January 22, 2012 – PRweb.com

Right now, across the United States, an estimated 300,000 American service men and women live with invisible wounds of war – known familiarly as post traumatic stress (PTS), depression and traumatic brain injury (TBI). As more troops return home, many more are expected to be diagnosed.

At home, these service members and their families now fight an intensely private war against despair, depression, and anxiety. In an effort to bring awareness to psychological and cognitive injuries, the USO has launched its first-ever Public Service Announcement (PSA) on the invisible wounds of war.

“Portraits” is a documentary style PSA that features service members who proudly answered the call to duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now live with invisible wounds. Service members speak candidly, and sometimes emotionally, about how these invisible wounds have changed their lives forever and ask Americans to take action.

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January 23, 2012 – The Lantern

Some students who come from military backgrounds and then decide to pursue a college education can suffer from the somewhat common disorder known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can occur after someone has experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death.

Roger Buck, the interim director of the Counseling Center at Hocking College, spoke at the event “Understanding Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” held at the Ohio Union on Jan. 19. Buck said one of the biggest problems for students with PTSD is that when coming back from the military culture, they didn’t fit well with the college crowd.

“These veterans are older individuals, have more life experience and leadership,” Buck said. “Veterans with PTSD feel disrespected by the childish behavior of traditional teenage students.”

Buck said for many veterans with PTSD, there is a lack of respect by faculty and staff on campus for the sacrifices of veteran friends killed and injured. Buck said the “non-compassionate” attitude of staff members toward veterans suffering from PTSD does not help solve the problem.

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January 23, 2012 - houmatoday.com

Houma native Brad Hebert was a Marine corporal during the siege of Fallujah in 2004 when he was injured by a roadside bomb that fractured his back, blew out his knee and left him with a traumatic brain injury.

January 24, 2012 – National Guard

To keep pace with the high tempo of deployments, training exercises and operations, National Guard units prepare extensively to ensure all tasks and duties will be completed successfully. But there is no duty area more important to mission success than that of the Family Readiness Group.

The FRG of the 268th Military Police Company is a superb example of how building and maintaining strong relationships among a unit’s families and communities enables Soldiers, units, and commanders to accomplish their duties with the confidence that their families are being taken care of properly.

The FRG is vital to a unit’s ability to accomplish the mission “because it gives Soldiers a sense of comfort that there is a group of people back home to answer questions about military life and to provide information on benefits for families while the Soldier is away,” said Army Capt. Paul Gross, commander of the 268th Military Police Company.

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January 24, 2012 – American Forces Press Service

A new Defense Department website is connecting military children — whether it’s across town or across the world — who are dealing with a loved one’s deployment.

The website, Military Kids Connect, offers military children an online community where they can learn about deployments, recognize and share feelings, and develop coping skills.

Psychologists from the DOD’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology developed the site to build on military kids’ strength and resilience, especially as they deal with the unique stressors of military life.

“We felt by connecting military kids with each other, through providing peer-to-peer support, they’d be able to build on the resilience they have already and learn new coping skills to deal with deployments,” explained Kelly Blasko, a psychologist from the center, dubbed T2.

The site features tools for all stages of the deployment cycle — from predeployment through reintegration.

To help prepare kids for an impending separation, the site includes an interactive map that offers information on numerous deployment locations. The aim here is to “give them positive information, rather than the negative information they hear on the phone or on the news,” Blasko said.

“We tried to focus on the fact they get increased responsibility at home [during a deployment], as well as new routines, because their parent is gone,” she said. “We developed activities around that.”

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