VetsENews.com is a service of
the Veterans Multi-purpose Center. We publish
monthly articles on the latest in news developments involving
Veterans and the military. If you have any questions or comments,
please contact us at: 866-598-8387
Please join us in the fight to provide
hope. Your partnership truly can make a
difference.
The
Veterans Multi-Purpose Center – a
veteran’s mental health care advocate
and veteran support organization in the
field for more than 20 years – is
pleased to introduce our new Corporate
Sponsorship Program. Corporate Sponsors
are now invited to join our Center in
its continuing mission to develop and
promote programs that touch people, and
save lives.
Family Support Gathering For Parents of
Deploying and Deployed OEF/OIF Personnel
With the upcoming deployment of our local
National Guard units, the South Florida Veterans
Multi-Purpose Center will begin two very
important support programs. One program will be
for parents of those deployed and the second one
will be a support group for Spouses and Loved
Ones. (See Below)
Monthly Family Support Gathering For Parents
of Deploying and Deployed OEF/OIF Personnel
There is no greater honor than to have our sons
and daughters serve our great country. It’s
emotionally challenging, however, when those
sons and daughters are preparing to deploy,
while we await their safe return from duty and
while they reintegrate back home.
Please join us for our free monthly support
gathering for parents of OEF/OIF personnel. Come
and meet with other parents in a
non-threatening, casual environment to share
tips, insights and supportive advice during this
often frightening and challenging time.
Gatherings meet the first Wednesday of every
month, beginning Jan. 6, 2010 from 7:00 - 9:00
PM at the South Florida Veterans Multi-Purpose
Center located at 4311 SW 63rd Avenue, Davie, FL
33312. The gathering is free of cost to all
parents of deploying personnel. For more
information, please call 954-791-8603 or
407-493-9656.
Read Full Article
War-torn Troops Soothed
by Horses’ Spirit
(zootoo.com)
MIAMI -- The science of the
human-animal bond is proving very effective in a
new arena: on the home front of a new war.
Returning veterans are finding help, as well as
healing in therapy that involves a saddle and a
set of reins.
"It feels pretty good. I feel
tall," said U.S. Marine Gene Calonge, who
recently returned from his deployment. Learning
to ride again is strengthening the bodies and
minds of young vets here at the South Florida
Veterans Multi-Purpose Center in Davie, Fla.
The last time Calonge mounted
a horse, was his service with the Marine Corps.
This time around it's Sam, a 4-year-old Arabian,
giving him a much-needed boost.
"It's different bonding with
an animal, you feel like you're not going to be
judged so much about anything so ... you and him
just have a good time,” said Calonge.
Support Gathering for Spouses and Loved Ones
of Deploying & Deployed OIF/OEF Personnel
Please join us for a monthly gathering of
spouses and loved ones of OEF/OIF personnel
preparing for deployment, currently deployed, or
recently returned from duty. The gathering is
informal and designed to create a supportive
network of loved ones dealing with the stresses
and emotional challenges faced when those we
love are called to duty. You are not alone. Come
and join us.
Meetings are the 2nd Saturday
of every month beginning Jan. 9, 2010 from
10:00 AM - Noon at the South Florida Veterans
Multi-Purpose Center located at 4311 SW 63rd
Avenue, Davie, FL 33312. The group is free of
cost to all spouses and loved ones of deploying
personnel. For more information please call
954-791-8603 or 407-493-9656
Read Full Article
New addition to South Florida Veterans
Multi-Purpose Center
We
call him Charlie Brown. He came to us
from “Pets in Distress Inc” with no information
on his back ground. Charlie is a mix of Boxer
and Ridgeback around four years old. Charlie is
also a trauma survivor.
According to the
Veterinarian it appears he may have been
attacked by another dog. One of Charlie’s hind
legs had to be amputated. Charlie recovered from
his ordeal and now is showing us his
determination to overcome his disability and is
in training to become a Therapy Dog.
Read Full Article
Nine years later, USS Cole attack claims
another victim
MIAMI — The October 2000 terrorist assault on
the USS Cole killed 17 sailors and injured 39,
among them Petty Officer 3rd Class Johann Gokool
of Homestead, an electronic warfare technician
who lost his left leg.
Last Wednesday, a week
after his 31st birthday, Gokool transitioned
from survivor to victim. Relatives say he died
in his bed, apparently during one of the violent
panic attacks that had plagued him since the
incident.
His younger brother found Gokool about 7 p.m.
Dec. 23 in the house they shared. Medical
examiners still haven't said what killed him,
but relatives believe that a deadly attack
stopped his heart.
The U.S. Navy classified Gokool 100 percent
disabled due to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The attacks came without warning, lasting from a
few minutes to hours, and because of them,
Gokool couldn't work, drive or even bowl -- his
favorite pastime.
Gokool, say relatives, frequently stayed up all
night chatting online with military buddies
around the world. "He didn't like to be in
public in strange places . . . He'd be stuck in
his room for days. He lived like an owl'' she
said He talked about the explosion all the time,
she said. "Anybody who would listen, he would
talk.''
"He would have been a `lifer,' '' said Natala,
herself an Army veteran. "He loved it so much.''
But on Oct. 12, 2000, as the Cole refueled at
the port of Aden, Yemen, terrorists rammed it
with an explosives-filled boat, tearing a
40-foot gash in the hull and triggering deadly
fires. Gokool was in the mess hall.
"When the explosion went off, everything was
in slow motion, like a movie,'' he told The
Miami Herald in 2005. "My body spun around and I
could smell smoke and fuel.''
He fell four stories into an engineering
room, where he lay unconscious for half an hour.
When he awoke, he tried to climb into an escape
trunk: a four-story ladder inside a metal tube.
Then he realized his legs were mangled. "I
don't want to die here,'' he told himself as he
inched up the ladder, hand over hand. At the
top, he found himself trapped by a damaged steel
door. He banged on it until rescuers found him.
As he recovered, Gokool learned to get around on
a prosthetic leg. And he sought PTSD treatment
at the Veterans' Administration Medical Centers
in Miami and Homestead.
They tried hypnosis and a hyperbaric chamber,
Ramish Gokool said, but nothing helped. Several
years ago, Johann stopped taking mood-altering
medications because of the side effects, Natala
said. When he was awake, the episodes were
generally mild, she said. When they struck in
his sleep, he would thrash uncontrollably. A
Naval honor guard will participate in funeral
services after the 9-to-11 a.m. visitation
Saturday at Branam Funeral Home, 809 N. Krome
Ave., Homestead. The family plans to take his
ashes to Arlington National Cemetery, where the
Cole dead lie in a special section.
`He always said he wanted to be interred with
his buddies up there,'' his father said.
Read Full Article
DEPRESSION RATE GOES UP AS TROOPS FACE COMBAT
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Perhaps it's not
surprising, but for members of the U.S. armed
forces, combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan
increases the risk of depression, according to a
new study.
Timothy S. Wells of the U.S. Air Force Research
Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Ohio, studied more than 40,000 members of the
U.S. military who had been free of symptoms of
depression and had not taken medication for
anxiety, stress, or depression before
deployment. The subjects were in all branches of
the military from some or all of 2000 to 2006.
Those who experienced combat had the highest
rate of new diagnoses of depression - about 6
percent for men and about 16 percent for women.
That compared with about 4 percent of men and
about 8 percent of women who were not deployed,
and about 2 percent of men and 5 percent of
women who did not face combat.
Some of the differences in the group that was
not deployed could be explained by the fact that
only those who meet all of the U.S. military's
health requirements are eligible for deployment,
Wells told Reuters Health by email. In other
words, "It is likely that the nondeployed group
had other risk factors, such as other mental
health disorders and health conditions that
placed them at increased risk of depression in
comparison to those who deployed, but were not
exposed to combat."
In their report in the American Journal of
Public Health, the investigators note that male
combat specialists had a lower risk for
depression than men in health care or other
supportive positions, suggesting that "military
hardiness" may help lower risk.
"Individuals who are expected to be exposed to
combat may receive training that alters their
risk for depression compared to non-combat
exposed personnel," Wells said.
Male and female personnel with pre-existing PTSD
were more likely to develop depressive symptoms,
reflecting a well-known link between the two
conditions.
Other risk factors for depression among men
included younger age, smoking, alcohol
dependence, and service in the Army or Marine
Corps. Furthermore, women who were married,
divorced, non-Hispanic white, on active duty, or
served in the US Navy or Coast Guard faced an
increased risk for depression.
We
call him Charlie Brown. He came to us
from “Pets in Distress Inc” with no information
on his back ground. Charlie is a mix of Boxer
and Ridgeback around four years old. Charlie is
also a trauma survivor.
