Doug's Dynamic Drivel

It can only get worse

8 December, 2009 (17:56) | Business, Environment, Medical

This IPS report By Dahr Jamail US: Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier on Soldier Violence is frightening to read. Here are a few clips:

Kernan Manion, a psychiatrist who was hired last January to treat Marines returning from war who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other acute mental health problems borne from their deployments, fears more soldier-on-soldier violence without radical changes in the current soldier health care system.

This episode is just one that is indicative of pervasive and worsening systemic problems afflicting a military mental health care system that is overburdened, overstressed, under-staffed, and ill equipped, but one that, according to Manion. Care is also administered by career military officers who are “ill- trained to provide the complex psychiatric expertise necessary to effectively treat psychologically impaired soldiers.”

Manion explained to IPS that upon returning home, troops suffering from myriad new-onset deployment related mental health problems were flooding the available resources. When they did come in, they had to bear the brunt of pervasive harassment, and oftentimes outright psychological abuse from Marine Corps superiors who refused to acknowledge the validity, much less the severity of their problems.

“I saw previously strong Marines, people who were now very fragile – who were broken by two or more deployments – come back to be squashed by their commanders, who told them they were “goddamn losers”,” Manion told IPS.

Manion holds deep concern for the future of both those treating traumatised soldiers, and the soldiers themselves.

“If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we’ll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I’ve heard so many times, “I’m not cut out for society. I can’t stand people. I can’t tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods.” That’s what we’re going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional, members of society,” Manion explained.

That barely scratches the surface of the article. The situation is far worse than the mainstream media are admitting to (no big surprise there, the MSM always obeys the village ~~idiots~~ masters.) At the behest of the Navy, Manion was fired by the private contractor that had hired him. No surprise there either – sweep it under the rug and pretend that real soldiers don’t get wounded psychologically. It’s all symptomatic of a rot that runs through North American society – the disposable nature of the individual in the power wielders search for more money and power.

How long before Main street decides that it has had enough and puts wall street and their like up against a wall, with or without blindfolds, and takes revenge? Good people can only take so much crap before they break and “go postal” and these people are starting to crack around the edges. What happens if Copenhagen is a massive failure, another Kyoto agreement, and all the signs are pointing that way. What happens when average global temperatures rise and the droughts worsen, when the massive release of methane from the previously frozen tundras accelerates GCC even faster and the land based ice melts in the Arctic (Greenland) raising the sea level. Do you, and here I’m talking to the baby boomers and older who hold the seats of power now, do you really think that the youth today will sit back and see their future destroyed, see the future of human life on the planet destroyed, see that their own children, real or hoped for, are condemned to an early death or no life at all. Condemned because some greedy corporate SOB and/or the politicians in his pocket simply wanted to make more profit now, shut out competitors that might innovate and solve the problem, and in doing so hurt his business. Do you really think they will let you get away with your lives? I don’t think so. There will be big red bulls eyes painted on everyone who stood in the way of GCC being solved and corrected, and plenty of people willing to pull the very non-metaphorical triggers.

Give me a little link love would ya ;):