sent him. And a lot of Marines had tattooed their vital information under an armpit. It was called a meat tag.”

The unit processed about half a dozen suicides. The suicide notes, she said, almost always cited hazing. Women, she said, were constantly harassed, especially sexually, but it often did not match the systematic punishment and humiliation meted out to men who were deemed to be inadequate Marines.

She said that Marines who were overweight or unable to do the physical training were subjected to withering verbal and physical abuse. They were called “fat nasties” and “shit bags.”

The harassed Marines would be assigned to other individual Marines and become their slaves. They would be sent on punishing runs in which many of them vomited. They would be forced to bear-crawl—walk on all fours—the length of a football field and back. This would be followed by sets of monkey fuckers—bending down, grabbing the ankles, crouching down like a baseball catcher and then standing up again—followed by a series of other exercises that went on until the Marines collapsed.

“They make these Marines do what they call ‘bitch’ work,” Goodell said. “They are assigned to be someone else’s ‘bitch’ for the day. We had a guy in our platoon, not in Iraq but in California, and he was overweight. He was on remedial PT, which meant he went to extra physical training. When he came to work he was rotated. One day he was with this corporal or this sergeant. One day he was sent to me. I had him for an hour. I remember sending him outside and making him carry things. It was very common for them to dig a hole and fill it back up with sand or carry sandbags up to the top of a hill and then carry them down again.”

The unit was sent to collect the bodies of the Marines who killed themselves, usually by putting rifles under their chins and pulling the trigger.

“We had a Marine who was in a port-a-john when he blew his face off,” she said. “We had another Marine who shot himself through the neck. Often they would do it in the corner of a bunker or an abandoned building. We had a couple that did it in port-a-johns. We had to go in and peel and pull off chunks of flesh and brain tissue that had sprayed the walls. Those were the most frustrating bodies to get. On those bodies we were also on cleanup crew. It was gross. We sent the suicide notes home with the bodies.

“We had the paperwork to do fingerprinting, but we started getting bodies in which there weren’t any hands or we would get bodies that were just meat,” said Goodell, who in May will publish a memoir called “Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq.” The book title refers to the form that required those in the mortuary unit to shade in black the body parts that were missing from a corpse. “Very quickly it became irrelevant to have a fingerprinting page to fill out. By the time we would get a body it might have been a while and rigor mortis had already set in. Their hands were usually clenched as if they were still holding their rifle. We could not unbend the fingers easily.”

The unit was also sent to collect Marines killed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The members would arrive on the scene and don white plastic suits, gloves and face masks.

“One of the first convoys we went to was one where the Army had been traveling over a bridge and an IED had exploded,” she said. “It had literally shot a seven-ton truck over the side and down into a ravine. Marines were already going down into the ravine. We were just getting out of our vehicles. We were putting on our gloves and putting coverings over our boots. I was with a Marine named Pineda. I was coming around the Humvee and there was a spot on the ground that was a circle. I looked at it and thought something must have exploded here or near here. I went over to look at it. I looked in and saw a boot. Then I noticed the boot had a foot in it. I almost lost my lunch.

“In the seven-ton truck the [body of the] assistant driver, who was in the passenger seat, was trapped in the vehicle,” she said. “All of his body was in the vehicle. We had to crawl in there to get it out. It was charred. Pineda and I pulled the burnt upper torso from the truck. Then we removed a leg. Some of the remains had to be scooped up by putting out hands together as though we were cupping water. That was very common. A lot of the deaths were from IEDs or explosions. You might have an upper torso but you need to scoop the rest of the remains into a body bag. It was very common to have body bags that when you picked them up they would sink in the middle because they were filled with flesh. The contents did not resemble a human body.”

The members of the mortuary unit were shunned by the other Marines. The stench of dead flesh clung to their uniforms, hair, skin and fingers. Two members of the mortuary unit began to disintegrate psychologically. One began to take a box of Nyquil tablets every day and drink large quantities of cold medicine. He was eventually medevaced out of Iraq.

“Our cammies would be stained with blood or with brains,” she said. “When you scoop up the meat it often would get on the cuffs of our shirts. You could smell it, even after you took off your gloves. We weren’t washing our cammies everyday. Your cuff comes to your face when you eat. Physically we were stained with remains. We had a constant smell like rotten meat, which I guess is what it was since often the bodies had been in the sun and the heat for a long time. The flesh had gone bad. The skin on a body in the hot sun slides off. The skin detaches itself from the layer beneath and slides around on itself.

“Our platoon was to the Marines what the Marines are to much of America: We did things that had to be done but that no one wanted to know about,” she said. “The other Marines knew what we did, but they did not want to think it could happen to them. I had one female Marine in my tent who would talk to me. The rest would not give me the time of day. The Marines in Mortuary Affairs knew that any day could be our day. Other Marines, who have to go out on the convoys, who have to get up the next day, have to get on with life.”

Her unit once had to recover two Marines who had drowned in a lake. It appeared one had leapt in to save the other. The bodies, which were recovered after a couple of days by Navy divers, were grotesquely swollen. One of the Marines was so bloated and misshapened that the body was difficult to carry on a litter.

“His neck was as wide as his bloated head, and his stomach jutted out like a barrel,” she writes in the book. “His testicles were the size of cantaloupes. His face was white and puffy and thick. Not fat, but thick. It was unreal. He looked like a movie prop, with thick, gray, waxy skin and the thick purple lips. We couldn’t stop looking at these bodies because they were so out of proportion and so disfigured and because, still, they looked like us.”

It was hardest to look into the faces of the dead. She and the other members of the mortuary unit swiftly covered the faces when they worked on the bodies. They avoided looking at the eyes of the corpses.

Once, the unit had to process seven Marines killed in an explosion. Seven or eight body bags were delivered to the bunker.

“We had clean body bags set up so we could sort the flesh,” she said. “Sometimes things come in with nametags. Or sometimes one is Hispanic and you could tell who was Hispanic and who was the white guy. We tried separating flesh. It was ridiculous. We would open a body bag and there was nothing but vaporized flesh. There were not four hands or a whole leg in a bag. We tried to distribute the mush evenly throughout the bags. We were trying to do the best we could sorting it out. We had the last body bag come in. We opened up the body bag and it was filled with the heads. I looked at four before looking away. Not only did we have to look at them, we had to pick them up and figure out who it belonged to. The eyes were looking back at us. We got used to a lot of it. But the heads worked the other way. They affected us more strongly as time passed. We saw on the heads the expressions of fright and horror. It made us wonder what we were doing here.”

She processed one Marine whose face was twisted at the moment of death by rage. The face of this Marine began to haunt her.

“I had this feeling that something awful had occurred,” she said. “The way he had come in and stiffened he had this look to his face that made my stomach curl. It looked angry. Often expressions on bodies would look fearful and hurt. The faces looked as though they had received death. But this face looked like he had given death.”

She and the other members of the unit became convinced they could feel and hear the souls of the dead Marines they had processed and housed in their reefers.

And then there was a body that was brought in one day that was not stiff.

“He was fully dressed in his cammies and his whole body was intact,” she said. “His hands were lying folded across his stomach.”

She and the others noticed that the Marine on the table was breathing lightly. The chest was going up and down. They frantically called their superiors to find out what to do. They were told to wait.

“Just wait? Wait for what?” she cried.

She remembers the doc saying: “There’s nothing we can do. Just wait.”

“People don’t wait for this sort of thing,” she protested. “What are we waiting for? What if this Marine was your brother, would we wait?”

They stood and watched as the man died. Goodell stormed out of the bunker.

“There was always a heaviness in the air,” she said. “It felt like I was being watched. We would feel hands on our shoulders or hands on our heads. Everyone had stories of sounds they heard or things they had felt. I was on watch at the bunker and I heard the back door open. I assumed it was one of the Marines coming in to use the Internet or the phone. I waited for them to come up. They would always come up. But no one came up. I got up and didn’t see anyone. I went back to my duty hut and I heard footsteps walk across the bunker. This kind of thing happened often.”

Her return to the United States was difficult, filled with retreats into isolation, substance abuse, deep depression and dysfunctional relationships. Slowly she pulled her life back together, finishing college and applying to graduate school so she can counsel trauma victims.

“Every single Marine I know goes to Iraq to help,” she said. “While I was there that is what I thought. That is why I volunteered. I thought I was going to help the Iraqis. I know better now. We did the dirty work. We were used by the government. The military knows that young, single men are dangerous. We breed it in Marines. We push the testosterone. We don’t want them to be educated. They are deprived of a lot and rewarded with very little. It keeps us at ground level. We cannot question anyone. We do what we are told.

“I am still in contact with most of the people I knew,” she said. “They are not coping. One lives in VA [Veterans Affairs], constantly seeing psychologists and psychiatrists. One was kicked out of the Marines for three DUIs. Another was kicked out of the Marines because he took cocaine. Those who have gotten out are living below the poverty level. And what people do to cope is re-enlist. When they re-enlist they do better. They function. I am the only one who went to school of the 18 Marines in Mortuary Affairs. But I am in counseling at the VA. I have been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, depression and substance abuse. What separates me from them is that I have a great support system and I found my salvation in my education.

“War is disgusting and horrific,” she said. “It never leaves the people who were involved in it. The damage is far greater than the lists of casualties or cost in dollars. It permeates lifestyles. It infects cultures and people and worldviews. The war is never over for us. The fighting stops. The troops get called back. But the war goes on for those damaged by war.”

Not long ago she received a text message from a Marine she had worked with in Mortuary Affairs after he tried to commit suicide.

“I’ve got $2,000 in the bank,” the message read. “Let’s meet in NYC and go out with a bang.”

Source: https://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/the_body_baggers_of_iraq_20110321/

Filed Under: America, Fatalities, Mental Illness, Military Industrial Complex, Suicide, War Tagged With: Death, Soldiers Bodies

How To Respond To The Awful Truth

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

It’s a volatile, challenging time to be alive, no doubt. The world is a landscape thoroughly scattered with catastrophic nightmares like flaming lava pits on a giant festering orb. And this huge array of drastic, life-threatening problems we’re facing that are burning in the world’s collective subconscious are apparently careening towards some mad, apocalyptic finale.

The big question we’re all faced with is this. Once we’re aware of what’s going on, what do we do? And more importantly, for those not willing to face the truth, what will it take to wake them up?

And third: does that predominant attitude make it inevitable for the rest of us to share their fate?

What does one do as they observe the deliberately imploded economy, the corporate thuggery pillaging the world, a manipulated media bent on an ignorant, placated populace, the ramped up rape of the environment, the poisoning of our food, water and air supply, the drugging of our children, and wars without end appearing to be leading up to a horrific nuclear conflagration?

What is our role in what we discover to be a literally predatory environment in a hijacked world?

Here’s How: Identify The Problems Are Real and Deliberate

The first issue is to clearly identify the problems and admit their gravity. Second, we need to understand the objective of these apparent trends, however horrific these motives may appear to be.

But let me get one thing straight before we go on any further.

In light of the vastness of these incontrovertible assaults on humanity and the obvious connections to corporate, banking and government insanity, whoever does NOT think that there’s an underlying motive with definite objectives by those controlling these massive programs is a stark raving lunatic, voluntarily living in a straightjacket of self-preserving denial, staring in a zombified trance at the shadows on their cell walls.

Secondly and similarly, if anyone thinks it’s simply “greed gone wild” that’s causing these problems and an unfortunate cyclical downturn of some sort, they need to get their minds blown.

And I’m here to help.

Why Doesn’t Money Satisfy The Controllers If It’s Just Greed? Cuz It’s Power and Control

Tell me something. If everything was done just for money, why don’t they stop there? These elites know they couldn’t spend what they have in a thousand lifetimes. So why do they keep pushing?

Why do wealthy people run for office when their coffers are overflowing? Why do banksters keep loaning money they know they won’t get it back to nation after nation as they slowly take over their economies and politics? The infamous Rothschilds are estimated to be worth over 500 trillion dollars yet keep pushing for more international “programs” and intervention.

Why?

Do you see the world improving because of their efforts? Do the mega-rich dynasties, industrialists, royal families, or the uber-wealthy Vatican chip in a non self-serving dime to help the world?

Or has the plug been pulled deliberately and we’re now in free-fall towards worldwide disaster? And could someone possibly be positioning themselves to pick up the pieces and take control of the filet that’s left on the world’s butcher block once the scraps have been extricated and thrown to the dogs of war?

Is their plan actually written in stone? Look up “Georgia Guidestones” for a spine tingler.

Living A Conscious Life

The issue and point of this article isn’t to run once again through the litany of wrongs being deliberately perpetrated on humanity and its home. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve caught on to some extent and hopefully are active in the awakening, or are on an accelerating path to the stage of awareness where you realize to not take action is impossible, if you have any semblance of awakened consciousness. That will come, believe me.

To be conscious means to act according to consciousness, not just think or realize in some ashram. I’m sure those folks have their place, but if you’re a somewhat normal operating human trying to exist in a world bent on abusing and even killing you off, there are some serious challenges involved as to what exactly to do.

This Is Where The Universe Comes In

You cannot…and there’s no exception to this..you cannot operate solely in the mental and physical realm and expect to understand what’s going on and where your place is in all this. You may be led there in spite of your blockage, but it’s absolutely essential to have a spiritual awakening in your life.

I’m in no way talking about religion. But I guarantee if you’re pursuing truth like I think you are, the spiritual, metaphysical, esoteric, whatever you want to call it, side of all this is becoming very, very apparent. And it’s vastly empowering. Right?

Our Refuge and Armament

The most important tool in our arsenal is the ability to listen to and act according to our hearts, our source, our spirit, our connection to consciousness. Call it God, the Universe or the underlying powers inherent in Chi, Ki, Prana or whatever. Learning to listen to a deeper influence and act in responsible, loving conscious awareness is the answer.

And we must grow in this area to meet the challenges of our time. Like the internet, our old modes of communication have been tampered with and will be used against us.

Spotting the Predators

Like the Hollywood ephemeral cloaked predator character, these mostly unseen forces we are up against can usually only be spotted by their effects, like leaves and branches moving in an organized pattern as the enemy approaches. Never mind the fact that the real government leaders and societal directors are not the ones we see in the news and that others are telling them what to do, the powers behind ALL of this we can safely assume are another level removed, and I would contend are ultimately spiritual, or other dimensional.

At the very least, call it evil people and you’ll be right. But the extent and source of this evil is quite revelatory when the next level of dots starts to connect for you. I don’t claim to know everything that’s going on, but the point is we’re up against a vastly interconnected conspiracy that, like seeing the leaves rustle when the transparent predator approaches, you can only identify by their effects.

And it’s important that we’re aware of this next level.

Any Way You Look At It It’s Nasty…But Make Some Conclusions

The point is, we don’t need to know every detail before drawing some very obvious conclusions.

1. A LOT of serious somethings are very wrong with the world.

2. World so-called “leadership” is out of touch, self serving and apparently working towards some other agenda.

3. This other agenda does not necessarily benefit you and me. They’re elitists with their own plans.

4. People are dying, being poisoned, starved and outright killed at a horrific rate, while food is withheld and medical care has become restricted and basically wealth-producing pharmaceutical in nature.

5. The extremely wealthy Powers That Be refuse to give any form of aid except to their own institutions and cohorts.

6. You are sitting at home wondering what the hell is going on while reading this article.

7. What are you going to DO with your life now that you realize this?

I hope you’ll follow your heart.

That’s my wish, prayer and affirmation. We need an energetic revolution, a call to real conscious action. That action is continuous open awareness and responding to the call of the Heart!

Wanna demonstrate, and mix with others who feel the call in whatever form? Go for it! Where will that take you? I don’t know!

Wanna participate in blogs and internet forums about your search, 9/11 truth, outrage about the world’s pollution, etc? Go for it!!

Point is, if you feel the call, respond! Respond! RESPOND!

And it will respond to you!

Happy trails, meet you in the awakening…

Source: https://beforeitsnews.com/story/1398/905/How_To_Respond_To_The_Awful_Truth.html?currentSplittedPage=0

Filed Under: Financial Crisis, Media, Mental Illness, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Psychology, Reality, Truth, Violence, War, Warning, World-wide Tagged With: Apocalyptic World

Fit to Be Killed: Manufacturing Synthetic Sanity on Death Row

December 4, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

The gun smoke had barely cleared - leaving six dead and 13 wounded, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who had a hole in her head - before federal prosecutors took the first step in hustling the shooter, Jared Lee Laughner, to the death gurney.

Attempting to assassinate a member of Congress is a capital offense, and one of the dead was a federal judge, making Laughner’s target practice a second federal capital offense.

Never mind that Laughner had a long history of mental illness; the federal death penalty law allows for a very limited insanity defense, so Laughner’s prospects of living to old age might seem dim. Except that his lawyer is Judy Clarke.

Colleagues, writing in posts on the Internet, widely regard Clarke as the best death penalty defense lawyer in the business. She successfully cut a deal with prosecutors to spare the life of the Unabomber, and she successfully kept Susan Smith, the Alabama mom who drowned her two toddlers in the bath tub, off the death gurney. Colleagues say that Clarke is not just philosophically opposed to the death penalty; for her, it is a driving passion.

The first step in Laughner’s journey through the legal system was a competency hearing, where the judge weighed testimony from a defense psychiatrist and a prosecution forensic psychologist. Unlike many such hearings, where the experts tailor their testimony to the needs of their legal team, both the defense and prosecution experts agreed that Laughner was a paranoid schizophrenic who was incompetent to stand trial - meaning that he was too crazy to participate in his own defense. The judge remanded Laughner to a federal forensic hospital for months of observation.

Laughner’s mental status did not improve - which is hardly surprising since he’s been schizophrenic for years - so the docs sought to medicate him. Clarke exploded and sprang like a panther with a string of objections … Unlike many high-profile lawyers, Clarke does not talk to the press - including Truthout. But her objections to forcibly medicating Laughner with antipsychotic drugs are obvious: they would, first, render him competent to stand trial; and second, lead him down a road that will end not with an injection of an antipsychotic, but rather a lethal cocktail of pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride - which passes for humane execution in the United States.

But can the states or the federal government medicate a person against his or her will? The Supreme Court has ruled that prison docs can forcibly medicate a mentally ill inmate if he “poses a threat to himself or others” or if the medication is in his own best interest. Clearly, a defense lawyer will argue that the purpose of medicating a person in a capital case is not to provide medical care, but to create a state that has been called “synthetic sanity” - a condition of pseudo-sanity that can be palmed off as competency.

Clarke is sure to capitalize on the niche in this ruling, because it’s hardly in Laughner’s best interest to medicate him so that he can stand trial for his life. It is questionable whether antipsychotic drugs enable the defendant to help his lawyer in an insanity defense. Many psychiatrists feel that these drugs do not attack the core of the illness, but rather make the patient think, act and look “doped up,” without addressing the underlying pathological processes.

Antipsychotics - especially the older drugs like Haldol and Thorazine - also exert deleterious effects on the body. Neurological side effects such as tremors, shaking and writhing of the extremities are common. Smacking of the lips and popping of the tongue are not rare. Some patients experience neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a sometimes fatal metabolic disorder.

The new generation of antipsychotics - Abilify, Seroquel, and others - are a distinct improvement: they provide a broader spectrum of efficacy, not just against schizophrenia, but against mood disorders as well, and fewer severe side effects. However, even these drugs are not entirely safe. Of course, defense lawyers strive to maximize the dangers, and minimize the benefits, of antipsychotic drugs … but then, as my grandfather liked to say to my father, “Don’t call ‘em lawyers; call ‘em liars.”

A capital trial comprises two components. First is the innocence phase, during which the jury decides whether the defendant did or did not commit the crimes in question. Next, if found guilty, comes the penalty phase, in which the jury must decide whether the sentence shall be death or (in most states) life without possibility of parole. Persons who have been sentenced to death often linger on death row for ten or 15 years before the sentence is carried out - or, with increasing frequency of DNA testing and other forensic measures - before they are exonerated. They may be sane when they are convicted, but with the passage of years, they may become depressed, anxious, psychotic or otherwise too incompetent to be executed.

In 1974, a Florida man named Alvin Ford killed a cop in the course of a robbery. The available evidence shows that Ford was sane at the time of his crime, trial and sentencing. The jury’s verdict was “death,” but after eight years on death row, Ford developed hallucinations and delusions that the Ku Klux Klan was after him and that he was Pope John Paul III, among other outré psychiatric symptoms. After exhausting all but one appeal, the defense succeeded in persuading the Supreme Court to hear the case. There was no precedent in American law. The court sought guidance in English common law, which forbids the execution of the insane. Sir Edward Cooke, writing in the 16th century, characterized the execution of the insane as a “miserable spectacle.” And a century later, the eminent jurist Sir William Blackstone deemed the practice “savage and inhuman.” The majority of the Supreme Court Justices agreed with these English jurists. Associate Justice Lewis Powell, in a concurring opinion, gave the court’s verdict a spin that still prevails. If it sounds sadistic and retributive, one can only say that it is, for Powell wrote that, in order for a person to be competent for execution, he must understand the nature of his punishment and the reason why he is being punished. It almost seems more humane to execute a lunatic who believes he’s coming back as a turtle than to make a sane man or woman tick off the days and years until his legally sanctioned murder.

But if a condemned man or woman - conceivably Laughner - deteriorated to the point where prison psychiatrists deemed him incompetent to be executed, could the prison authorities forcibly medicate him into a state of “synthetic sanity,” so that he would perhaps understand that he was going to be killed and the reason why? The supreme courts of two Southern states - Louisiana and South Carolina - deemed it contrary to their state constitutions to forcibly medicate a prisoner in order to prep him for execution. The United States Supreme Court has had two opportunities to address the issue, but all they did was touch up Powell’s opinion to mean that the condemned person must have “rational understanding” of the reason why he or she is going to be killed.

And if a person does not possess “rational understanding,” can prison docs help him out with medication?

The seminal case involves a man named Charles Laverne Singleton, who was condemned to death for murder, burglary, larceny and first-degree sexual assault. Singleton had a long history of mental illness, did not grasp that he was going to die in the electric chair, could give no more than yes or no answers to his attorney and evinced no understanding why or whether he was going to be punished for his misdeeds.

Nevertheless, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state could forcibly medicate Singleton preparatory to his execution. In 2003, the Supremes refused to hear the case, letting stand the Eighth Circuit’s ruling that forcible medication neither violates the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment, nor the due process clause. Singleton was duly medicated and executed on January 6, 2004.

I spoke with Richard Dieter, executive director, Death Penalty Information Center. Dieter told me that the Singleton case was the only one that’s worked its way up through the courts, but he judged it likely that there had probably been several other cases where inmates had been forcibly medicated to effectuate synthetic sanity. This did not surprise me, because in the course of writing the present series of articles on capital punishment for Truthout*, I came across instances of court-appointed lawyers who failed to file vital papers on time, who turned up drunk in the courtroom or who slept through the trial. In America, justice usually comes with a price tag. Without a dedicated lawyer to monitor the authorities, it’s easy to see how psychotic, confused inmates could be fed antipsychotic drugs … and no one would ever know. Who’s to know the little pills aren’t “vitamins?” Then, too, there’s “bug juice”: odorless, tasteless liquid Haldol that can be mixed in food or drink.

Ethically and morally, the buck stops with prison psychiatrists. Both the American Medical Association (ABA) and the American Psychiatric Association forbid members from participating in executions, but neither organization has punished a member for doing so. Only the American Board of Anesthesiology has adopted a policy with real teeth in it, but executions are carried out in a secretive manner, and the ABA has yet to catch a member in the act.

Eventually the Supreme Court will probably rule on forcibly medicating inmates for the purpose of executing them.

It is difficult to be optimistic about the verdict that would be handed down by the Roberts court; the outcome will probably depend upon Justice Kennedy. But whatever the verdict of the Supreme Court Justices, prison physicians can make the difference. All too many of them have long forsaken the fundamental oath of medicine, “Do No Harm.” Doctors must stand up against synthetic sanity in substantial numbers, and their professional societies must punish those who breach the doctor’s oath. Ultimately, however, there is only one definitive solution to practices like creating synthetic sanity: to abolish the benighted practice of capital punishment once and for all.

Source: https://www.truth-out.org/fit-be-killed-manufacturing-synthetic-sanity-death-row/1322681222

Filed Under: America, Drugs, Law, Mental Illness, Politics, Rights Tagged With: Death Penalty, Insanity

Ten Unusual Ways to Get in the Top 1% of Happiness

December 3, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

At midnight my door opened and I saw the shadow of someone about 4 feet tall walk into my room and stand by my side of the bed. “I can’t sleep,” she said and she was smart enough to also say, “my mind is racing”. Over the nine years of her life so far she has probably heard me say that many times. Like when I was losing a home and I threw a chair and the police were called. The third time police had to be called on me in life (out of five).

So I took her hand and we walked downstairs and she gave me a lecture on what was going on in each one of her classes and she concluded with a discussion of the various Greek gods (“Athena is my favorite,” she said. “Who is yours. Hermes?”) And then I saw her yawn and I said maybe now she can try to go back to sleep, which she did.

I’m scared for her. My mind races also. How many times has my mind woken me up at midnight to remind me of how little money was in my bank account, or how many bills I had to pay, or how much I hated my job, or even hated being an entrepreneur with customers, clients, people screwing me, people hating me. I don’t want her mind to wake her like that when she’s older. It’s the worst pain. And I might not be there then for her to talk to.

Will she kill herself? Will she wake up her husband or girlfriend or whatever and say, “my mind is racing. Talk to me.”

One time some bad business things were happening to me. Something was shutting down, other things were going down. Some people were cheating me. Whatever. My mind was racing. I woke up Claudia. “Breathe like this,” she said. It was two in the morning but she wanted to help. She had me do a breathing exercise that involved quickly exhaling but I forget the rest of it. Then I fell asleep.

One investor of mine told me I had a “scarcity complex” - that I always had a strong feeling that I had nothing even when I had many things to be happy about. This was about eight years ago. I agreed with him. He wanted to be my mentor. I wanted him to sell his business and then let me invest the money. So I agreed to everything he said. I did that back then. But in this case maybe he was right. Unless I’m at optimal health in every way I constantly feel like I have less than nothing. It’s post-traumatic stress from losing everything several times and watching my father lose everything twenty years earlier.

No toys will ever patch that bleeding.

The country now has a scarcity complex. “The banks took everything.” “The government took everything.” “There are no jobs.” “There is no money”. Everyone is in despair. Everyone is scared about feeding their family. Scared and scarred. Greece, Japan, China, Libya, terrorism, Jamie Dimon, Obama, Rich Perry. These are the monsters in the closet at night.

I’m tired of monsters in my closet. Anger won’t change anything. Complaining won’t change anything.

I want to be consistently in the “1%”. Not of money. Money comes and goes, talking of Michelangelo.

I want to be in the 1% of the happiest people on Earth.

My only goal is to be in the 1% of happiness. Else, if I’m in the 99%, then all of my other goals will also fall short of the 1%. You can’t meet the love of your life, for instance, if you’re in the botton 99%. At least, from my experience it will be harder. It’s like taking out the garbage and expecting to meet the love of your life in the garbage can.

My life is like a laboratory and happiness has been the experiment. Only when I’ve been in the 1% of happiness have my other goals been satisfactorily achieved.

So I know what I have to do when I slip into the 99%. This might not work for everyone. Maybe some people have to protest with signs to be in the top 1% of happiness. That doesn’t work for me.

But these ten things work for me:

A) Lately, exercise has worked for me to stay in shape and sweat out toxins. Bad stuff builds up in the body. You have the usual disgusting methods to get out bad toxins that go into the digestion system. But what about bad stuff that builds up in every pore of your body. You have to sweat it out. Sometimes just 100 pushups a day will do it. For me, I like doing yoga.

B) I don’t have a lot of friends. But I do know enough people that I can do this: every day I make sure I don’t talk to people who bring me down. And I try to meet new people who bring me up. I won’t do business with anyone who brings me down. The last time I tried that, my body told me, “Bad James!” On the second day on the job I fell straight to the ground and sprained my ankle for no obvious reason. If you let it, the reactions in your body (any part of your body) will tell you if you are with good people or bad people. When I get an email from someone who is bad for me, I usually get a quick stomach ache. So I delete the mail and put the emailer in Spam. Its’s the only solution if I want to be in the 1%. I don’t engage at all with anyone who is going to bring me down. Why should I? [See. "How to Deal with Crappy People"]

C) I like to be creative. Whether it’s through this blog or writing down a list of ideas or even drawing. It makes my brain come to life in ways that it’s not used to. It’s important here, to never expect results from your creativity. When I was working on the pilot of a TV show, for instance, it made me very anxious to know whether or not it was going to get accepted. I was too attached to the results of the creativity. Just like now I might be too attached to blog traffic.

D) I like to avoid these nine obstacles to my success. Any one of these nine will make me unhappy.

E) I try to avoid all leaks. For instance, I’m happily married. Cheating on my wife would make me unhappily married. BAM! That would put me in the 99%.

F) I try to be as grateful as possible. When I remind someone what they’ve done for me and how happy it made me it not only brings back memories of that happiness it also makes me happy that I’m helping them be happy by being grateful for them.

G) I try to “surrender”. I say to myself, “I can’t do everything. I can’t take this pain. I can’t have everything I want. Sometimes I’m helpless in the face of my material goals. So YOU figure it out.” I don’t even know who I’m talking to. Who YOU is. I might be talking to my teddy bear when I say that. But having a sense of surrender and humility will help me reduce my needs (I don’t need a yacht for instance) and help me to feel humility. There’s a physical exercise that’s good to practice surrender if you are not good at it. In America we’re not really good at surrender. We never give up. We want to win every war. The exercise is to reach down and touch your toes. It obscures your vision (because you are staring at your knees), its almost impossible (you have to be flexible, both physically and mentally), and it looks like your bowing, which is an unusual thing for Americans to do. So it teaches surrender if you are uncomfortable with it.

(Claudia touching her toes)

H) I try not to lie to anyone or harm anyone. Because then you have to keep track of which lie was told to who. Or you feel bad about who you harmed, which was usually as a result of either anger or greed. If I never harm anyone I never have to deal with anyone’s anger (unless it’s irrational anger). Anger makes me unhappy.

I) Sometimes you can’t avoid work that you don’t want to do. We all have to feed our families. But, in general, if I move every day towards staying away from corporate America (fluorescent lights and bosses make me less happy) then I’ll be more happy.

J) I need a tenth thing so that I can call this post, “Ten Ways to be in the Top 1%” so hold on a second while I think of something…coffee? No, sometimes it spills on me. A lot of sex? Makes me VERY happy but sometimes makes me jealous or anxious. Ahh, sleeping 8-9 hours a day. Because then I know I’m in the top 1% for at least 1/3 of the day. And I also know I won’t be tired the other 2/3, which would put me in the bottom 99%.

And if I’m consistently in the top 1% of happiness, maybe there’s a slight chance my two daughters , and maybe others I interact with, will be in the top 1% when they’re older. Happiness is both contagious and hereditary. And so on.

Source: https://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/10/ten-unusual-ways-to-get-in-the-top-1/

Filed Under: Health, Mental Illness, Psychology, Self-Sustainability Tagged With: Happiness

Stress And How It Affects Your Body

December 3, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Along with a lot of joy, having a new baby can bring a whole lot of new stress. There are many drastic changes taking place in your home, and if you are a first time mom, it can be especially stressful. This article will give you some wonderful tips for making your life with your new baby a little less stressful.

Practice preventative health care maintenance and give yourself fewer reasons to stress-out! Not only do questions about your health keep you stressed, but failing to engage in preventative health measures can really harm you in the long run. So, make sure you keep regular check-ups and appointments for screenings to keep you thinking healthy, being healthy and less stressed!

When you feel your body reacting to stress, you need to have an outlet for the stress so that it does not interfere with your life. The best way to rid your mind and body of stress is to exercise regularly, ideally for thirty minutes at least five days a week. Not only will this help you feel more calm, it will boost your energy throughout the day.

A great tip that can help you feel less stressed is to go back and finish something that you started. We all know the lingering feeling of leaving something unfinished. By going back and completing something that you left unfinished, your stress will go down and you’ll feel much better.

Make time for stress. Instead of feeling stressed all day long, minor stress and worrisome thoughts can wait. Tell yourself you’ll worry at a certain time of the day and when you have a stressful thought, remind yourself that it’s not the right time. When you finally get to the appointed worry time, you might find that you’re not even stressed anymore.

In order to deal with stress at work consider getting a stress ball. This is a great way to privately and quietly deal with your stress. The exertion used on a stress ball will at least help to deal with stress in a manner that allows both you and your co-workers to go about your day.

If you have problems with stress, try joining a sport team or community. Look for adult softball, racquetball, basketball, or other team sports. Sports are great for relieving stress because they satisfy our need for competition as well as proving exercise. Let yourself have some fun and burn some calories to relieve your stress.

Create a peaceful saying. Many people use a positive saying or affirmation that they say repeatedly when they begin to feel stressed. By repeating the affirmation, you can silence the more critical thoughts you are having about the situation. Next time you are feeling stressed, try saying the affirmation ten times in a row.

Learn positive thinking techniques to conquer stress. When you are feeling stressful, sit down and take some deep breaths. Close your eyes and think of yourself in your favorite relaxing place. Whether it is on a beach relaxing and sipping a drink or at a ball game with your kids, laughing and having a good time. Just thinking about positive and stress free situations will make the stress go away.

This next tip for dealing with stress may sound like common knowledge, but not many people realize it. To get rid of stress in your life, you must remember to avoid the cause of the stress. Stay away from situations that are stressful. The more you stay around stress, the worse your life will be.

As was stated at the beginning of this article, having a new baby can bring a lot of stress into your life. Learning how to deal with the new stress can be challenging. Hopefully, after reading this article, you will feel a little more prepared and will use the tips to help you chill out, when things become too stressful.

Source: https://www.survivingthefuture.com/stress-and-how-it-affects-your-body.html

Filed Under: Health, Medical Industry, Mental Illness, Psychology Tagged With: Stress

After Duty, Dogs Suffer Like Soldiers

December 2, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

SAN ANTONIO — The call came into the behavior specialists here from a doctor in Afghanistan. His patient had just been through a firefight and now was cowering under a cot, refusing to come out.

Apparently even the chew toys hadn’t worked.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, thought Dr. Walter F. Burghardt Jr., chief of behavioral medicine at the Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base. Specifically, canine PTSD.

If anyone needed evidence of the frontline role played by dogs in war these days, here is the latest: the four-legged, wet-nosed troops used to sniff out mines, track down enemy fighters and clear buildings are struggling with the mental strains of combat nearly as much as their human counterparts.

By some estimates, more than 5 percent of the approximately 650 military dogs deployed by American combat forces are developing canine PTSD. Of those, about half are likely to be retired from service, Dr. Burghardt said.

Though veterinarians have long diagnosed behavioral problems in animals, the concept of canine PTSD is only about 18 months old, and still being debated. But it has gained vogue among military veterinarians, who have been seeing patterns of troubling behavior among dogs exposed to explosions, gunfire and other combat-related violence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Like humans with the analogous disorder, different dogs show different symptoms. Some become hyper-vigilant. Others avoid buildings or work areas that they had previously been comfortable in. Some undergo sharp changes in temperament, becoming unusually aggressive with their handlers, or clingy and timid. Most crucially, many stop doing the tasks they were trained to perform.

“If the dog is trained to find improvised explosives and it looks like it’s working, but isn’t, it’s not just the dog that’s at risk,” Dr. Burghardt said. “This is a human health issue as well.”

That the military is taking a serious interest in canine PTSD underscores the importance of working dogs in the current wars. Once used primarily as furry sentries, military dogs — most are German shepherds, followed by Belgian Malinois and Labrador retrievers — have branched out into an array of specialized tasks.

They are widely considered the most effective tools for detecting the improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, frequently used in Afghanistan. Typically made from fertilizer and chemicals, and containing little or no metal, those buried bombs can be nearly impossible to find with standard mine-sweeping instruments. In the past three years, I.E.D.’s have become the major cause of casualties in Afghanistan.

The Marine Corps also has begun using specially trained dogs to track Taliban fighters and bomb-makers. And Special Operations commandos train their own dogs to accompany elite teams on secret missions like the Navy SEAL raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Across all the forces, more than 50 military dogs have been killed since 2005.

The number of working dogs on active duty has risen to 2,700, from 1,800 in 2001, and the training school headquartered here at Lackland has gotten busy, preparing about 500 dogs a year. So has the Holland hospital, the Pentagon’s canine version of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Dr. Burghardt, a lanky 59-year-old who retired last year from the Air Force as a colonel, rarely sees his PTSD patients in the flesh. Consultations with veterinarians in the field are generally done by phone, e-mail or Skype, and often involve video documentation.

In a series of videos that Dr. Burghardt uses to train veterinarians to spot canine PTSD, one shepherd barks wildly at the sound of gunfire that it had once tolerated in silence. Another can be seen confidently inspecting the interior of cars but then refusing to go inside a bus or a building. Another sits listlessly on a barrier wall, then after finally responding to its handler’s summons, runs away from a group of Afghan soldiers.

In each case, Dr. Burghardt theorizes, the dogs were using an object, vehicle or person as a “cue” for some violence they had witnessed. “If you want to put doggy thoughts into their heads,” he said, “the dog is thinking: when I see this kind of individual, things go boom, and I’m distressed.”

Treatment can be tricky. Since the patient cannot explain what is wrong, veterinarians and handlers must make educated guesses about the traumatizing events. Care can be as simple as taking a dog off patrol and giving it lots of exercise, playtime and gentle obedience training.

More serious cases will receive what Dr. Burghardt calls “desensitization counterconditioning,” which entails exposing the dog at a safe distance to a sight or sound that might set off a reaction — a gunshot, a loud bang or a vehicle, for instance. If the dog does not react, it is rewarded, and the trigger — “the spider in a glass box,” Dr. Burghardt calls it — is moved progressively closer.

Gina, a shepherd with PTSD who was the subject of news articles last year, was successfully treated with desensitization and has been cleared to deploy again, said Tech. Sgt. Amanda Callahan, a spokeswoman at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

Some dogs are also treated with the same medications used to fight panic attacks in humans. Dr. Burghardt asserts that medications seem particularly effective when administered soon after traumatizing events. The Labrador retriever that cowered under a cot after a firefight, for instance, was given Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, and within days was working well again.

Dogs that do not recover quickly are returned to their home bases for longer-term treatment. But if they continue to show symptoms after three months, they are usually retired or transferred to different duties, Dr. Burghardt said.

As with humans, there is much debate about treatment, with little research yet to guide veterinarians. Lee Charles Kelley, a dog trainer who writes a blog for Psychology Today called “My Puppy, My Self,” says medications should be used only as a stopgap. “We don’t even know how they work in people,” he said.

In the civilian dog world, a growing number of animal behaviorists seem to be endorsing the concept of canine PTSD, saying it also affects household pets who experience car accidents and even less traumatic events.

Dr. Nicholas H. Dodman, director of the animal behavior clinic at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, said he had written about and treated dogs with PTSD-like symptoms for years — but did not call it PTSD until recently. Asked if the disorder could be cured, Dr. Dodman said probably not.

“It is more management,” he said. “Dogs never forget.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/more-military-dogs-show-signs-of-combat-stress.html

Filed Under: Animal Rights, Animals, Mental Illness, War Tagged With: Military Dogs, Post-Traumatic Stress

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