Tag: PTSD

Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted #Project2025

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

While controversy swirls around last week’s mass firing of 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs’ employees, a far greater threat to veterans’ health care is going completely unnoticed. Powerful leaders in Congress have quietly unveiled their plan to gut VA-delivered care, wrapped in the misleadingly titled “Veterans’ ACCESS Act.” If veterans don’t act fast, they will lose the VA health care system they know and depend on.

The bill appears innocuous enough, with aspirations of accountability. But don’t be fooled. Hidden in its depths like a ticking time bomb is a provision intended to dismantle the integrated VA health care system faster than you can say “privatization.”

…

Follow the money, which will hemorrhage from the VA to the private sector. The likely outcome is that the VA will close its inpatient services and instead become a sprawling assortment of outpatient clinics. If that sounds familiar, it is the plan laid out in the Project 2025 playbook. Veterans are being hoodwinked that the VA facilities they rely on won’t be impacted. Don’t buy it for a second.

Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted

Previously:

What’s in Store for VA Disability Benefits with New Office of Management and Budget Chief?

Read More »

Reflections on war propaganda

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

I told myself that I wasn’t going to listen to these “think tanks” for a while. I guess I wasn’t ready, as the following angered me. This is just normal thinking inside “The Blob,” though.

Full video

Wikipedia:

Demonizing the enemy, demonization of the enemy or dehumanization of the enemy is a propaganda technique which promotes an idea about the enemy being a threatening, evil aggressor with only destructive objectives.

Read More »

Personal: Dad, USN

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)2 Comments

Originally titled, “Does anyone recognize this flag?”

I was going through my father’s photos (see after the cut), last night, from when he was in the US Navy during the Vietnam War. I had assumed that he was an E-5, but he may have only been an E-3. We kids were told not to mention his service because of his PTSD, so I never asked him. I thought that I had his service records (I know where to request them, if I have to) because I found out which ship he was on many years ago. Unfortunately, it slips my mind now. I have a T-shirt in storage, with their patch on it. I’ll have to look for it, soon.

Read More »

Placebo effect for all psychiatric diagnoses “of considerable magnitude”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

In a new study, researchers found huge improvements in psychiatric symptoms on placebo alone, particularly for depression and anxiety. They included the 10 least biased, most recent randomised controlled trials for nine common diagnoses in their attempt to quantify the improvements that could be expected without treatment.

Placebo effect for all psychiatric diagnoses “of considerable magnitude” (archived)

Wisconsin ranks among 10 states with the most uninsured veterans

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Source

(Stacker) – Over 9 million veterans receive healthcare through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), but as many as 1.5 million remain uninsured — amounting to about 6% of veterans nationwide (or one out of every 15 veterans), data shows. These insurance gaps mean that many who served our country go without necessary healthcare each year

Wisconsin ranks among 10 states with the most uninsured veterans

Israeli Group to Study MDMA Therapy for October 7 Survivors With PTSD

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Israeli Group to Study MDMA Therapy for October 7 Survivors With PTSD

A group of 400 Israeli survivors of the October 7 Hamas attack, including civilians, released hostages, and soldiers, could be offered MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a potentially trailblazing study to commence later this year.

…

“Our goal is to create a therapy model that can serve universally, with the intention and prayer to help people,” said Dr. Keren Tzarfaty, CEO and co-founder of MAPS Israel, which is already running trials evaluating MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and eating disorders. “We hope it will demonstrate high levels of safety and effectiveness and enable us to offer the program in other places over the region and the world, not only to treat PTSD, but to help people open their hearts and expand their minds.”

…

Dr. Rick Doblin, founding president of the U.S.-based MAPS and a longtime advocate for using psychedelic therapy in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, said that the study would serve as a seminal piece of research into whether psychedelic-assisted therapy can help large groups of traumatized people.

Read More »