Posts Tagged ‘SFTT’

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With countless stories like Major Ben Richards surfacing each day, SFTT Chairperson, Eilhys England, has assembled an eminent group of physicians, psychologists and medical professors to assess current treatment programs afforded to our veterans suffering from PTSD (“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”) and TBI (“Traumatic Brain Injury”). Also, SFTT’s Medical Task Force will evaluate emerging new treatment programs that may provide more effective results in addressing the needs of our brave warriors.   Found below is a list of the physicians who comprise SFTT’s Medical Task Force and who so generously give of their time and expertise to help our men and women who have served our country so valiantly.  We thank you!

Dr. Henry Grayson, Ph.D., Co-Chair of SFTT’s Medical Task Force - Is a  psychologist practicing in New York City and Connecticut. He has a PhD from Boston University, as well as a postdoctoral certificate in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy from Postgraduate Center for Mental Health and a Theology degree from Emory University. He is the author or three books, founded both the National Institute for Psychotherapies and the Institute for Spirituality, Science and Psychotherapy, and the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy.

Dr. Frank M. Ochberg, M.D., Co-Chair of SFTT’s Medical Task ForceA Psychiatry professor at Michigan StateUniversity with degrees from Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University and the University of London. Formerly an associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health, more recently he has been involved with numerous organizations dealing with PTSD including founding Gift From Within, a non-profit PTSD foundation, and consulting at Columbine High School in Colorado. In 2003 he received a lifetime achievement award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Dr. Grant Brenner, M.D- A graduate of the New Jersey Medical School and as assistant clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Beth Israel Medical Center. He is a member of Physicians for Human Rights and the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Dr. Brenner is the director of trauma services at the William Alanson White Institute, a board member at the Disaster Psychiatry Outreach, and the author of Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience-Integrating Care in Disaster Relief Work.

Dr. Eric D. Caine, M.D. - A Psychiatry professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center School of Medicine and Dentistry. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Medical School, and a chair of the department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center School of Medicine and Dentistry. In 2001 he received the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry’s Leadership in Training Award for Chair of the Year.

Dr. Robert Cancro, M.D- A professor and chairman of psychiatry at the New York University Medical Center. He is a graduate of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, has served as the director or the Nathan Kline Research Institute, a long time consultant of the U.S. Secret Service, and the recipient of numerous awards in the field of mental health including the New York State Office of Mental Health Award and the Irving Blumberg Human Rights Award.

Lorraine Cancro, MSW - A psychotherapist with a Masters from the New York University Silver School of Social Work. She is the executive director of the Global Stress Initiative, a senior consultant at The Barn Yard Group, and formerly the director of business development and military health editor at EP Magazine.

Jaine L. Darwin, Psy.D., ABPP - A graduate of Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology is a psychologist-psychoanalyst specializing in trauma and PTSD, relationship issues and depression. Dr. Darwin has run a volunteer organization SOFAR that provided services to family members of military service members and veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kathalynn Davis, MSW - A psychotherapist with Masters from Columbia University, a certified Sedona Method Coach, Life Coach certified at New York University and Practitioner for International Institute for Spiritual Living.

Dr. Stephen V. Eliot, Ph.D., - A Psychoanalyst with private practice in Westport CT.

Dr. Mark Erlich, M.D. - is a graduate of the City College of New York and the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. He is the founder and director of Profiles & Contours, a clinical assistant professor at New York Medical College and Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine, and a clinical instructor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is also the president of the New York Facial Plastic Surgery Society.

Dr. Mitchell Flaum, Ph. D. - A clinical Psychologist with private practice in New York City.

Dr. Joseph Ganz, Ph.D.,  A psychotherapist and a graduate of the Stress Reduction Program from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  He is also trained in couples and family psychotherapy and is the co-founder, co-director and faculty member of The Metropolitan Center for Object Relations-New Jersey.

Dr. Stephen Gullo, Ph.D.,  -  received his doctorate in psychology from Columbia University, and for more than a decade, he was a professor and researcher at Columbia University Medical Center. He is the former chair of the National Obesity and Weight Control Education Program of the American Institute for Life Threatening Illness at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. His first book, Thin Tastes Better, was a national best seller as was his second book, The Thin Commandments.  He has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, and Barbara Walters and has also made numerous appearances on Today, Good Morning America, and Hard Copy. Dr. Gullo is currently president of the Center for Health and Weight Sciences’ Center for Healthful Living in New York City.

Joan S. Kuehl, L.C.S.W. -  Is a social worker with private practice in New York City.

Dr. Judy Kuriansky, Ph.D.,  A graduate of New York University, an adjunct faculty member at the Teacher’s College Columbia University and at Columbia Medical School. She has
provided “psychological first aid” after bombings in Israel, SARS in China, the tsunami in Asia, and after 9/11 in the US. She is a representative to the United Nations for the International Association of Applied Psychology and the International Council of Psychologists.

Dr. Robert Rawdin, D.D.S. -  A graduate of the Northwestern University School of Dentistry and New York University. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Prosthodontics and currently serves as president-elect and program chair of the Northeastern Gnathological Society. He is also a clinical assistant professor at the New York University College of Dentistry.

Dr. Stephen Ross, M.D. - A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the UCLA School of Medicine. He is the director of the division of alcoholism and drug abuse at Bellevue Hospital, director of the NYU Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, and director of the Bellevue Opioid Overdose Prevention Program.

Dr. John Setaro, M.D. - A graduate of Boston University, and a resident and fellow at Yale-New Haven Hospital, as well as an associate professor of medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Editor’s Note: While these notable physician give freely of their time, there still remains the task of supporting our troops with “more than lip service.” The needs of our brave warriors are great and SFTT looks to your contributions to help support our Investigative, Information and Intervention campaigns. As a 501(c)(3) educational foundation, we rely on the contributions of concerned Americans to help get the proper treatment to those who need it most. Contribute what you can.

The following article entitled “Honor, Stigma…and PTSD” is written by Frank Ochberg who is the Co-Chair of SFTT’s Medical Task Force.   Dr. Ochberg has been dealing with the complexities of PTSD for some 40 years.   His words resonate even more strongly today as many troubled veterans are returning home to environments which may appear to be less hostile on the surface, but are equally dangerous nonetheless.  Our institutions are simply unprepared and, perhaps, unwilling to deal with the complexities of PTSD and, as such, we run the risk of losing an entire generation of brave warriors to the stigma and horrors of PTSD: the “signature wound” of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Join SFTT and help get these brave warriors the treatment they deserve.

QUOTE

I’m an old guy from the Vietnam era, a psychiatrist who studied violence in the 1960s, who treated survivors of trauma in the ’70s and who helped create and nurture the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder through the ’80s.

There are a few dozen of us who are considered the pioneers of the modern era of traumatic-stress studies, and most of us are worried – deeply worried — on behalf of the current generation of veterans with invisible wounds.

We thought that by now there would be access to care whenever needed. We thought that by now there would be clear understanding that PTSD is a wound, not a weakness. We thought that a veteran who served honorably and received a compensable medical diagnosis for PTSD due to his or her service on the field of battle, would receive a medal for sacrifice.

But instead of honor, there is stigma. And this stigma must stop.

Stigma is an elusive concept. It means we mark a person or a whole caste of people for exclusion. Stigma may mean we mark ourselves as diminished, degraded and unsuited for inclusion and intimacy. Stigma is insidious, communicated in whispers, in gossip, and in gestures without words.

Why in the world, this enlightened world, would we stigmatize our veterans who come home with PTSD, or traumatic brain injury, or depression?

Perhaps we do it out of ignorance or fear or extrapolation from the few, atypical cases of domestic and criminal violence that grab headlines. When job opportunities are limited due to diagnostic labels, it is reasonable to avoid the label.

(MORE: Troop Mental Ills: Psychiatric or Organic?)

When advancement through the ranks is limited by labels, it is reasonable to reject diagnosis and treatment. So fearing the consequences to livelihood, some suffer in silence and, in a way, add to the climate of stigma.

There are now a growing number of us who have joined a campaign to change this climate of stigma. We cannot wait for the rate of suicide among young veterans to recede of its own accord. We cannot wait for the VA to catch up with its caseload of cases –veterans waiting months for an appointment. We want to change labels, to improve media coverage, to improve awareness, to emulate successful campaigns to reduce stigma, and to honor our veterans who bear invisible wounds.

Here are some activities we commend:

  • Support the request of former Vice-Chief of Staff of the Army, General (ret.) Peter Chiarelli to change the title PTSD to PTSI – for Injury. Anyone can endorse this campaign right here. But time is limited. It must be done by June 10 to be considered by those with the power to make the change. All the arguments for doing this are on the site.
  • Visit the Dart Center’s website, particularly if you are a journalist covering this topic. Reporters can do a better job covering trauma, war and PTSD. There are tools of the trade to improve accurate and sensitive reporting of those topics. Bloggers can benefit, too. Telling the true story of PTSD will reduce the stigma of PTSD.  (MORE: A Lone Madman or a Broken System?)
  • Attend National PTSD Awareness Day, June 27, on the Senate grounds of the U.S. Capitol. Sponsored by the veterans’ group, Honor For All, this gathering will honor all who have served and sacrificed, including those who took their own lives, struggling with “invisible wounds of war.”
  • Sign the petition calling on our president to establish a Presidential Advisory Committee to reduce the stigma of PTSD and related invisible injuries, earned in service to our country. This committee could tap leaders in all walks of American life, entertainment figures, professional athletes, architects of the successful campaigns on behalf of breast cancer. If football players can wear pink gloves to support breast cancer awareness, baseball players can swing purple bats on PTSD Awareness Day.

We will not defeat the stigma of PTSD easily. No single idea, petition, campaign or organization can turn public attitude around. Changing PTSD to PTSI is a significant step on the road to honor, away from stigma. The word, injury, is honorable in military culture and accurate in medical parlance. Let’s start there and move forward together.

UNQUOTE

Frank M. Ochberg, M.D., is the medical adviser of Honor For All, Co-Chair of Stand For The Troops Medical Task Force, having served in uniform during the Vietnam era. While Associate Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, he helped define PTSD, then edited the first text on its treatment. At Michigan State University, he is clinical professor of psychiatry, formerly adjunct professor of criminal justice, and adjunct professor of journalism.

 

 

 

MAJ GEN John BatisteEilhys England, Chairperson of Stand For The Troops, is pleased to announce that MAJ GEN John Batiste, US Army (Retired)  has been elected President of the Board of SFTT, a nonprofit 501(c)3 educational foundation based in Greenwich, CT.  General Batiste, President and CEO of Klein Steel, brings to SFTT the benefit of three decades of military service, organizational leadership, and advocacy for America’s frontline warriors. Six years to the day after the passing of Col. David ‘Hack’ Hackworth on May 5, 2005, the legacy foundation that he co-founded with his wife Eilhys England continues to build on his life work of safeguarding the physical, mental and emotional well-being of America’s frontline serving and returning troops.

General Batiste is the product of a military family, (the son and son-in-law of veteran career soldiers), a graduate from West Point who served for over 30 years and a two-time combat veteran who led troops in two war zones, including Iraq.  In 2005, as a two star General, he refused to accept his third star that would have promoted him to become the second-highest ranking military officer in Iraq.  Instead, he resigned in principle, in protest at the prosecution of the Iraq war.

In the tradition of SFFT founder David Hackworth, John Batiste made headlines again in 2006 when he and six other senior retired generals (Batiste was the only General who had held a high level position in the Pentagon and had commanded troops in Iraq) went public with their condemnation of the prosecution of the war in Iraq and called for the immediate firing of then Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.  It was dubbed the ‘Night of the Generals’ by the media.

In the Army, General Batiste rose from infantry officer to commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division -the “Big Red One”- which conducted successful peace enforcement operations in Kosovo and combat operations in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom II). His deployments, assignments and commands took him from Fort Benning to Bosnia (Operation Joint Endeavor), NATO, the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and the Department of Defense. His final assignment in the US Army was commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division, the “Big Red One,” from August 2002 to June 2005.  After retiring from active duty in 2005, he joined Klein Steel, a Rochester, NY company as its president.  He is a graduate of West Point, the Army War College, and the financial management MBA program at Naval Postgraduate School.

General Batiste’s support of veterans and their families includes service as a board member of the Rochester-based Veterans Outreach Center, founding president of the Rochester Regional Veterans Business Council, and a member of the board of advisors of the First Division Museum at Cantigny. As Committee Chair of SFTT’s PTSD Initiative prior to his election to Board President, he has been instrumental in focusing attention and resources towards prevention and treatment of the PTSD epidemic (on average 18 veterans every day commit suicide in the United States).

General Batiste succeeds Fred Tanne, P.C., a senior corporate partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Tanne is stepping down as President to co-chair SFTT’s critical new PTSD initiative that is working to establish diagnosis and treatment protocols, remove the stigma of PTSD that prevents many from seeking treatment, and get those most at risk into appropriate treatment. A resident of Mt. Kisco, he will continue to be available to the Foundation as a member of SFTT’s Advisory Board.

Continuing their service as SFTT Board officers, with Ms. England and General Batiste, are:

SFTT Vice Chair/Secretary Roger Charles, a Peabody award winning investigative journalist who’s been singled out for recognition for his coverage of the Oklahoma City bombings for ABC News and CBS 60 Minutes II – Abuse at Abu Ghraib – to mention just two.  At SFTT, he was also the driving force behind the May 2007 NBC Nightly News, Dateline and MSNBC investigative reports by Lisa Myers on inferior body armor.  Combined with Roger and Eilhys’ reaching out to US Senators, it resulted in a call for Congressional Hearings and further independent testing.  An Annapolis graduate, Roger Charles is a retired USMC Lt. Col. who commanded an infantry platoon in I Corps during the Vietnam War.

SFTT Board Treasurer Bob Evans, a national market manager for 3M in its Washington, DC office.  The son of a career Army Officer, Bob served as a division artillery aviation officer, artillery battery executive officer and troop commander at Fort Hood, Texas.   Bob is president of the prestigious National Order of Battlefield Commissions. It counts Audie Murphy and the late SFTT founder David Hackworth among its 1000 by invitation only members.

SFTT (www.sftt.org) is a non-partisan apolitical organization chaired by Eilhys England, a Greenwich resident who co-founded the organization with her late husband Col. David Hackworth, America’s most valor-decorated soldier.  SFTT is unique in its mission and uniquely qualified to carry out its mission to give a voice to our troops. SFTT provides a platform and voice for the brave men and women defending us on the frontlines, by educating the public and policy makers in Washington D.C. on the need to send our country’s brave warriors off and to welcome them back with the best available equipment, training and support to make it home alive in body, mind, and spirit.

For information on SFTT, visit the foundation’s website at www.sftt.org or phone 203–629-0288.

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photo of a soldierStand For The Troops (“SFTT”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit Educational Foundation established by the late Col. David H. Hackworth and his wife Eilhys England to insure that our frontline troops have the best available leadership, equipment and training.

In the past four-plus years SFTT'S active campaign has focused on ensuring America's frontline troops get the best available individual protective equipment and combat gear.

Donations and contributions from concerned Americans help fund the SFTT website.

Hackworth Memorial DVD

photo of HackworthIncludes rare footage from Hack's memorial service at Fort Myers Chapel and burial in Arlington National Cemetery.
All donations received from purchasing of The Hackworth Memorial DVD go to Stand For The Troops a 501 (c) 3 non-profit, non-partisan apolitical foundation established by Hack and his wife Eilhys to make sure that America's front-line forces—the kids Hack loved out at the tip of the spear—always have the right training, leadership and equipment to meet their assigned missions and make it home alive and in one piece.

Our Campaigns

  • December 23, 2009: The law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP filed the final motion with the Federal Court in Washington, DC in the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) on behalf of the SFTT’s editor for forensic records held by the Department of Defense (“DOD”).
  • October 16, 2009: The Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) issues report to Congress calling for “independent expert assessment of Army body armor test results.” This damning report of US Army body armor test procedures is the outgrowth of a two-year investigative and educational campaign by SFTT to seek fair and impartial test procedures.

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