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There’s a continuing tension over whether mental disorders are “organic” or “psychological”. The first is easier to define — a brain injury caused by an insult, such as a bullet wound, blow to the head or bomb blast. “Psychological” is usually chalked up to bad parenting. Two new debates raise this issue again. One is [...]
Two separate events Wednesday put into sharp focus what is happening to the young Americans the nation has been sending off to war for more than a decade: – At 2 p.m., scientists at Boston University and the Boston VA announced they have found chronic traumatic encephalopathy – brain damage like that suffered by boxers [...]
I am encouraged recently to see that community-based, civilian clinicians want to be prepared to meet the mental health needs of returning veterans and their families. One great example is the extraordinary response to a free on-line educational series From the War Zone to the Home Front: Supporting the Mental Health Needs of Veterans and [...]
Next week is the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, the largest yearly gathering of its kind. It’s exciting because of the prominence military matters are going to get. Last year there were perhaps 15 military-related sessions at the meeting in Hawaii. This year, there’s going to be twice as many dedicated to military [...]
Even as the pace of war, and the number of Americans waging it, is falling, their need for mental-health care is growing. On Thursday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it is boosting its mental-health workforce by 1,600 psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers – a 10% hike, as well as hiring 300 support staff to [...]
1. The Army announced that there were a total of 28 suspected suicides in its active and reserve ranks, nearly double February’s suspected toll of 15 suicides. 2. The San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco, released a study showing that Vietnam-era vets who did more killing during their combat [...]
The Army’s Medical Department just published a journal devoted to the use of dogs in Army medicine. I wanted to highlight the publication here on Time’s Battleland. Both dog- and soldier-lovers can read it for free. Army medicine has been using dogs to work with combat stress-control teams in theater since about 2007. Dogs assist [...]
In the national quest to understand what motivated Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales to leave his compound in the middle of the night, and allegedly gun down 16 men, women and children, there have been many motives already put forth. These include a “witches brew” of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), marital [...]
The trickle of mitigating circumstances trying to understand the motive of the Army soldier who allegedly slaughtered 16 Afghan civilians last Sunday has turned into an avalanche over the past 24 hours. According to a defense attorney retained by his family, and news reports of rumors, innuendo and perhaps some facts, Staff Sergeant X has [...]
For the past few days, Washington’s, America’s, probably much of the world’s airways have been filled with commentary about the horrific killings in Afghanistan allegedly committed by an American soldier. Radio, TV and the blogosphere have been inundated with reports, predictions, and speculation—why he did it, what it means for the American war effort in [...]
