More troops hospitalized for mental health than any other reason

More U.S. troops were hospitalized for mental health disorders than any other reason in 2009.

Mental health hospitalizations throughout the military topped injuries, battle wounds and even pregnancy and childbirth for the first time in 15 years of tracking by the Pentagon's Medical Surveillance Monthly report.

Four mental health issues — depression, substance abuse, anxiety and adjustment problems such as PTSD — cost the Pentagon 488 years of lost duty in 2009.

Obviously PTSD, depression, anxiety and substance abuse are not limited to American soldiers. According to a new U.K. Ministry of Defense study covered Thursday by The Guardian, troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have a 22% higher risk of alcohol misuse than their fellow servicemen and women.

Reservists serving in Iraq and Afghanistan were found to be three times as likely to suffer PTSD as other reservists, while regular personnel in combat roles there were found to be twice as likely to report the disorder.

Simon Wessely of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London thinks alcohol abuse is even more of a concern than PTSD. "Our view is that alcohol misuse is actually a greater problem for the armed forces than PTSD," he said.

Another article about the new UK report, from Reuters, points out a "striking" difference in mental health between US and UK troops. US personnel deploy for longer than UK troops – 15 months compared with six months – and American troops are younger. Combined with the numbers from the Pentagon, it is clear that US soldiers are undergoing intense mental pressure.

Read the whole article at The Raw Story.

May is Mental Health Month

Check out NKM2 for yourself!

18 a day....

By Rick Mays for the Army Times

Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department.

Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months.

The numbers, which come at a time when VA is strengthening its suicide prevention programs, show about 18 veteran suicides a day, about five by veterans who are receiving VA care.

Access to care appears to be a key factor, officials said, noting that once a veteran is inside the VA care program, screening programs are in place to identify those with problems, and special efforts are made to track those considered at high risk, such as monitoring whether they are keeping appointments.

A key part of the new data shows the suicide rate is lower for veterans aged 18 to 29 who are using VA health care services than those who are not. That leads VA officials to believe that about 250 lives have been saved each year as a result of VA treatment.

VA’s suicide hotline has been receiving about 10,000 calls a month from current and former service members. The number is 1-800-273-8255. Service members and veterans should push 1 for veterans’ services.

Dr. Janet Kemp, VA’s national suicide prevention coordinator, credits the hotline with rescuing 7,000 veterans who were in the act of suicide — in addition to referrals, counseling and other help.

Suicide attempts by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans remains a key area of concern. In fiscal 2009, which ended Sept. 30, there were 1,621 suicide attempts by men and 247 by women who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, with 94 men and four women dying.

In general, VA officials said, women attempt suicide more often, but men are more likely to succeed in the attempt, mainly because women use less lethal and less violent means while men are more likely to use firearms.

Suicide attempts among veterans appear to follow those trends, officials said.

10 Ways to Reduce Anxiety... Part 2

3. Don't fight the craziness.
You may occasionally have thoughts that lead you to think you'll do something terrible ("I'm attracted to him. Does that mean I'll have an affair?")or that you're going insane (a client of mine who is an attorney kept imagining herself screaming in court.) Remember - our minds are creative. Little synapses firing away at random,and every now and then a "crazy" thought jumps out. Everyone has them. Instead of judging yours, describe it to yourself like it's a curious object on a shelf and move on.

4. Recognize false alarms.
That fear of your house burning down because you left the iron on has never come true. That rapid heart beat doesn't mean you're having a heart attack; it's your body's natural response to arousal. Many thoughts and sensations that we interpret as cues for concern - even panic - are just background noise. Think of each of them as a fire engine going to another place. You've noticed them; now let them pass by.

Ed. note: Part of a series by Robert L. Leahy, PhD and director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in NY, NY. See the first part here.

you CAN die from it

Do you know someone who always brings a ray of sunshine into the room? I'm talking a person with a razor wit, an infectious grin, always willing to listen to you whine, quick with scalding sarcasm at her own expense or a painful groaner of a pun? I get to see the friend who fits this description every other Wednesday from ten until noonish - the bright spot of my Wednesday workday - and while I filled her nails we would talk about the kids, our husbands, our mothers and pets, and all the ups and downs of our lives just as we have for the past ten years or so. Occasionally we would hook up to go for a walk, getting as much exercise from the laughter as from the mileage. She once helped me reupholster a chair - I stiffened her spine when she tried to talk herself out of going to her 30th class reunion. We exchanged hysterical birthday cards and Christmas presents. I held her hands every other week.

On March 26th she took her own life.

My friend did not attempt suicide. She made a methodical, intelligent plan - dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's - timed it and executed her exit from this life with the same precision she showed in the miniature rooms that she painstakingly created as a hobby. There was no detail unattended to. She was 48 years old. My age.

Five days before I posted to this blog about the social isolation of mental illness. At her memorial service, the pastor read from the Book of Job and pointed out that in Jobs culture, it was customary to sit in front of your home dressed in sackcloth and covered in ashes - to put grief and misery on display - but that in our culture, one is expected to hide grief; to put on a smile and always keep up appearances. She was a master of deception because she felt it was expected of her; she was always smiling, laughing, joking, because it hid her pain. I held her hands every other week. I never saw it.

And now I am keeping up appearances and hiding my broken heart. I miss her so much. And it occurs to me that her pain really didn't end... it merely moved... to all who loved her.

If you've ever thought about it... think about it.

What Is "Hearts & Minds?"

The NAMI Hearts & Minds program is an online, interactive, educational initiative promoting the idea of wellness in both mind and body. Wellness is an ongoing process of learning how to make choices that support a more successful, healthy life.

Engaging in a wellness effort can make a huge difference in the quality of your life. One study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that taking the wellness approach can result in a 17 percent decline in total medical visits and a 35 percent decline in medical visits for minor illnesses.

Wellness is about the individual; you can decide what parts of your life you would like to change and you can determine your own success. The Hearts & Minds program includes information on medical self advocacy, smoking and substance abuse, healthy eating and exercise suggestions including sample journals and work sheets to download. Check out something new for your "tool box" here.

Cause of death....

There are days that I think I could die of it. Wonder what they'd put down as the cause of death if you just stopped breathing in the sheer, vast, emptiness of isolation? Yeah, yeah, yeah - I know that social isolation is one of the extreme effects of mental illness, but frankly, I wonder if it isn't just the extreme effect of our social culture? Even when I'm out of my house I'm amazed at how little we interact with the people around us.

So yesterday I volunteered some of my time to help get donations for the Salvation Army and the Prenatal Care Center. Every March the Soroptimist Clubs of Anacortes and Fidalgo Island team up for a Community Baby Shower and hit the local markets encouraging folks to pick up some baby food, or diapers or such and donate it for folks that are struggling to make ends meet. It is really an easy sell; even people disinclined to contribute to the poor (perhaps buying into the idea that they must have done something wrong to be poor or homeless in the first place,) have no problem opening up their wallet for a baby. My job was to ambush shoppers at the door and present them with a list of possible contributions that they could pick up while shopping. And it was interesting to see how generally uncomfortable people are with talking to a 'stranger' - how smiling and greeting someone automatically seems to put them on the defensive. I was pretty uncomfortable, too, even though I genuinely believed that most of them would be inclined to contribute - and there were people that I couldn't bring myself to greet, as they seemed almost hostile.

Okay, so we did pretty well in the donation department nonetheless. But I marvel that anyone connects with anyone in a world where speaking banal pleasantries to someone that you do not actually know seems awkward at best. Everywhere I go I see people talking to a little square of plastic, or typing furiously on it. But where do people talk? Not at the market, not at the dinner table, not in the car, or the bus, or the train. So.... where?

As I write this I'm at home... alone... on my computer. I wonder if you can die from it...