Iraq war veteran holds hostage, wants treatment

[sabra]

Source: AP

HERINGTON, Kan. - A veteran of the Iraq war who held his family hostage and wore military armor during a standoff with police surrendered only after being assured he would receive help for post-traumatic stress disorder, police said.

The Fort Riley soldier, whose name was not released because he had not been charged, locked himself and his family inside his Herington home Sunday night. He released his family shortly after the incident began, but surrendered only after talking to a Herington police officer who had befriended him, police Chief John Pritchard said.

Police went to the man's home about 8:30 p.m., after receiving a call that he was holding his wife and four children hostage. After releasing his family before officers arrived, he put on military body armor and said he wanted to "go down in a blaze of glory," Pritchard said.

Pritchard said the man had nine loaded firearms, including two assault rifles, in the house. The man did not point a weapon at officers during the standoff, but officers saw him with a weapon in a backyard several times, he said.

...

Pritchard said one of the conditions of the man's surrender was that he receive treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, from which the man believed he was suffering because of his service in Iraq. Pritchard said he didn't know when or how long the man had served.

Read more: http://www.kansas.com/197/story/46646.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Well...

There's a story that has a certain air of inevitability around it.

[sutz12]

3. Sadly, yes....

Hopefully, he gets the help he needs.

[OwnedByFerrets]

7. Help HELL...........

Monkeyboy will put him back in uniform and send him back to Iraq.:sarcasm:

[fighttheevilempire]

13. Sadly, the sarcasm icon doesn't belong there.

I have no doubts that "president shit for brains" (as per maher) wouldn't ship him back this instant. We've got a surge going you know.

[babylonsister]

2. Whoa. Speechless. nt

[NMDemDist2]

4. good grief

what these damned bushies done to our country

:cry:

[Paulie]

5. Looks like the movie "Article 99" will be able to be done as a remake

As a country we continue to FAIL with helping our combat veterans. :cry:

[vickitulsa]

6. Because vets do not receive and never have received adequate treatment for PTSD,

this is the sort of story we're going to be hearing more and more often now, imo.

I have a great many Vietnam vet friends who have suffered -- many in silence for decades -- from the disabling, maddening symptoms of PTSD. Most of them only got treatment at long last because others of their "brothers" who'd already begun dealing with PTSD's demons in treatment helped them toward that end.

Having been diagnosed with PTSD years ago myself (childhood trauma, not combat), and being of the same generation, having lived through those years of turmoil and horror that were Vietnam, I relate all too well to these vets. And by extension, I understand what all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who have followed in their tracks since are going through as well. I've been talking about this subject to everyone who will listen ever since the first Gulf War.

The battles these veterans have to fight AFTER their tours of duty are in many ways even more difficult than combat experiences. And you have to consider that while they're involved in active fighting, especially on foreign soil, they have their close friendships with other troops to provide a great deal of support. This is something that is immediately gone when they return to their "normal lives back home."

Most of them find it very difficult to even talk about their experiences and the savage symptoms of PTSD that bring their lives to wrack and ruin in pretty short order after they get back. They know that others who haven't "been there" simply cannot understand in any deep way the emotional impact and effects of their war experiences.

They were also trained to the max to be strong and not to give in to normal human feelings of empathy or sympathy for others -- or for themselves! Signs of weakness were considered a very big liability, and so they learned very well the habit of stuffing their feelings, trying to ignore them. They contained as best they could their fear and sorrow and wrenching, roiling pain of losing buddies and witnessing atrocities of war. Maybe worst of all, they have to live with what they themselves have done -- the killing and wounding of others, the destruction of homes and livelihoods and taking of innocent lives.

But the fact is most humans don't do well when they continue to try to hold in and bury such powerful emotions. They try to carry on, but at some point their intrusive symptoms reduce them to a state where they simply can no longer cope with daily life.

I know from personal experience that hypervigilance alone can make you feel stark raving crazy. One Navy corpsman (medic) Nam vet I am very close to was so hypervigilant that he was constantly jerking his head around at the slightest noise even 30 years later and in the safe and lonely confines of his very own home of many years! He had three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, having performed heroic measures during several incidents incountry in the late 60's. He was one of the medics the Navy trains who "humped the boonies" right alongside the Marine grunts.

The VA ignored Ken until it was finally no longer possible for him to function -- then they started medicating him into a stupor. He had a car accident driving while overmedicated and nearly died. Then he lay in his own piss and shit in a VA hospital in Virginia, suffering the horrors of the damned alone, until a fellow vet visited him there and contacted a group of vets and friends online about Ken's deplorable conditions. We raised hell and made calls and wrote letters, and Ken was immediately rescued and given star treatment -- but I know the conditions for most others even in that same facility didn't improve much, if at all.

If they don't have someone close to them who can tolerate their behavior and stick it out with them, constantly helping them to cope and also to seek and persistently DEMAND the treatment that they need and deserve from the VA and the broader society in which they live -- what they were PROMISED when they signed up ("first rate health care for life!"), veterans can be left to endure the most horrible fates imaginable in this country they either volunteered or were drafted to "defend."

And remember the eruption of violence into the public domestic sphere like what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday tends to be "contagious" in some sense.

Imagine how many Iraq and Afghanistan vets are watching all this news coverage, and thinking about how close they sometimes feel to a personal explosion of "mindless" violence! The Korean man who caused so much death and destruction on that campus had only two handguns, too, according to reports so far. Imagine an angry, suffering vet's thoughts on how much damage HE could do with much more weaponry, such as the vet in this OP story had....

I started predicting such events as in the OP more loudly ever since I learned they were sending Iraq vets with PTSD symptoms right back into action over there, maybe with medication but with under-diagnoses that are disgracefully but intentionally given.

Their anger at the betrayal they're receiving at the hands of the VA and the government in general -- and possibly in their minds by the public as well, and I can't disagree with them on that for the most part -- just builds and builds as they continue on over time without adequate attention, intervention, and treatment. What they get instead of a proper response, when they do try to get help from the VA, is a cold shoulder at best and outright putdowns and denials of their suffering at worst.

Endless delays, screwed-up appointments, ignoring their urgent needs, treating them like flakes or defectives who should be ashamed ... all that is routine from the VA system. All the while the system is running out the clock on these vets, knowing many will either give up or die.

We're in for a very long time of seeing this sort of outrage in our country. I feel for the vets and their families from the deepest part of me, and I hope that America's citizens WAKE UP to this very serious problem before we see too many incidents like the above to count....

[Karenina]

14. PLEASE post this in GD.

K&R. :cry:

[vickitulsa]

17. Well, I would -- and thanks for the suggestion -- but I'm not very good

at starting and managing threads! :scared:

Please feel free to use any portion or all of my post to start a thread on the subject if you like -- you have my full permission. And I'd be glad to participate in such a thread ... it's hard to explain why I'm just not good at initiating them, but take my word for it. :)

I've been commenting on this urgent subject pretty often here at DU ever since I came here. Something in me just compels me to keep doing it, to make as many people as I can more aware of the terrible wrongs and the huge problem for our society of how we treat our veterans.

[xchrom]

8. quelle surprise -- bushco has consistently treated vets badly

-- and vets with ptsd have always had hard time getting what they need -- so people are getting desperate.

[Decruiter]

9. We are in for a very long national nightmare. Vietnam aftermath is

going to seem like a walk in the park and then some. A picnic on the beach.

We owe so much to those being "forced" to serve.

[Javaman]

10. I'm glad he had mind enough to ask for help...

even if it was in this extreme manner.

I hope he recovers.

Damn this war.

[Dr Fate]

11. Good lord- I hope they can help the guy. Glad no one got physically hurt. n/t

n/t

[superconnected]

12. The hell, he'll get help. He's going to jail.

This is America. Our modern society puts the mentally disturbed in jail and realizes the real problem is we can't torture them...yet.

[vickitulsa]

16. You're absolutely correct, I suspect.

This sounds like it might be a slightly different case, since apparently the vet KNEW a member of law enforcement with whom he was allowed to talk to resolve the standoff. It's POSSIBLE they will provide treatment to the vet, but I strongly suspect he will be unable to avoid being charged with a crime and thus will likely be jailed and maybe eventually sent to prison for a time.

I'd like to follow up on this story to see if it's possible to learn what happened afterward.

Ever since the Reagan years, when so many facilities for treating the mentally ill were closed or greatly reduced in size and scope, the mentally ill among us have ended up on the streets and in our prisons.

I know this for a fact because I was IN prison in 1991 and saw more and more incoming prisoners who were mental patients, not criminals. I also had two prison penpals very longterm who assured me over time that this trend continues unabated to this day.

Often, persons with mental illness do fairly well in prison, where their every movement and activity is closely supervised and determined for them. They become institutionalized and dependent on that structure -- not unlike the structure of a mental instutition, though prison offers much less in the way of compassion or "treatment" as you would expect.

Then when one's sentence is served, s/he is released into the "wild west" of our culture, often in the inner cities, with no support system whatsoever. Oh, the authorities like to pretend there is a support system in the form of halfway houses or whatever, but trust me, it's a MILL, a FACTORY, the way our prison system works, and there is no real support provided to those transitioning from prison or jail to "the free world."

One of my dearest friends was wrongly convicted of a double murder over 30 years ago and was thrown in prison in Michigan on his 17th birthday with a life sentence. I met him through a penpal program and we wrote and had a few rare, expensive phone calls for over 15 years. He served 29+ years before finally being released when his appeal was granted. The current prosecutor actually shook his hand upon his release and assured him there would be no new trial. It was the closest they came to an apology for a wrong that boggles the mind.

Jay literally grew up in prison, and because his home life was so extremely abusive, he actually found life in prison to be "more kind" than what he'd had before. That's not to say he received very good treatment for his mental distress, but they did a better job of it in his rare case than his family and community had done up to that point. Jay is a brilliant and very sensitive man who came to grips with his demons mostly on his own, and he adjusted to life in prison and learned how to cope -- and did quite well at it, even though you can imagine that life in prison at a medium or greater security level must be supremely miserable to say the least!

Still, he did well, and he's one of the most decent and smart and enjoyable people I've ever known in my life. I trust him completely and we've been in almost daily contact, mostly via computer, ever since his release 18 months ago. He's been employed for over a year already and is very reliable and steady.

But if he had not had a cousin's family that was willing to accept him into their home and help him in every way to adjust to life on the outside, I shudder to think what would have become of him. Even as it was, he didn't have it easy. His relatives are rabid fundies, and he's not, so that put a lot of pressure on him, but he was patient and tolerant and did what he had to to get back on his feet.

Because he won his appeal and no new charges were filed, as happens in a portion of the cases where an inmate is released into our society again, there was absolutely NO system of support or transition for Jay! Other prisoners who are paroled or pre-paroled do have some follow-up by probation and parole officials, though that could scarcely be considered "transition support," since it's mostly just some rules a parolee has to follow and some reporting requirements -- all of which are often ignored, by the way. Heavy case loads preclude close tracking and supervision, just like with our official system for monitoring abused children in the homes where they live.

What the vet in the OP will face is the same totally inadequate and ineffective ways of handling both mental or emotional illness and drug abuse or crime that this country has been satisfied with for too long. It's bound to catch up with us at some point, and I think, as another poster said, we've definitely reached and passed that "tipping point."

[Doctor_J]

15. This won't be the last of these stories we hear

But as long as I have my yellow ribbon bumper sticker on my 7,000 pound SUV that I drive two blocks to the grocery store, I've done my part to support the troops.

:eyes: