Epidemic Continues: Iraq Vet with PTSD Kills Self, Brother
The epidemic of suicides among veterans of the Iraq war with PTSD has become so common that I sat down to write about two news ones today and end up writing about an even more recent, and shocking, one. It involves a decorated vet who wrote about his PTSD for the Marine Corps Gazette-- and this week killed himself and his brother after a long police chase in Arizona.
Police have discovered no motive for the killings, nor why the brothers earlier in the week may have planned to commit suicide by driving into the Grand Canyon -- Thelma and Louise style.
Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, 36, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon -- and met President Bush a few weeks ago -- wrote a lengthy article in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette detailing his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. He loved his country so much he named a daughter America, The Arizona Republic reports today.
His brother was Willard J. Twiggs, age 38.
"All this violent behavior, him killing his brother, that was not my husband. If the PTSD would have been handled in a correct manner, none of this would have happened," Kellee Twiggs, the wife of Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, said. She said he began changing after his second tour of duty in Iraq, and worsened after he returned from his third stint there, when he lost two good friends from his platoon.
"He went and saw a physician's assistant who said that was the severest case of PTSD she'd seen in her life," Kellee Twiggs said, according to published reports. Twiggs had been absent without leave since May 5.
Travis Twiggs was given medications for mood elevation and sleeping to get him calmed down before beginning therapy. But again he was sent back to Iraq "and he was very, very different, angry, agitated, isolated and so forth," upon his return, Kellee Twiggs said, according to the Associated Press. "He was just doing crazy things."
She said her husband was treated in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Medical Center and then sent to a Veterans Affairs Department facility for four months. But she said she couldn't understand why he was not sent to a specialized PTSD clinic in New Jersey.
"They let him out. He was OK for a while and then it all started over again," she said, according to AP, adding that Travis Twiggs was with the Wounded Warrior Regiment and accompanied a group to Washington a few weeks ago where he met President Bush at the White House.
In his Marine Corps Gazette article, written after his fourth tour, he wrote: "All of my symptoms were back, and now I was in the process of destroying my family," he wrote. "My only regrets are how I let my command down after they had put so much trust in me and how I let my family down by pushing them away."
Most recently, Twiggs was assigned to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, Va. Tom Ricks, The Washington Post's military reporter, notes today online that he had touted Twiggs' Marine Corps Gazette article about PTSD when it came out.
The AP describes Twiggs' final hours this way:
On Wednesday, Twiggs and his brother led law enforcement agents on a chase across more than 80 miles of Interstate 8 after speeding away from a Border Patrol checkpoint in southwestern Arizona.After officers with the Tohono O'odham Police Department placed spike strips on the interstate, the car continued for about a mile. Police and Border Patrol agents heard two shots from the disabled car and later found both men slumped forward and dead in a vehicle they had carjacked Monday night within Grand Canyon National Park.
They are believed to have crashed their car at the canyon's edge and walked away from the scene, witnesses said, hours before the carjacking at gunpoint. Park spokeswoman Shannan Marcak said that investigators believe, based on how the car was hung up on a tree, the men may had tried to drive off the road and into the canyon.
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Greg Mitchell's new book has several chapters on the suicide issue. It is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Fails on Iraq. It features a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joe Galloway.
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One cure for war stimulated PTSD: how about not going to war in the first place?
......In his Marine Corps Gazette article, written after his fourth tour....
_Fourth_ tour. It is absolutely criminal that a tiny group of people is being forced to fight this war over and over--by themselves.
If we had a draft, this war would never have been started in the first place. I think anyone who votes in favor of a war should be required to send their loved ones to _fight_ in it.
The answer to your question is very sad. The military is being used as pawns, our own homegrown human beings - pawns - in order to fuel an enormous military industrial complex looting our treasury. Simple.
In all the money that is going to fund the war - how much do you think is dedicated to military salaries, health care and general well-being??
But if you need a few billion in already obsolete killing toys ? We know just where to point you.
You will choke when you realize that the budget for outside contractors dwarfs the actual budgets dedicated to the military. That the construction contracts and other commercial projects that don't seem to have any commerce are funded by US taxpayers but the military forces are treated as a demographic, and totally disregarded lest the efforts of guys like Paul Rycoff and John Sotlz and many others.
We need to end the coup of the corporatist insurgency in America
We need to keep our word to our regular military and our reservists that have been hoodwinked.
We need to bring them back and get them healthy
We need to end the nightmare for them and their loved ones
We need to love them
Binx101
The Almost Daily Binx
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Thank you Greg. I know there are a lot of "if only's" coming from this administration, but this is one that shouldn't have happened. One of my parents' best friends ended up with PTSD after serving in Viet Nam, he lost two wives and three daughters to divorce because the VA wouldn't help him. He, like so many others, should never have to go through this alone.
If we should have learned anything from our previous wars/occupations it is that soldiers come home broken physically and mentally. Not all of them, but a good number of them do. It's time to take care of every one of our vets.
Greg, thank you for reporting this as it is hard enough hearing about it. With the new discovery that the VA had a manager in the psychiatry department send emails down the chain to advise care providers from refraining to diagnose Soldiers with PSTD and use lesser diagnoses - which resulted in less care and worse yet release back into their tours, it is imperative that this terrible result of the Iraq War be recognized in each of our Soldier's home towns and intervention there taken on by the community if possible to avoide consequences of the VA failure to treat, and failure to tell all Soldiers and their families of the rate of suicide is an epidemic.
I
"But she said she couldn't understand why he was not sent to a specialized PTSD clinic in New Jersey."
in worship of the almighty dollar.
When a buck can be saved to pay for new war machinery, instead of wasting it on that which war has broken beyond repair, then by all means... put some duct tape on it and send it back to war, or better yet... toss the damaged goods on the waste heap... and cover it up.
NYT article: http://www
This is so tragic.
I have been devastated by how PTSD has affected my son-in-law - and my daughter and two grandchildren. He came home from Iraq a different person. It took over a year for him to get the treatment he needed. And only then due to an immediate crises. He is much better now. Admits the problem he struggles with. Attends anger-management classes regularly. Knows from his own body when he needs medication if he has forgotten to take it. Has become a husband and father again.
Recently my 14-year old granddaughter went to her first high school dance. She informed her boyfriend, "You better behave. My father has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you know." --Her boyfriend "behaved."
And yet now we hear how the military is wanting to change soldiers from the catagory of suffering PTSD to associate disorder so they return to battle. What a great administration and military we have. Everyone is expendable I guess.
I am hopeful Obama will address these issues when he and McCain have that debate!! Any time. Anywhere.
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