Date: 5/27/2009
KRISTIN M. HALL
Associated Press Writer
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — Regular duties are suspended for three days at Fort Campbell, which leads the Army in suicides this year, so commanders can identify and help soldiers who are struggling with the stress of war and most at risk for killing themselves.
The post began a stand down on Wednesday so soldiers can focus on suicide prevention training in the wake of 11 confirmed suicides by Fort Campbell soldiers this year. More deaths are being investigated as possible suicides.
“This is not a place where Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division want to be,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend. “We don’t want to lead the Army in this statistic.”
From January to March, the installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee line averaged one suicide per week, Townsend said. After an Army-wide suicide prevention campaign in started in March, there were no suicides for six weeks, he said.
“But last week we had two. Two in a week,” Townsend said.
In a series of addresses this week, Townsend will speak to each of the approximately 25,000 soldiers assigned to the division. He told more than 4,000 soldiers Wednesday morning that the suicides must stop.
“Someone here has had thoughts or is having thoughts about hurting themselves,” Townsend said. “Or you know someone who is.”
Army leaders have been developing new guidance for commanders to help installations like Fort Campbell deal with rising suicide rates. Across the Army, suicides from January through March rose to a reported 56 — 22 confirmed and 34 still being investigated and pending confirmation.
The Army has said that soldier suicides reached the highest rate on record in 2008. Officials said the deaths in 2008 would amount to a rate of 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which is higher than the civilian rate, when adjusted to reflect the Army’s younger and male-heavy demographics.
Frequent deployments by the division since 2001 have contributed to the stress suffered by soldiers at Fort Campbell, said Col. Ken Brown, the head of chaplains on the installation.
The three 101st Airborne combat brigades have gone through at least three tours in Iraq. The 3rd Brigade also served seven months in Afghanistan, early in the war, and the 4th Brigade has just returned from a 15-month tour in Afghanistan.
“We’ve been at war at this installation for seven years,” Brown said. “I think that has a cumulative effect across the force.”
Fort Campbell leaders have asked soldiers on the post to look out for each other and paired them up through a “battle buddy” system. Unit leaders are also reviewing and updating lists of soldiers who may be a risk for suicide and are reminding them they can seek help from resources such as a chaplain or a hospital.
But Army officials say many soldiers are afraid that seeking help for mental health issues will hurt their career or make them appear weak to their fellow soldiers. Townsend urged soldiers to speak up.
“You wouldn’t hesitate to seek medical attention for a physical wound or injury,” Townsend said. “Don’t hesitate to seek medical attention for a psychological injury.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Air Force to train combat docs to use acupuncture
Date: 1/30/2009
By KAMALA LANE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Warrant Officer James Brad Smith broke five ribs, punctured a lung and shattered bones in his hand and thigh after falling more than 20 feet from a Black Hawk helicopter in Baghdad last month.
While he was recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, his doctor suggested he add acupuncture to his treatment to help with the pain.
On a recent morning, Col. Richard Niemtzow, an Air Force physician, carefully pushed a short needle into part of Smith’s outer ear. The soldier flinched, saying it felt like he “got clipped by something.” By the time three more of the tiny, gold alloy needles were arranged around the ear, though, the pain from his injuries began to ease.
“My ribs feel numb now and I feel it a little less in my hand,” Smith said, raising his injured arm. “The pain isn’t as sharp. It’s maybe 50 percent better.”
Acupuncture involves placing very thin needles at specific points on the body to try to control pain and reduce stress. There are only theories about how, why and even whether it might work.
Regardless, the ancient Chinese practice has been gradually catching on as a pain treatment for troops who come home wounded.
Now the Air Force, which runs the military’s only acupuncture clinic, is training doctors to take acupuncture to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. A pilot program starting in March will prepare 44 Air Force, Navy and Army doctors to use acupuncture as part of emergency care in combat and in frontline hospitals, not just on bases back home.
They will learn “battlefield acupuncture,” a method Niemtzow developed in 2001 that’s derived from traditional ear acupuncture but uses the short needles to better fit under combat helmets so soldiers can continue their missions with the needles inserted to relieve pain. The needles are applied to five points on the outer ear. Niemtzow says most of his patients say their pain decreases within minutes.
The Navy has begun a similar pilot program to train its doctors at Camp Pendleton in California.
Niemtzow is chief of the acupuncture clinic at Andrews Air Force Base. He’s leading the new program after training many of about 50 active duty military physicians who practice acupuncture.
The U.S. military encountered acupuncture during the Vietnam War, when an Army surgeon wrote in a 1967 edition of Military Medicine magazine about local physicians who were allowed to practice at a U.S. Army surgical hospital and administered acupuncture to Vietnamese patients.
Niemtzow started offering acupuncture in 1995 at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Several years later, he became the first full-time military medical acupuncturist for the Navy, which also provides health care for the Marines.
Later, he established the acupuncture clinic at the Malcolm Grow Medical Center at Andrews, and he continued to expand acupuncture by treating patients at Walter Reed and other Air Force bases in the country and in Germany. Niemtzow and his colleague Col. Stephen Burns administer about a dozen forms of acupuncture — including one type that uses lasers — to soldiers and their families every week.
Col. Arnyce Pock, medical director for the Air Force Medical Corps, said acupuncture comes without the side effects that are common after taking traditional painkillers. Acupuncture also quickly treats pain.
“It allows troops to reduce the number of narcotics they take for pain, and have a better assessment of any underlying brain injury they may have,” Pock said. “When they’re on narcotics, you can’t do that because they’re feeling the effects of the drugs.”
Niemtzow cautions that while acupuncture can be effective, it’s not a cure-all.
“In some instances it doesn’t work,” he said. “But it can be another tool in one’s toolbox to be used in addition to painkillers to reduce the level of pain even further.”
Smith says the throbbing pain in his leg didn’t change with acupuncture treatment but that the pain levels in his arm and ribs were the lowest they’ve been since he was injured. He also said that he didn’t feel groggy afterward, a side-effect he usually experiences from the low-level morphine he takes.
Ultimately, Niemtzow would like troops to learn acupuncture so they can treat each other while out on missions. For now, the Air Force program is limited to training physicians.
He says it’s “remarkable” for the military, a “conservative institution,” to incorporate acupuncture.
“The history of military medicine is rich in development,” he said, “and a lot of people say that if the military is using it, then it must be good for the civilian world.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
By KAMALA LANE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Warrant Officer James Brad Smith broke five ribs, punctured a lung and shattered bones in his hand and thigh after falling more than 20 feet from a Black Hawk helicopter in Baghdad last month.
While he was recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, his doctor suggested he add acupuncture to his treatment to help with the pain.
On a recent morning, Col. Richard Niemtzow, an Air Force physician, carefully pushed a short needle into part of Smith’s outer ear. The soldier flinched, saying it felt like he “got clipped by something.” By the time three more of the tiny, gold alloy needles were arranged around the ear, though, the pain from his injuries began to ease.
“My ribs feel numb now and I feel it a little less in my hand,” Smith said, raising his injured arm. “The pain isn’t as sharp. It’s maybe 50 percent better.”
Acupuncture involves placing very thin needles at specific points on the body to try to control pain and reduce stress. There are only theories about how, why and even whether it might work.
Regardless, the ancient Chinese practice has been gradually catching on as a pain treatment for troops who come home wounded.
Now the Air Force, which runs the military’s only acupuncture clinic, is training doctors to take acupuncture to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. A pilot program starting in March will prepare 44 Air Force, Navy and Army doctors to use acupuncture as part of emergency care in combat and in frontline hospitals, not just on bases back home.
They will learn “battlefield acupuncture,” a method Niemtzow developed in 2001 that’s derived from traditional ear acupuncture but uses the short needles to better fit under combat helmets so soldiers can continue their missions with the needles inserted to relieve pain. The needles are applied to five points on the outer ear. Niemtzow says most of his patients say their pain decreases within minutes.
The Navy has begun a similar pilot program to train its doctors at Camp Pendleton in California.
Niemtzow is chief of the acupuncture clinic at Andrews Air Force Base. He’s leading the new program after training many of about 50 active duty military physicians who practice acupuncture.
The U.S. military encountered acupuncture during the Vietnam War, when an Army surgeon wrote in a 1967 edition of Military Medicine magazine about local physicians who were allowed to practice at a U.S. Army surgical hospital and administered acupuncture to Vietnamese patients.
Niemtzow started offering acupuncture in 1995 at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Several years later, he became the first full-time military medical acupuncturist for the Navy, which also provides health care for the Marines.
Later, he established the acupuncture clinic at the Malcolm Grow Medical Center at Andrews, and he continued to expand acupuncture by treating patients at Walter Reed and other Air Force bases in the country and in Germany. Niemtzow and his colleague Col. Stephen Burns administer about a dozen forms of acupuncture — including one type that uses lasers — to soldiers and their families every week.
Col. Arnyce Pock, medical director for the Air Force Medical Corps, said acupuncture comes without the side effects that are common after taking traditional painkillers. Acupuncture also quickly treats pain.
“It allows troops to reduce the number of narcotics they take for pain, and have a better assessment of any underlying brain injury they may have,” Pock said. “When they’re on narcotics, you can’t do that because they’re feeling the effects of the drugs.”
Niemtzow cautions that while acupuncture can be effective, it’s not a cure-all.
“In some instances it doesn’t work,” he said. “But it can be another tool in one’s toolbox to be used in addition to painkillers to reduce the level of pain even further.”
Smith says the throbbing pain in his leg didn’t change with acupuncture treatment but that the pain levels in his arm and ribs were the lowest they’ve been since he was injured. He also said that he didn’t feel groggy afterward, a side-effect he usually experiences from the low-level morphine he takes.
Ultimately, Niemtzow would like troops to learn acupuncture so they can treat each other while out on missions. For now, the Air Force program is limited to training physicians.
He says it’s “remarkable” for the military, a “conservative institution,” to incorporate acupuncture.
“The history of military medicine is rich in development,” he said, “and a lot of people say that if the military is using it, then it must be good for the civilian world.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
