We've posted a lot about TBI injuries in the military over the past year or so, sadly because it's the sheer number of TBIs suffered in the Iraq War that has drawn so much needed attention to this once silent epidemic.

Well, it's silent no more. Congress and the military have gotten heavily involved. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta are sponsoring studies of TBI in prisons. Others are beefing up studies of TBI in homeless populations. In fact, Jack is meeting this month with a representative from Harvard to discuss studying TBI's impact on the homeless. The NFL has completed intensive studies on TBI in professional football. For a topic that rarely saw the light of day, it would now be hard to find someone who had NOT heard about TBI in the past year.

And speaking of the past year, the Surgeon General has just praised the improvements in the way Army medicine assists and transitions its wounded and ill. If you'll remember, it was not so long ago that the Army was on the receiving end of a lot of criticism in this very area.

Coupled with those improvements,

Col. Loree Sutton, head of the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, spoke at the [same] media roundtable about improvements in mental health and brain injury research and treatment.

"There have been numerous advancements in the last few months with respect to mild traumatic brain injuries, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and anxiety," she said. Mental health professionals, both Army and civilian, will continue to cooperate and share information regarding mental health and brain injuries and the risks associated with them.

Sutton added that a scientific working group would convene later this month to review all areas and discuss ways to better serve affected Soldiers and their families.

"We are looking to take a holistic approach (when dealing with) injury and trauma," she said.

Read more about the roundtable here.

Labels: Army, military, TBI, traumatic brain injury, Veterans

USA TODAY, January 18, 2008, WASHINGTON — An Army task force found major gaps in the care of traumatic brain injury last year, but officials say they are moving rapidly to correct the problems.

A task force study — completed last May but not made public until Thursday — found fault with several issues, including efforts to identify and treat soldiers suffering mild traumatic brain injury often resulting from exposure to roadside bomb blasts.

Although victims often show no outward sign of the injury, it can affect brain functions dealing with short-term memory, problem solving and sleep, and cause nausea, dizziness and headaches. Treatment often involves pulling a soldier out of combat temporarily or permanently, and treating the symptoms.

Screening efforts show 10% to 20% of Marines and soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq may have suffered this wound, according to the Army. The task force last May found that "major gaps" in identifying and treating the injury "were created by a lack of coordination and policy-driven approaches."

This was despite the fact that researchers at the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center — the Pentagon's premier clinical research office for brain injury — had developed ways of identifying the wound in 2004, the study said.

USA TODAY reported in November that at least 20,000 U.S. service members returning from combat have been diagnosed with, or shown signs of, brain injury.

"There is clearly a problem when the most common injury of the war is the least understood," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. "This task force is a long-overdue step forward in diagnosing and understanding the signature wound of this war."

Continue reading.

Labels: Army, Iraq War, traumatic brain injury

More on TBI and the military...

• The Army News Service reports that -- as announced a few weeks ago -- "The Army launched its Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and mild Traumatic Brain Injury chain-teaching program at the Pentagon last week." The program:

...is mandatory for all active-duty and reserve-component Soldiers, from the highest to lowest levels in the chain of command.
...
Lt. Gen. James L. Campbell, director of the Army Staff, opened the training by telling his peers that the biggest teaching point he wanted to get out to the Army's leaders involved a cultural shift in thought - that leaders shouldn't assume that because Soldiers have no visible injuries that all is well mentally.

• Good news no matter how you look at it, or from what portion of the political spectrum.

• And on the not-yet-dealt-with front, we have a report from NPR's KUOW (Seattle) of the experience of a local soldier, Staff Sgt. Richard Kellar, with the hell of TBI:

KELLAR: "Depression, anxiety and all the rest of that stuff. It's bad. They give you Zoloft and they try to monitor it. And all the rest of that."

REPORTER: "Does it help?"

KELLAR: "I don't know. I don't see a difference. I'm still depressed."

It's going to take years -- decades -- for the full impact of returning Iraq veterans' TBIs to be handled (well or at all) by US society, as Kellar's experience (and others like it) is already showing. But it's encouraging to see even the limited progress represented by the Army's joint PTSD/TBI educational program.

Labels: Army, Iraq War, PTSD, TBI, traumatic brain injury, US military