MSC in the News

Military Wives Working to Improve Lives of Soldiers on Dallas' Good Day Morning Show

 

To see MSC President, Carissa Picard, on PBS NOW with Maria Hinojosa, watch this on-line soldier's story here: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/424/video-webex.html?i=2. MSC was able to successfully intervene on behalf of this soldier as well as several others at Fort Hood, Texas, who needed to be placed in the Warrior Transition Unit.

Unfortunately, due to the high volume of demand for help and the lack of funds, MSC has to temporarily stop its case management component. Our 501c3 application has been submitted to the IRS recently but it may take up to 3 more months to get approved and MSC cannot begin applying for grants until it is. MSC is currently operating on exclusively on donations. Any contribution, even as little as $5 can make an enormous difference in the lives of our Military and their families.

If you are outraged by what you see in this video, we encourage you to tell others about MSC and ask them to join. You do not have to be a military spouse to join, you simply have to support our mission of empowering a movement of advocates within the active duty community. Someday we would like to have an advocate on every installation who could help families and soldiers like Sgt. Chavarria and Specialist Norrell (MSC's role was profiled in his story on the actual PBS show).

Your ally in change,

Carissa Picard
President
Military Spouses for Change
Involve. Inform. Inspire.

 

MSC President on NPR Discussing Reductions in Tour Lengths

To the Point with Warren Onley: The President, the War in Iraq and American Soldiers

'Thu, 10 Apr 2008

Main Topic: President Bush today accepted the recommendations of General David Petraeus. The draw-down of troops from Iraq will stop when the "surge" ends in July. Democratic leaders of Congress said, "He's just dragging this out, leaving a failed war and a failed economy on the doorstep of the next president." Because of strains on the troops, Mr. Bush also reduced tours of duty from 15 months to 12, but that won't start until August. We talk with soldiers about the state of morale after six years of war. What do multiple tours on the front lines mean for their families? What about recruitment, retention and readiness to meet future contingencies?

Guests:

 

MSC on the CBS Evening News

The Military's Showdown with PTSD FORT HOOD, Texas, April 17, 2008 (CBS) Twenty-two year old combat medic Jonathan Norrell volunteered for every mission during his year in Iraq. He was bombed, ambushed, treating wounded under fire - and the memories still haunt him.

"The things that affected me the most weren't the IEDs, which I went through six or seven of, and all the firefights, and all the combat," Norrell said. "It was the psychological stuff, the people I failed to help." By the time he came off his tour of duty he was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: anxiety, sleeplessness, flashbacks. Military doctors recommended immediate discharge and treatment but the command refused. Instead they forced him into combat training exercises. He turned to drugs and alcohol. "I just lost it," Norrell said. "I didn't wanna do it anymore."

So the Army he served so well in Iraq threatened to expel him without medical benefits. Norrell's case reveals the showdown inside the military, between the new school and old school view on how to handle PTSD - one of the signature injuries of the Afghan and Iraq wars. And experts warn there's a storm coming: a generation of soldiers coming home with PTSD. CBS News has been given documents showing more than 100,000 vets of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are seeking help for mental health disorders.

Norrell decided to fight back by reaching out to veteran's groups and advocates like Carissa Picard of Military Spouses for Change. Picard's husband leaves for Iraq in June. "Our soldiers didn't choose to wage this war; they didn't choose to go to Iraq or Afghanistan," she said. "We've sent them there. We need to take responsibility for what happens to them."

Norrell's struggle for help took months of meetings, phone calls, e-mails, lobbying Congressmen and the top levels of the Pentagon before she finally got help at Fort Hood. We asked the man in charge there why it took so long. "The field commander recognizes the soldier has a problem, and they request the soldier to be transferred to the warrior transition unit," said Col. Casper P. Jones III. Dozier said: "That sounds great, but we know in this situation, for several months, it didn't happen." "It didn't happen," Jones said. "I think there are lessons from this case that can help us all as we move forward."CBS News has learned that top Pentagon officials have made visits to bases across the country. They're telling Army commanders to take their doctors' diagnoses more seriously, and get the troops treatment. Norrell hopes that by speaking out, other troops won't have to fight so hard to get the help they need. "Hopefully what happened to me won't happen to any more soldiers," he said. Link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/17/eveningnews/main4025681.shtml

 

(Mar. 3, 2008)  MSC Participates in Senator Obama's Veterans Forum in San Antonio. 
MSC members Sarah Bradley and Cynthia Thomas.

PhotobucketWhen the candidates came to campaign in Texas, MSC contacted the campaigns of Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama to offer to arrange for a meeting with interested military spouses.  The Obama campaign was the only campaign to respond to our offer.  They invited our members to participate in this Veterans' Forum in San Antonio.

MSC President, Carissa Picard (pictured below in the front row in a lavender blouse), was able to ask Senator Obama whether he would support GI bill benefits for military spouses.  He agreed that "it makes sense to have transferability" but that he wants to increase GI Bill educational benefits overall first (he supports Senator Webb's 21st Century GI Bill).

 

 

(Feb.. 29, 2008) MSC on NPR.  Listen to National Public Radio's Alex Cohen interview MSC's President, Carissa Picard, and MSC member, Cynthia Thomas, as part of her story about the Texas Presidential primaries and Fort Hood.

 

(Feb. 2008)  MSC in the Armed Forces Journal.  AFJ writer, Christopher Griffin, found the blog that MSC also tries to maintain as part of our outreach efforts.  In his February article on military blogs written by and/or about military spouses entitled, "They Also Serve," he discusses MSC and our first successful case advocating on behalf of one of our soldiers:

Photobucket"While longer deployments are a challenge for every military family, some milspouses have blogged about the challenges that remain after family members return from war, especially in instances where they have suffered emotional or physical injuries.

Carissa Picard at Military Spouses for Change has organized an eponymous nonprofit organization to “promote and protect the rights and interests of veterans and military families.” In an e-mail exchange, she explained that she founded the organization to help milspouses become advocates on behalf of their soldiers, who are prohibited from being politically active: 'Our experience with military policies is second only to the service member, yet we are not similarly limited in our freedom of expression. ... So we have to make that shift from caregiver to advocate.'

You can read more by clicking on the hyperlink above.

 

(Nov. 19, 2007) News Channel 8 Austin's Chelsea Hover interviews MSC President, Carissa Picard, and MSC National Secretary, Inga Guenther, about MSC efforts to get the Presidential candidates to participate in a forum on Veterans, Military Families, and Wounded Warriors.

Soldiers' wives trying to lure presidential candidates to Fort Hood

Carissa PicardAs most the country watches the presidential debates from their living room, one group of military families at Fort Hood wants the candidates to come to them.

Military Spouses for Change is trying to lure Democratic and Republican candidates to address the largest military community in the country face-to-face.

"These candidates are asking to be the next commander in chief. I feel like our families and service members, if nothing else, deserve an audience," organizer Carissa Picard said.

Picard's husband, Caynan, is home for now. He'll be deployed again to Iraq early next year. She and Military Spouses for Change have contacted almost every presidential candidate to participate in a bipartisan forum to address issues about the war and aftercare for veterans.

"If they were to come here it would mean that the soldiers make a difference, the soldiers mean something. That their lives and their families mean something. That they're not just talking the talk, that they are actually going to make some changes and support the troops," military wife and mother Inga Guenther said.

Guenther's two sons and husband are currently active in the military.

As the largest military installation in the country, many military families at Fort Hood feel the candidates owe it to them to answer questions on Iraq and veteran care.

"It's the defining issue for this election, but for military families, it defines our lives," Picard said.

In a town where on average two soldiers a week are killed, Picard wants the nation to remember that for every soldier killed, there's a family left to pick up the pieces.

 

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

~Margaret Mead

Spouse group: Action needed for wounded vets

Military Times
Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Oct 16, 2007 13:49:39 EDT

On the eve of a major Senate hearing to review the recommendations of two commissions aimed at helping wounded combat veterans, a politically active Army wife is looking for less talk and more action.

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee will hear Wednesday about proposals from the President’s Commission on Care for America’s returning Wounded Warriors, which completed its work in July, and the Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission, which issued its final report Oct. 3.

There is some overlap between the two commissions; for example, both recommend that the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs use the same disability ratings system to eliminate confusing differences that often leave injured service members and their families feeling they have been treated unfairly.

It remains unclear when or if Congress will act on the recommendations, partly because some of the proposals could be costly.

Carissa Picard, whose husband is a Black Hawk pilot at Fort Hood, Texas, with orders to deploy to Iraq in the spring, is president of Military Spouses for Change.

Picard said wounded combat veterans and their families are becoming weary of waiting.

“This is not how a grateful nation treats it heroes,” she said. “Action speaks louder than words. Thus, are our wounded warriors really not heroes? Is our country not grateful? Can someone in Congress answer this question for us?”

Military Spouses for Change is about four months old and has about 200 members, mostly the spouses of current or recently discharged veterans. Although Picard has been linked with Democratic causes, the spouses’ group is nonpartisan.

The group’s Web site includes a comparison of the presidential candidates’ views on Iraq.

“The presidential election is a great tool for us to try to get the changes we think are necessary without being seen as disloyal to the commander-in-chief, who is not running for re-election,” Picard said.

In addition to an overhaul of the disability ratings system, Picard said the government needs to take a new approach to diagnosing and treating mental health problems among combat veterans.

She said the government should automatically presume that a veteran with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder is suffering from a service-connected disability; the veteran should not have to prove it.

And the government needs to do more to help the families of combat veterans with mental disorders, she said.

“The vast majority of our returning warriors are suffering serious and significant mental and/or physical injuries and coming home to spouses and children,” she said.

“The government needs to recognize the financial and emotional needs of the entire family, not just the wounded warrior. You cannot divorce the well-being of the service member from his family, and vice versa; what impacts one, impacts the other.”

Picard’s nonprofit organization is working on an initiative to limit punishment for misconduct by combat veterans because of reports of troops suffering from anger management and impulse control issues.

“Essentially, we believe that if a service member engages in nonviolent misconduct and has served in a combat zone in the previous five years, and has no prior military history of misconduct, he or she should undergo mental health treatment and only be subject to non judicial discipline,” Picard said.

Not treating troops with problems and sending them back for another deployment is “a failure of leadership,” she said.

“The chain of command for these young men should recognize that these are red flags and these young men could be exhibiting signs of an undiagnosed [traumatic brain injury] or PTSD and intervene,” she said.

“However, that isn’t happening.”

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/military_disabilitycommissions_071016w/

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