I jus want to share a fact about  post traumatic stress disorder. According to a brand new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the meds aren't working as advertised. Specifically, the most commonly prescribed post-traumatic stress disorder narcotics are apparently no better than placebos at treating the symptoms. The bad unwanted effects are there, though. The proof is here: Antipsychotics fail to alleviate PTSD symptoms in veterans . You must check this out!

I've posted a few posts on this forum today, so I thought I'd introduce myself and discuss what PTSD is (in general) for those that don't really understand it. I go by the pseudonym Pandora.

Here is my story,

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a life threatening, debilitating disorder that can break down a sufferer’s body through anxiety and stress. Further it poses a significant suicide risk resulting from the brains neurological imbalance and chemical depression. It seems many do not quite grasp the fact that PTSD is indeed an illness, and a very serious one at that - the most serious of the anxiety disorders, and the most deadly. Many simply do not survive.

PTSD, or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of a life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or physical or sexual assault in adult or childhood. Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. However, some people will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time. These individuals may develop PTSD. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person's daily life.

People with PTSD experience three different kinds of symptoms. The first set of symptoms involves reliving the trauma in some way such as becoming upset when confronted with a traumatic reminder or thinking about the trauma when you are trying to do something else. The second set of symptoms involves either staying away from places or people that remind you of the trauma, isolating from other people, or feeling numb. The third set of symptoms includes things such as feeling on guard, irritable, or startling easily.

PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as psychological symptoms. PTSD is complicated by the fact that people with PTSD often may develop additional disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person's ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and difficulties in parenting.

More than half of persons with PTSD also have problems with alcohol. The next most common co-occurring problems in men and women are depression, followed by conduct disorder, and then problems with drugs.

According to the American Psychiatric Association (1994), post traumatic stress disorder develops after someone is exposed to an extremely traumatic event and they reacted to the event with intense fear, horror or helplessness. Such traumatic events include:

• war
• torture
• rape
• child sexual or physical assault
• physical assault
• being kidnapped
• terrorism
• a natural disaster (e.g. a bushfire, flood or cyclone)
• a major car accident
• being diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness, e.g. cancer
• finding the body of someone who has committed suicide or been murdered
  
  (Personally, I have suffered torture, rape, child sexual assault, being kidnapped, terrorism, finding the body of someone who has committed suicide as well as those who have been murdered and much more)

A simple analogy -
PTSD is an entirely normal reaction to an abnormal amount of stress. Having PTSD does not mean one is mentally ill, nor does it mean that one is weak or somehow deficient. Instead, think of it this way; no matter how strong your leg bones, if enough force is applied, they will break. Given the proper care, they will heal; and so can the person with PTSD.

This is my illness. So you can understand a little bit more of what I live with every day.

Pandora

 

Book: The Shack Author: William P. Young http://www.theshackbook.com/ This book has the potential to change your life. It's been a #1 bestseller for years, and is available in paperback everywhere! Check out the website to read some reviews.

Book: The Shack

Author: William P. Young

http://www.theshackbook.com/

This book has the potential to change your life. It's been a #1 bestseller for years, and is available in paperback everywhere!

Check out The Shack website to read some reviews.

 

Posted by Pandora

Restless Heart Syndrome by Green Day (lyrics)
- listen to the song if you can.

I've got a really bad disease
It's got me begging
On my hands and knees
Take me to the emergency
'Cause something seems to be missing
Somebody take the pain away
It's like an ulcer bleeding in my brain
Send me to the pharmacy
So I can lose my memory

I'm elated
Medicated
Lord knows I tried to find a way to run away.

I think they found another cure
For broken hearts and feeling insecure
You'd be surprised what I endure
What make you feel so self-assured?

I need to find a place to hide
You never know what could be
Waiting outside
The accidents that you could find
it's like some kind of suicide

So what ails you is what impales you
I feel like I've been crucified to be satisfied

I'm a victim of my symptom
I am my own worst enemy
You're a victim of you're symptom
You are your own worst enemy
Know your enemy

I'm elated
Medicated
I am my own worst enemy
So what ails you is what impales you
You are your own worse enemy
You're a victim of the system
you are your own worst enemy
You're a victim of the system
You are your own worst enemy

Pandora

Reposted here by Pandora.

********************************************************************************

Officer down: The dark demons of policing

April 11, 2010

By MARK BONOKOSKI, QMI Agency

   

BRACEBRIDGE, Ont. — >From the outside looking in, Bruce Kruger would appear to have an idyllic life.

Retired from the OPP within the top 4% of its hierarchy, his final rank after almost four decades being a detective inspector, he lives in a perfect-setting, bed-and-breakfast home on the banks of the Muskoka River, and owns a successful Swiss Chalet-Harvey’s franchise in the heart of town as well as in Huntsville.

He has been married 40 years to wife, Lynda, has four children, one a cop, and 13 grandchildren.

He has both the Canada Medal of Bravery and the Ontario Medal of Bravery, as well as a number of valour certificates and commendations, and with nary a recorded blemish on his career.

He’s Bracebridge’s Town Crier, and award-winning one at that, and has served on more municipal boards, organizing committees, and charitable groups than one can imagine.

Back in December, he was an official Olympic torchbearer, one of his last public functions before going to ground.

Bruce Kruger, as it turns out, had a dark secret.

And now he wants it out.

A few days ago, Bruce Kruger returned from an eight-week, in-house stay at the Homewood Health Clinic in Guelph where, partially at his own expense, he finally dealt with the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that plagued him most of his life as a cop, and throughout the entire 10 years he has been in retirement.

Of the 36 people in his therapy group, a third were either police or military personnel — the $15,000 to $20,000 costs for treatment partially borne by many of the participants.

For Bruce Kruger, the test of his psyche, and the load he was forced to emotionally carry, began early.

On June 28, 1977, while still a young constable, he was forced to shoot and kill James William McGrath, an escapee from the Joyceville Penitentiary with a 37-year criminal record who was about to blow away his partner, Const. Mark Murdoch, then only 22, with a sawed-off shotgun while Murdoch was trapped in his cruiser.

Two hours before the shooting, during which McGrath, 52, was hit with four bullets, he had busted into the home of Gord Smith, then an Orillia-area MPP, and had terrorized his wife, Jean, as he looted their home and stole their Volkswagen.

Then, in the summer of 1980, Kruger recovered two bodies floating in a lake. He knew both victims personally — the six-year-old boy, a playmate of his own son, and the father who had tried in vain to rescue his only child.

Four adults had watched them drown, according to reports at the time, and had done nothing and reported nothing.

Bruce Kruger rowed the victims back to shore, the boy was lying at his feet with his dead eyes staring up at him, the father’s body dragging behind the boat with his legs secured with a rope.

“I’ll never shake the look in that little boy’s face,” says Kruger. “It has been with me forever.”

On Jan. 2, 1981, it was Bruce Kruger’s luck of the draw to find the body of 35-year-old Huntsville OPP Const. Rick Verdecchia — frozen in a snowbank, two bullet holes between the eyes — and then be assigned to stay with the body until the scene was photographed and cleared several hours later.

Verdecchia’s killers, two young men who had robbed a gas station at Burks Falls and killed the attendant, shot Verdecchia after sliding their car into a snowbank during the pursuit.

Seven hours later, now down in Orillia, they shot another cop five times before leaving him for dead.

The triggerman, 19-year-old Gary Fitzgerald of Windsor was eventually convicted of two counts of murder and, over the course of time, escaped twice from minimum-security prisons.

Last reports had him eligible for parole in 2006.

His whereabouts today, however, is uncertain.

OPP Const. Neil Hurtubise, 29 when he was shot point-blank by Fitzgerald, spent four months in hospital before returning to patrol duty and, for years, worked as a volunteer with a fledging OPP trauma team counselling other police officers who had survived a shooting, but only a shooting.

PTSD had not yet been defined as a diagnosis, let alone anything beyond burnout — the attitude being “suck it up, get over it, move on.”

But it was cooking inside Bruce Kruger.

PTSD, by definition, is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event which results in psychological trauma — the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one’s own or someone else’s physical, sexual, or psychological integrity, all which overwhelms the individual’s ability to cope.

It can develop as exposure to a single, traumatic event or the accumulative effect of being witness to years of human pain and horrors. Routinely PTSD and depression run together, and isolation at home for months on end — away from the job, friends and colleagues — can throw the recovery process off track.

Shooting death

Kruger’s case, for all intent and purpose, is textbook. In 1991, while commander of the Bracebridge detachment, Kruger heard that “person or persons unknown” were searching him out, all to do with his involvement in the shooting death years earlier of James McGrath.

“Due to the serious nature of the incident and the difficulties I had dealing with it, I immediately asked for assistance to protect myself and my family, fearing the worst might occur,” says Kruger.

“I was told to deal with it myself.”

“My fear was so intense that I sat with my gun in my open drawer of my desk when the person came to my office,” he recalls. “An armed plainclothes officer posed as a secretary nearby with a gun by the typewriter.

“Luckily, no action was required.” he says. “It was the son of the deceased who was trying to find some redeeming qualities of his dead father to cling to.

“But OPP command had refused to assist in defusing my concerns.”

It was all adding up — “numerous suicides,” he says, “children’s deaths, murders, horrific motor vehicle collisions, sexual assaults, the burning of my boat by drug dealers, and on and on and on” — without an iota of assistance, he insists, in dealing with the stress that had ramped up rage, nightmares, fits of anxiety, crippling hyper-vigilance, bouts of crying, compassion fatigue, mental breakdown and depression.

Depression, say experts, means a more complicated and risky recovery, although Homewood is recognized as one of the very few centres in Ontario and Canada with the expertise to treat PTSD singularly or when it occurs with depression.

“(But) at no time (while on the force) did I receive any counselling for any of the situations I faced,” says Kruger. “With the exception of being cautioned not to ‘brag’ about the shooting incident.”

When a peer program was commenced by the OPP in the early ’80s, Kruger approached a peer counsellor for assistance.

“I was provided a cup of coffee, discussed my problems with the counsellor in a coffee shop for about a half hour, and was given the recommendation not to divulge any of these difficulties since it was not a positive step towards any promotion,” he says.

“This concluded the therapy provided by the force.”

And so Kruger “sucked it up,” and the promotions followed, even to the point of being named provincial co-ordinator of the OPP’s elite TRU team — Tactics and Rescue Unit — that involves itself in high-risk takedowns.

Following that, he was commander of the OPP’s Bracebridge detachment. Then he was promoted to inspector overseeing community policing at the force’s headquarters in Orillia. Then up until retirement on the last day of 1999, he was a detective inspector with the major crimes unit.

And, all the while, he kept mum.

In December 2008, long before Homewood, Kruger wrote a letter to OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino in which he bared his soul in outlining the plight that had followed him into retirement — the excessive drinking, the depression, the nightmares, the fear — and what the force should be doing to help the untold number of sufferers within its ranks.

Fantino knows the price of PTSD.

In fact, there’s not much he has not seen.

“In my 40 years of policing I have witnessed and been personally involved in an endless number and variety of traumatic events,” he said in response to a query on PTSD.

“Being better informed and educated about these issues have helped the policing profession as a whole to recognize the issues and develop very effective programs to support our people when they become directly or indirectly involved in traumatic events,” he said.

“That’s where over the years we have made a great deal of progress.”

Although Fantino did not respond personally to Kruger, he passed on his letter to the civilian authority within the force where it languished for more than a year, purportedly falling through the cracks because of personnel movements.

Then came a one-page letter from Mary Silverthorn, now civilian commander of the career development bureau, written on Jan. 12, who, after apologizing for “the oversight of not responding to your original letter dated Dec. 19, 2008,” promised a proper response to his letter by the end of February — admitting that PTSD is a “very real and concerning risk to those choosing a career in emergency response services.”

In early March, he got that promised letter.

After telling Kruger she is not privy — because of confidentiality issues — to how many OPP officers suffer from PTSD, Silverthorn then advised Kruger to contact the OPP union “to understand their strategy” in informing retired members of available support.

To Bruce Kruger, it was just another slough off.

Another abandonment. mark.bonokoski@sunmedia.ca or 416-947-2445

 

*****************************************************************

Ombudsman to look at trauma afflicting police

Investigation follows Sun series on psychological toll facing officers

 

 

BY MARK BONOKOSKI ,QMI AGENCY

FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MAY 1, 2010 7:00:00 EDT PM

In the wake of the Sun's recent stories on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the police ranks, it has been learned that an investigator within the office of Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin has begun a hard review of the file submitted by Bruce Kruger, the retired OPP detective-inspector whose profile launched the series.

This has been confirmed by the ombudsman's office, although privacy issues prevent it from disclosing details.

"Our normal process starts with assessing a complaint to see if it involves something that can be quickly and informally resolved," says ombudsman spokesman Linda Williamson.

"We also look at whether the issue could be systemic, or symptomatic of a larger problem.

"If an issue is determined to be serious and not easily resolved, we may decide to proceed to a formal investigation," she says. "Then the next step is to notify the organization being investigated, after which we can gather evidence - obtain documents, interview witnesses."

Back in early April, Bruce Kruger had just returned from an eight-week stay at the Homewood Health Clinic in Guelph where, partially at his own expense, he finally dealt with the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that plagued him most of his life of a cop, and throughout the 10 years of his retirement.

Of the 36 people in his therapy group, a third were either police or military personnel.

For Bruce Kruger, the test of his psyche, and the load he was forced to emotionally carry, began early when, as a young constable, he was forced to shoot and kill a lifelong criminal who was about to shoot his partner with a sawed-off shotgun.

And that's where the downward spiral began.

In the end, Kruger claims that he was both ignored and abandoned by the force from the onset when it came to dealing with the stress issues that evolved into full-blown PTSD.

Promoted yes; but left floundering.

"I did not go to the ombudsman's office for me," says Kruger, reached at his home in Bracebridge. "I did it for all the others like me, the ones still on the job, and the ones fighting PTSD in their retirements.

"And I did it for all the ones about to enter policing."

According to Kruger, whose professional career has seen him presented with both the Canada Medal of Bravery and the Ontario Medal of Bravery, the only "remedy" is a full public inquiry into how police forces across the province and the country handle stress issues.

"It's a problem," says Kruger. "And it's systemic."

Throughout the series, high-ranking officers and staff psychiatrists spoke of advances being made to ensure that first responders get the help they need in dealing with the trauma of the moment.

"This is all well and good," says Kruger. "But PTSD - the affliction that takes time to build, often years of time - is being totally overlooked.

"It's the stuff that builds up over years."

"For OPP management to slough off concerns by directing people like me to the OPP Association - (the rank and file's union) is a travesty," says Kruger.

"What's the hierarchy saying? That they're not responsible for the health and well-being of the officers?"

At the brass level, Kruger argues to the ombudsman that no support group is provided for officers or families for ongoing assistance.

"They have no statistics or information to verify the number of members suffering from PTSD and no designated person responsible for initial contact and follow-up with PTSD members.

"And there is no follow-up or support for retirees who may develop PTSD after leaving the force," says Kruger.

As for the police association, Kruger maintains there is no co-ordinated effort within their office to address member concerns, with very limited PTSD information being disseminated to members or their families.

"There is total confusion amongst the association's departments pertaining to who is doing what for members," says Kruger, indicating that the union even fails to follow up on members who are known to be suffering PTSD.

<>But Kruger does not end it there.

He takes shots at the Police Association of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, The OPP Commissioned Officers Association, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and the Ministry of Community Safety - all for basically punting the ball on first down when it comes to dealing with PTSD within police ranks.

Whether the ombudsman launches a full-scale investigation as a result of its review remains to be seen.

But at least there is now some public light.

 

It seems many do not quite grasp the fact that PTSD is indeed an illness, and a very serious one at that - the most serious of the anxiety disorders, and the most deadly. Many simply do not survive; this is sadly the case in my family, as two of my PTSD sufferers are deceased - one from suicide, and the other from drunk driving as a direct result of PTSD. My third PTSD sufferer, my daughter, is still living; however we have had some close calls with her. Though doing well at the moment, in the past she has engaged in risk-taking behaviours which could have proved deadly, and additionally she has made several suicide attempts. She works very dilligently upon herself, and we give her full credit for that. However, part of the reason she is doing well now is also because of my husband and I, and other family. We are supportive of her. We certainly do not try to sabotage her healing nor exact revenge upon her for having hurt us, and believe me, she has hurt us, very deeply at times. She ran away from us for several years, we lost contact with her completely, and at one point we thought her dead. It was most difficult, and we were both angry and frightened for her. However, now that we are reunited, it is water under the bridge. She has an illness, we accept that, and we do not wish to make matters worse for her by constantly reminding her of her past transgressions. She carries far too much guilt on her own; we needn't add to it. No matter how upset you are with your PTSD sufferer, no matter what they have done to you and your family in the past, if you truly care about them, please do not make matters worse for them. Doing so is playing with fire. You may think you have the right to revenge, however; your sufferer, no matter what they have done, is already in extreme pain - guilt, depression, extreme stress, not to mention flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance and other anxiety symptoms in the extreme. Any anxiety which you yourself feel currently, they feel tenfold. There is no comparison. This is why they are diagnosed with an illness and you are not. Ask yourself the following: Do you really wish to push your sufferer to the point of self-harm? How would you feel if they attempted suicide after being pestered or pushed by you? This is a very real possibility if you push them too far. Yes, it is their choice to end their own life; however, do you honestly wish to have a part in that? What if your sufferer is the father or mother of your children? How will your children will feel in future if you have helped to destroy the life of their parent, and intentionally so? If you still feel justified in getting your revenge against them, then my suggestion is no contact until such time as you are able to control yourself. Yes, you have been hurt, some of you have been hurt very badly, and I comprehend that as it has happened to me as well. However, from sad experience, I know that being right and getting even is not worth the life of my PTSD sufferer. When they are gone forever, it is too late. My daughter recently quoted Dr. Phil, and I will as well: "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" Do you wish to be part of the problem, or part of the solution? Do you wish to wallow in self-pity, or do you wish to take the high road and make a positive difference in your family? Your choice.