For two years Nesson watched as Murray battled the Veterans’ Administration for a doctor’s appointment, fought off a collection agency, and screamed and cried and punched walls in PTSD-fueled frustration. Her film, Poster Girl, has now been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). It is a breathtaking look at a hidden war, one that leaves far more soldiers dead on the home front, by suicide, than on the battlefield. http://huff.to/evq3fh

A recent study conducted by Stanford University found that rates of PTSD among service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan may be as high as 35%. With two million troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, we can expect that an astounding 700,000 veterans will suffer from PTSD. http://bit.ly/dQoHgu

WASHINGTON, D.C. – At the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, top Senate Democrats raised loud objections to a House Republican plan that they said would eliminate 10,000 housing vouchers for homeless veterans this year, an effort to save $75 million from the 2011 federal budget. http://bit.ly/ggHr13

Veteran’s advocacy groups must continue to raise our collective voices in opposition to this Nation’s civilian leadership’s attempts to manipulate public sentiment by voicing in public their unyiedding support for Veterans while simultaneoulsy and callously cutting programs that would benefit those that willingly sacrificed for this Nation.

Please read below-the anguish expressed by a Family member is real and pitch perfect / When in God’s name are we going to get them the resources they so desperately need to cope and rebuild their lives. Please help by donating to the Invictus Foundation/

I remember being at Bethesda Naval Hospital the morning after my husband overdosed the first time. I hadn’t slept other than the small amount I had had before I found him dieing next to me. After a night of panic, vomit covered CPR, following ambulances, full blown panic attacks, and being yelled at by my recently revived husband for, “Overreacting and calling 911”, I had had it. I can honestly say at that point I felt as if the world was against me – I couldn’t think straight, I was “done”. http://bit.ly/hzoPCj

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) became part of the American vocabulary after the Vietnam War as its affects on veterans became widely publicized. Now, a new generation of American veterans are again victims of PTSD. This series explores the impact of politics on the funding, diagnosis and treatment of veterans suffering from PTSD. It examines the propaganda used to justify a reduction in benefits to veterans with PTSD and the effort to redirect blame for the ravages of war to the soldiers themselves. http://bit.ly/hAUpv5

“When we interact with animals there are neurochemicals that are released in our brain that help us with mood control, feel less anxious, less depressed, and feel better,” MU College of Veterinary Medicine Rebecca Johnson said. “So exposure to these dogs will give these service members all of those benefits”. http://bit.ly/edCpcS

A rhetorical question whose answer lies in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves”. This Nation cannot continue to give lip service to the PTSD tsunami caused by ten years of war. The harsh reality is that 18 veterans a day commit suicide. In the face of that reality what we see is proposed cuts to the VA budget for services which will almost certainly guarantee continued barriers to competent behavior health services, enormous delays in processing disability claims and now to an already exhaustive list of inaction, we can add a lack of competent crisis intervention training by public safety officers to deal with the tsunami .http://bit.ly/hsUpoh

The 19th annual Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice will be presented on Saturday, May 7, 2011, to Dr. Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., for his work studying and understanding the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans of the Vietnam War, and for bringing to public attention the specific causes, effects, and complex realities of war-induced psychological injury. http://bo.st/gpxEtZ

Like those who spoke out against the Witch Trials in 1692, it is his voice and the voice of others speaking out against injustice that have changed the way the military and the public treat a group of citizens, in this case US troops who suffer from PTSD, both during active duty and after. Through his work, Dr. Shay has helped make it possible for those who serve in the military and others in the path of war with PTSD to be offered treatment so that they have an opportunity to lead a full life.

Information disclosed by the Pentagon to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee revealed that visits by family members of active-duty military personnel to therapists have increased at a compound annual growth rate of 15% over the past 10 years. http://bit.ly/gNtnbT

Among OIF/OND participants in Iraq, the proportion of medical evacuations because of what were termed “mental disorders” sharply increased from 7.2% in 2003 to 22.0% in 2010. http://bit.ly/eOAU0B

The increase in the relative proportion of medical evacuations due to mental disorders among OIF/OND participants was most apparent among females.