SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―As the economy tumbled, many race tracks went out of business, leaving many greyhound racing dogs out of a home, but a new program is retraining the animals to help serve military veterans.  Steve Manning, a former Marine who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), said a prescription of lithium xiproxene dithicote and Prozac can’t help fix his emotional problems, but his dog Cowgirl can.

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The number of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) casualties has increased tremendously, especially for Route Clearance Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers who are exposed to IED-associated blasts are often not aware of any resulting mild Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and return to duty without proper medical diagnosis and treatment.  The U.S. Army and Columbia University are collaborating on a project to develop a pre- and post-deployment functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) protocol that identifies a specific neural signature from blast-induced TBI in soldiers and provides vehicle intelligence. fMRI measures the changes in blood flow related to neural activity in the brain.

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NAMI Testifies At Senate Veterans Hearing: More Outreach And Mental Vietnam era combat pilot and national board member of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Clarence Jordan testified at a Senate hearing today calling for better outreach and coordination of mental health care by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

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The question from the counselor was simple and straight forward: Did anyone need help dealing with the violence they encountered on the front lines in Iraq? No one in the Marine unit raised their hand, especially not Daniel Hanson, who thought he didn’t even have the “right” to ask for a therapist’s help since he experienced far less death and destruction than did his friends in the infantry.

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When Michael Manna left the Navy in the summer of 2009, he was suffering from depression but didn’t know where to turn for help.  A Marine friend saw in Manna the post-traumatic stress he had experienced and urged the 27-year-old from Glen Gardner to call the New Jersey Veterans Helpline.  “It’s the first time when I’ve reached out and have said I need help and I got a response,” Manna said.  During a 20-minute conversation, Master Sgt. Chuck Arnold, a Vietnam veteran trained in counseling, talked to Manna about what was troubling him and the negative thoughts he was having.

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The first day Kristine Wise returned from eight months military service in Iraq, she knew something was wrong. Driving from San Diego to Bakersfield to see her brother, the road signs triggered flashbacks. “One said ‘railroad,’ but instead I saw ‘roadside’ and in my mind a roadside bomb,” said Wise, who supplied parts to combat vehicles in the first wave of the war. “I would see ‘beware’ and my mind would see ‘Baghdad.’ I couldn’t explain it.”   The depression and panic attacks began long before her honorable discharge in 2004, but the battle to get the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to take her symptoms seriously was just as difficult.

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America’s Army, an online combat game developed by the Pentagon, has helped boost military recruitment. The game’s technology is not all that different from the tools used in today’s war zones to guide unmanned drones and perform other tasks.   In a recent article for Foreign Policy, Peter Singer, the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, explored the question of how realistic that technology really is and the extent to which virtual and actual war have merged.

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Sgt. Doraliza Velez-Collazo used to sleep with the lights on, haunted by nightmares since suffering a traumatic brain injury in Iraq. Severe depression kept her inside her small rented room in Southern California most days.  But just before the holidays, a 10-pound ball of fur came into her life and quickly began to turn it around.  Lupita, a 3-year-old Chihuahua that had been abandoned at a Los Angeles County shelter, was placed with Velez-Collazo with the help of Pets for Vets, a nonprofit organization.

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The act of killing is as fundamental to war as oxygen is to fire. Yet it is also the one thing many combat veterans avoid discussing when they return home, whether out of shame, guilt or a deep fear of being misunderstood.  But a new study of Iraq war veterans by researchers in San Francisco suggests that more discussion of killing may help veterans cope with an array of mental health problems stemming from war.

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