PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder): An anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. People with PTSD have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of their ordeal. They may experience sleep problems, feel detached or numb, or be easily startled.

TBI (traumatic brain injury): Also called a concussion.

ASR (acute stress reaction): The immediate aftermath of a traumatic incident in a combat zone. The military describes it as normal reactions among troops confronted by abnormal situations.

CID (critical incident debrief): The Army's term for a mandatory session that takes place 24 to 72 hours after an event that may be sapping a soldier's will to fight.

 think the North Central coast of New Zealand’s North Island is as close to paradise as you are likely to find. We don’t know for certain why Captain Cook called it “The Bay of Plenty” in 1769. But at the port of Taurange, a three hour drive south from Auckland, the average low temperature in the winter (March through August) is a cool 41F, and the average high in the summer is a pleasant 75F. During the winter rainy season the average rainfall is only 4 to 5 inches a month. And even though its beach lined coast is bisected by the Taupo Volcanic Zone, with its northern terminus of White Island, one of the most accessible and active, explosive volcanoes in the world, a mere 30 miles off the coast, there is nothing in the geological history to indicate that this resort region has anything particular to fear from Mother Nature. The violence and the fireworks of this land are merely harmless backdrops. Or at least they were until 45 year old James Bowring went on the prowl.

Today December 12, 2007, there's a hearing on Stopping Suicide and Ending Homelessness: Mental Health Challenges Within the Department of Veterans Affairs by the House Veterans' Affairs Committee,

Ilona Meagher, of PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within and author of Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops, is scheduled to be one of the ones to testify at this Congressional hearing, as many already know. If you have the chance, and C-Span carries this hearing please watch! Ilona has a short send off post at her site, seems though she's caught in the Mid West ice storm, here's hoping this Important New Voice on PTSD can make it to DC!

There are many sources that will show that Americans pay about twice as much as Europeans for their health care. I would tell you that we pay three times as much for health care in this country due to hidden costs. Here is an example.

It aired this morning on NPR's Morning Edition-Saturday, at the end of this post about Andrew there's another short inteview with Tammy Duckworth.

A growing number of soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental issues related to combat stress. Two Washington Post reporters discuss the challenges some of these men and women face getting help.

We bandy around the word insane, we call those who disagree with use crazy. We have a stereotyped image of a crazy person cowering in a fetal position gibbering incoherently. But mental illness and insanity are real, and at the highest levels of government are more than just debilitating they are threatening for the peaceful existence of the planet it’s self.

This is a very moving testimonial, from the speeches of the committee members, to the family members which will bring tears and rage into your being.

This is what Oversight and Congressional Investigations should look like, sound like, something this Congress and Country are finally doing, way Long Overdue and Too Late For Far Too Many!

As a child the Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui could not speak, and this was a concern to his parents, his grandparents, and his uncle.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak a second language, English, that he would have had to learn when his parents emigrated to the US when the child was 9 years old, it was that he didn’t speak at all.  His disability was pronounced at an early age, impacted negatively on his socialization skills, and learning a second language would have been that much more difficult.

When Memories Are Scars
By Matt Bean, Men's Health

The report, in a section about mens health, should have been written to cover all human beings. For Tramatic Experiances that bring about PTSD is not unique to Man but also to Women and, in my oppinion, Women can and do have a greater veriaty of tramatic experiances that can alter the brain brought on them by who else but Men.
The lead in to this report is just below.