Six weeks after James Fair, a 22-year-old combat engineer, began serving in Iraq in the fall of 2003, he detonated a homemade bomb while walking away from a barbed wire fence he had just erected near Falluja. He lost his eyesight and both arms below the elbows, and sustained brain injuries.
Seven months later, when he was released from a military hospital — the blue scars from the powder burns on his face still visible — he moved in with his then wife in Kansas but left after two months, because, he said recently, she “couldn’t take care of me.” After that, he returned home to Western Pennsylvania to live with his mother, Lonnie Mosco, and her new husband, Scott, in a small two-story house they had moved to in his absence.
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By Ingrid Dinter

I have been helping many Veterans with EFT, mostly by phone. The results for their overall wellbeing, their release of insomnia and other symptoms of PTSD have been quite wonderful.

To be able to communicate the progress that Veterans can make with EFT, I have decided to monitor their shifts and progress with two standardized forms, the SA-45 and the PCL-M. These research tools are described briefly at the end of this article. In addition to signing an informed consent form, the Veterans that I work with are also required to keep a daily sleep journal, which documents sleep duration, quality of sleep, overall wellbeing and other factors. It is my hope that the results of this single case study will encourage and inspire others to move forward with the clinical, larger scale research studies that need to be done in this field, so that the Veterans and their families get access to this important and powerful healing tool.

“Don” is a 61 year old Vietnam Veteran who and has been diagnosed with…
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Combat vets — especially those who are homeless or suffering from mental health issues — can get help Friday and Saturday at the second annual Great Falls Veterans’ Stand-Down.
Organized by the Vets4Vets group and staffed by about 100 volunteers, the stand-down gives vets free clothing, survival gear, haircuts, medical and dental exams, mental health assessments and counseling.
It’s designed to help vets like Mel Deppneier, an Army vet from the 1960s, who had been camping under a bridge in Great Falls for the past four years but lost virtually everything he owned this spring when the Missouri River rose nearly out of its banks and flooded his camp. Four or five sleeping bags were reduced to a soggy, muddy mess.
“I could use a couple new sleeping bags,” said Deppneier, a wiry 63-year-old with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard who makes his living collecting aluminum cans in company of his old Dalmatian, Sarah. “And I need a good military-issue poncho.”
Last year, it was raining on stand-down day, and Deppneier decided not to leave his tent, but Don Scott, one of the volunteers, dropped off a new sleeping bag and some cold-weather gear.
Organizers believe they served more than 200 vets and about 400 people, including family members. Thirty-eight percent of the vets reported a service-connected disability, and 14 percent were homeless.
Stand-down volunteers brought in two semi-truck loads of surplus gear, about 63,000 pounds, and gave away about 35,000 pounds of it — duffel bags full of fatigue pants and shirts, underwear, socks, raingear and overcoats.
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A Letter in Memory

Risks for troops and families too serious to ignore reassessments, Akaka says

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI) commented today on a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the latest in a number of reports on the Department of Defense’s failure to adequately assess the post-deployment health of returning servicemembers. Akaka, Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, stressed the need for the Department of Defense to aggressively address deployment-related health issues.
“The Department of Defense owes it to servicemembers to ensure adequate assessment and reassessment of their health after they return from deployment,” said Akaka. “They have committed to defend our freedom, and in return, we have committed to protect their health and wellbeing. Our troops and their families are too important to let any potential mental health issues slip through the cracks.”
The report issued September 4, 2008 by the Government Accountability Office, found several problems with DOD oversight of the post-deployment health reassessment (PDHRA). While DOD has developed requirements for administering the PDHRA, the Department is unable to determine whether servicemembers are completing their reassessments. This report follows a June 2007 GAO finding that DOD does not collect or provide Congress with the information necessary for the Congress to evaluate the military’s compliance with post-deployment health assessment regulations. GAO noted that while DOD agreed to the recommendations in the June 2007 report, the Department failed to incorporate those recommendations into DOD’s oversight practices.
According to GAO, DOD is unable to exercise oversight for post-deployment health assessments and reassessments. In response, DOD has concurred with some of GAO’s recommendation, but also suggested that oversight is beyond the scope of the quality assurance programs. Chairman Akaka responded, “Oversight is a necessary function and an essential component of the Department of Defense’s mandate to perform quality assurance. The post-deployment health of our troops depends on the DOD’s ability to collect and manage all necessary and relevant information. I will continue to work to ensure that the DOD improves its accountability to both decision makers in Congress and to our nation’s servicemembers and their families.”
Various studies and reports have found that warzone deployment puts servicemembers at risk of mental health issues that can be crippling if left untreated. For example, a recent RAND study found that nearly one in five troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Other research suggests that mental health issues are more likely to be detected during post-deployment health reassessments, which occur months after servicemembers return from deployment, than during earlier assessments.
For more information contact Daniel Kawika Riley (Chairman, Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs) (202) 224-9126 email:Kawika_Riley@vetaff.senate.gov

By ERIC NEWHOUSE • Tribune Projects Editor and The Associated Press

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama promised Wednesday to expand Montana’s pilot program to assess the mental health of combat vets nationwide, if elected.
The Montana National Guard has developed a program to check its soldiers and airmen for signs of post-traumatic stress disorder every six months for the first two years after returning from combat, then once a year thereafter. The program exceeds national standards set by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The pilot program was created in response to the suicide of former Army Spc. Chris Dana of Helena, who shot himself on March 4, 2007, days after being given a less-than-honorable discharge because he could no longer handle attending drills following a tour in Iraq.
“He (Obama) told me he understood why we need to have additional screenings for PTSD,” said Matt Kuntz, Dana’s stepbrother, who was among a small group invited to meet with Obama on Wednesday in Billings. “And he told me when he is elected president, he will implement Montana’s pilot program nationwide.”
Kuntz, who recently gave up his job as a lawyer in Helena to advocate for the mentally ill and their families, said he was invited to brief Obama on how Montana had become a national model for assessing the mental health of its combat vets.
Besides the additional screenings, the Montana National Guard has developed crisis response teams that include a chaplain to investigate behavioral problems among its troops, and TriWest Healthcare pays to have four part-time counselors on hand to talk with soldiers and airmen during weekend drills.
After the briefing, Obama spent about 20 minutes telling several hundred veterans and their families that, if elected as president, he will be committed to meeting their needs.
He told the largely partisan crowd that his Republican rival, John McCain, deserves gratitude, but not votes, for his years of military service.
McCain is a former Navy pilot who served two decades in the military, including more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam after his plane was shot down during a bombing mission.
McCain spokesman Tom Steward said “Obama’s rhetoric does not match his record,” and pointed out the Democrat voted last year against a bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama said, at the time, that he did not want to give a “blank check” to continue the war in Iraq without a timeline for troop withdrawals.
Steward said he was confident McCain’s record would be enough to maintain GOP loyalty among veterans. He added that some of the Arizona senator’s fellow POWs would appear with him at next week’s Republican convention in Minneapolis.
“No one knows better than Sen. McCain what veterans have put on the line for our country,” Steward said.
Obama’s speech to Montana veterans on Wednesday came a day before Obama is scheduled to accept his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
If elected, the Illinois senator has pledged to secure more funding for veterans’ health programs, improve mental health treatment for soldiers returning from war and end the war in Iraq. By reaching out to the nation’s 25 million veterans, the Obama campaign is hoping to make inroads on a constituency that traditionally leans Republican.
Montana has the second highest concentration of veterans in the country — 16 percent of its voting-age population.
“(Obama) took a lot of questions from the audience,” Kuntz said of the Billings event. “And he didn’t have to look at any notes. He had it all there in his head.
“Perhaps the thing that blew me away the most is that he gets it — he understands what we’re doing here and why it’s important,” Kuntz said. “I was blown away. After it was all over, I teared up – couldn’t even talk.”