President Obama signed an executive order on Friday, August 31, directing the Veterans Administration to hire 1,600 new mental health professionals, as reported by NPR.
Salient quotes from the executive order:
“Since September 11, 2001, more than two million service members have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Long deployments and intense combat conditions require optimal support for the emotional and mental health needs of our service members and their families. The need for mental health services will only increase in the coming years as the Nation deals with the effects of more than a decade of conflict.”
“Department of Veterans Affairs shall ensure that any veteran identifying him or herself as being in crisis connects with a mental health professional or trained mental health worker within 24 hours.”
“The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense shall jointly develop and implement a national suicide prevention campaign focused on connecting veterans and service members to mental health services.”
“The lack of full understanding of the underlying mechanisms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), other mental health conditions, and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) has hampered progress in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. In order to improve the coordination of agency research into these conditions and reduce the number of affected men and women through better prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Education, in coordination with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, shall establish a National Research Action Plan within 8 months of the date of this order.”
“Within 180 days of the date of this order, in those service areas where the Department of Veterans Affairs has faced challenges in hiring and placing mental health service providers and continues to have unfilled vacancies or long wait times, the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services shall establish pilot projects whereby the Department of Veterans Affairs contracts or develops formal arrangements with community based providers, such as community mental health clinics, community health centers, substance abuse treatment facilities, and rural health clinics.”
“The Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services shall engage in a comprehensive longitudinal mental health study with an emphasis on PTSD, TBI, and related injuries to develop better prevention, diagnosis, and treatment options.”
What does this mean?
There is a lot more; read the full executive order here.
On the surface, it is most politically correct to provide support for veterans with mental trauma. But what treatments are actually provided by the mental health industry? More psychiatric drugs! The very drugs that are already known to cause violence and suicide.
The fact missed by most is that psychiatric, mind-altering drugs have been found to be the common factor in an overwhelming number of acts of random senseless violence.
These drugs, on an ever increasing rise in society and in the military, are actually creating acts of violence. The scientific research documenting the connection between violence, suicide and psychiatric drugs is overwhelming.
The use of psychiatric drugs escalates when the government, the mental health industry, and the psychopharmaceutical industry target new markets to increase profits. Antidepressants are a hoax — a hoax that is killing members and veterans of our armed services.
So-called post-traumatic stress disorder emerged in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when veterans were having difficulties overcoming the brutal events they had witnessed. Three American psychiatrists coined the term PTSD and lobbied for its inclusion in the 1980 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. While the effects of war are devastating, psychiatrists use people’s logical reactions to it to make money at the expense of their vulnerability.
Some experts say that most of the soldiers suffering the effects of participating in particularly dangerous missions were experiencing battle fatigue, or in other words, exhaustion, not “mental illness.”
Today, PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been interpreted as mental disorders.
Psychiatric trauma treatment at best is useless, and at worst highly destructive to victims seeking help. By medicalizing what is a non-medical condition and introducing harmful drugs as a therapy, victims have been denied effective treatment options.
In 2010, at least one in six service members was taking a psychiatric drug. What do you suppose the number is now? What do you suppose the consequences will be with 1,600 more mental health workers in the Veterans Administration?
Contact the White House here and provide your opinion, or call the White House Comment Line at 202-456-1111 and express your point of view. Contact your local, state and federal officials and tell them what you think. Write General Lloyd James Austin III, Army Vice Chief of Staff, at 1400 Defense Pentagon, Washington DC 20301-1400. Write the Honorable Eric K. Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, at 810 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20420.