Women deployed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are emerging as a group especially vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder, researchers reported this week at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Assn. http://lat.ms/kQBbbT

Worth reading and listening to mp3 @ http://bit.ly/jztxn2

A startling number of our service members and veterans are taking their own lives. They are returning from war with wounds to the mind that can prove to be as deadly as wounds to the body.http://bit.ly/jZJY8k

We continue to talk a good game about “Support Our Troops” and the military goes so far as to find a Poster Boy to provide confirmation that competent resources are available for warriors and their families and then the Poster Boy shows it to be the balderdash it is by succumbing to the torment in his soul. My God, people, when will we act!!! http://on.msnbc.com/dRQ6hK

http://bit.ly/ewT59L

My last blog post spoke of the disconnectedness of those in our military community from the public at large. The first line of an article in a Seattle newspaper about this tragedy was, “we may never know what happened”-Complete and utter balderdash-Easier to absolve ourselves from our societal responsibility of “if we send them, we must mend them” by chalking it up to the randomness of the Universe rather than actually investigating the appalling lack of resources that are available to those that we ask to carry the burden of multiple deployments and multiple tactical operation areas.

Several VA doctors and therapists interviewed said there is sometimes no way to tell how many of a veteran’s medical problems are related to a mild TBI and how many are triggered or worsened by post-traumatic stress disorder. http://bit.ly/dVE3el

“An epidemic of disconnection.” That’s how journalist and author Bob Woodward has described the increasing distance between the small community of military personnel who are bearing the burden of war and American society in general.http://bit.ly/i0r2yq

“A must-read for anyone who wants to make the phrase, ‘Support the Troops,’ more than a slogan.”–Former US Senator Max Cleland

“”Weep, America, cringe, America. We talk a good game about honoring all those who go into harm’s way for our sake, but do we go beyond fine words and a few gold-plated flagship medical facilities? Aaron Glantz is in our face on the military treatment facilities, the VA, and civilian society at large.” –Jonathan Shay , Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America The War Comes Home is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government’s neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan http://amzn.to/fVZtBg Aaron Glantz, who reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of this war, interviewed more than one hundred recent war veterans, and here he intersperses their haunting first-person accounts with groundbreaking investigative journalism. This timely book does more than provide us with a personal connection to those whose service has cost them so dearly. It compels us to confront how America treats its veterans and to consider what kind of nation deifies its soldiers and then casts them off as damaged goods.

Produce by NPR-Great Story-Be sure to stream and listen-

At 8:20 p.m. on Sept. 21, 2010, Iraq veteran Brock Savelkoul decided it was time to die. He lurched from his black Tacoma pickup truck, gripping a 9-mm pistol. In front of him, a half-dozen law enforcement officers crouched behind patrol cars with their weapons drawn. They had surrounded him on a muddy red road after an hourlong chase that reached speeds of 105 miles per hour. http://n.pr/idvaQM

The study, issued last month by the Veterans Administration’s inspector general, found that female Veterans may be unaware that Women Veterans Coordinators are available at regional offices to help them with matters such as filing disability claims for PTSD, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other mental health conditions. http://bit.ly/gWDMTr