Stigma delays help for brain-damaged veterans

In all wars, soldiers who lost limbs were welcomed home as heroes.  Their mentally scarred buddies were shunned and pitied. That cruel stigma continues to burden veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

    A wounded infantryman, captured by the Germans in World War II, could not erase the experience from his mind after he came home to work in his father’s automobile agency. He committed suicide two months later.

     A veteran fighter pilot in Korea taxied to the end of a runway for his 30^th sortie, but could not bring himself to open the throttle and takeoff.   He was sent home.  “Had I been shot down I’d have been a hero,” he said.  “But I had the shakes and went home in shame.”

     A Marine who served two combat tours in Vietnam came home a mental wreck, and for 20 years rampaged through dozens of menial jobs and three brief, unfortunate marriages before he was diagnosed with PTSD and put in a Veteran’s Hospital in Denver.  He still receives weekly VA counseling with a dozen other Vietnam veterans in Cambridge.

      “After combat, a soldier wants to go home, not to some hospital,” he said.  “And if he admits he has screaming nightmares and tremors during the day, he knows he’ll be a marked man, whether he stays in service or tries to get a civilian job.  One of my pals said we’re ‘lepers without lesions’. I agree.”

      Only in recent days have military commanders sent condolence letters to families of veterans who took their own lives, whether in a combat zone or after returning to the United States.  That negative attitude toward mental distress has delayed evaluation of brain-damaged veterans and contributed directly to an increase in suicides, family violence, broken homes and homelessness.

      Since 2005 the Veterans Administration, Walter Reed Hospital Center and the Pentagon have promised to speed diagnostic and rehabilitative services for veterans with PTSD.  It hasn’t happened.  The unconscionable waiting time, even to receive evaluation, much less rehabilitation, affirms stigma’s power.

     “Frankly, I’m dismayed that a whole new generation of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan fare little better than we did when we came home from Vietnam 40 years ago,” said the Marine combat veteran.  “It’s inexcusable.”

     William Schoenhard, the VA’s deputy undersecretary for health operations and management, agrees the VA has not been as quick as it should have been, and that simply tracking only the time it takes for new patients to get their first appointment is unacceptable.

     George Arana, VA’s acting assistant deputy undersecretary for clinical operations, apologized for delays that spawned hundreds of horror stories across the country when he testified last week before the Senate Veteran’s Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

      Stigma has placed a heavy burden on brain-damaged veterans in every conflict and motivated soldiers to deny their illness, knowing admission would diminish any chance of promotion should they stay in the military, and be detrimental to civilian employment should they leave.

      Apologies from VA’s mid-level administrators don’t solve the long-festering problem. Only a mandate from the president, the VA administrator and Murray can break through the logjam of pending cases and give top priority to treating the signature wound of the Iraqi and Afghan wars: brain damage.

     

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Carlton E. Spitzer

Crusade for freedom gives hope to the world

In late June, China’s Premiere Wen Jiabao surprised his British hosts by calling for more freedom and democracy. Corruption and income disparities were harming China, he told his London audience.  Skeptics pointed to China’s recent crackdown on mere talk of a people’s uprising.  But Jiabao has consistently called for reforms to safeguard his nation’s economic growth, and his latest message was received with a measure of hope.

     That same week in Cambodia, four surviving Khmer Rouge leaders went on trial in Phnom Penh before a United Nations-sponsored tribunal seeking belated justice for an estimated 1.7 million people slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.  Few had imagined those responsible would ever be brought to account.  

     But the most powerful evidence that a crusade for truth and freedom is underway throughout the world is displayed by the courage of  thousands of average citizens in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria who braved armed resistance as they demanded removal of tyrants and a voice in their governments.

     They have succeeded with minimal bloodshed in Tunisia and Egypt, but Libya is engulfed in a desperate civil war, with NATO forces aligned with insurgents.  The outcome there  is uncertain.  Syria’s armed repression has already taken many lives and no nation has come to the aid of  the oppressed. 

     America’s engagement in these uprisings has been hesitant and selective:

Aggressive military support for insurgents in Libya, on-the-scene diplomatic assistance in Tunisia and Egypt, but only distant pronouncements on Syria.  . 

     America has courted despots who could assure access to oil and would  permit us to build airbases on their land.  Others let us use their deep water ports to service our Navy.   Thus we maneuver carefully in the midst of uprisings to protect our interests, even as we support their people. Our professed values are often in conflict with political and commercial realities.

      We work through the United Nations where we can, but do not hesitate to go it alone.  America’s military might is second to none and we are called on to be the world’s policeman.  Our diplomats are global mediators.  And our intelligence services monitor the world.  Our drones are so effective that adversaries are in a fierce competition to replicate them.

     Precise intelligence, verified by multiple sources, guided a small band of SEALS to Osama bin Laden’s walled compound in Pakistan.  Proof that our sleuthing has vastly improved since 9/11.

      Lack of communication between the FBI and CIA was a contributing factor in failing to stop terrorists who took over jet airliners and used them as weapons.   Flight schools had notified the FBI that Arabic students paying cash had shunned jet simulator instruction on takeoffs and landings and wanted only to learn to control big jets in flight.  That they were not apprehended still boggles the mind. 

      Today the thirst for freedom is palpable and persistent, even in Syria where peaceful demonstrations are met with gunfire, and in other nations where women have suffered second class citizenship for generations, denied the right to vote, to travel alone or drive a car.

      Technology aids in the quest for freedom.  Instant messages, including photos, are transmitted from hand-held devices to every corner of the earth.  Dictators can no longer control communication.   But the people can.. 

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Carlton E. Spitzer      

Do actors have hidden brain powers?

I am in awe of actors.  Spencer Tracey said it was all a matter of remembering lines and not bumping into furniture.  But memorization alone is a formidable challenge.  And literally becoming the person one is portraying to bring a rapt audience to tears and laughter is a rare gift.

     Perhaps actors synapses work overtime between the brain’s Hippocampus and Neocortex, giving them extraordinary powers of memorization and creativity.  My friend David H. Foster, who has played dozens of roles over the years with amazing skill, says one memorizes a page at a time, then focuses on character development.  He makes it sound so simple.  Admirers know it is not.

     The late Jim Peyton, a frequent performer with local theatre groups for many years, personified an actor’s determination to “get in character.”  He often performed, “Lepers Without Lesions,” a monologue on the life of Frank Spillman, a Vietnam veteran who still suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.   He met Frank, and they talked for hours.  Frank sometimes accompanied him to performances to respond to questions from the audience.  They did not resemble each other physically.  But on stage, Jim was Frank.   Eric Mihan has performed the role with equal conviction since Jim’s passing. 

     Bob Chauncey, executive director, the Hugh Gregory Gallagher Motivational Theatre, Inc., is a strong believer in educating the public through dramatizations of real life experiences.   But performances must be convincing as well as entertaining, he says.  Chauncey often performs, “My Black Bird Has Flown Away,” on Gallagher’s life.  He studied films of Gallagher’s presentations, read his books, and had long discussions with Gallagher’s friends and family before he premiered the play.

     Actors bring stories alive, and make us believe the characters they portray live once again.  It is enormously hard work.  The best actors make it look easy.  The shrug of a shoulder, the raised eyebrow, the movement of a hand, the change of tone, or the pregnant pause add meaning to the words. 

     Washington, D.C. actor Jabari Exum performed my monologue on Frederick Bailey (Douglass)  June 17 as part of the Frederick Douglass gala weekend, culminating in the unveiling of a statue of Douglass on the Talbot Courthouse green.  Exum was to have performed from a small stage.  Lighting was arranged accordingly. But when the moment came, musicians had failed to remove band instruments from the stage.  Sizing up the situation as he entered the back of  the Tidewater Inn’s Gold Room, Exum chanted slave songs as he made his way to the front of the room, casually placed a chair in front of the stage he used as a prop, and interacted with the audience for the next twenty minutes as if it had all been arranged that way. 

     Not only did the versatile actor give a brilliant performance, but adjusted so smoothly to the unexpected circumstance that no one but the two masters of ceremonies and myself knew.  Synapses in Exum’s extraordinary brain work overtime.   No doubt about it.   Little wonder I’m in awe of accomplished actors.

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Carlton E. Spitzer