EtiotropicTM OPED: Just Effective or Cure? Integrity? Only Complete Trauma Management?: You Don't have to Reinvent the PTSD Management Wheel: ETM, the DOD and the Military

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

You Don't have to Reinvent the PTSD Management Wheel: ETM, the DOD and the Military

Why Etiotropic TM™ is NOT the DOD and Military’s Primary Pristine Psychological Trauma Management System Today and Why Incompetency (as in Walter Reed) Rules: Emphasizing the Gulf War of 1990-1991’s Intercession on DOD Planned Implementation of Etiotropic TM™ Following Research and Study

Department of Defense and Military: Their study and research of ETM TRT 1990-1991

In May 1990, a DOD – military education and research group assiduously studied Etiotropic TM (at the time viewed in the context of the clinical component Trauma Resolution Therapy™ - TRT) theory and application. The group’s members, numbering fifteen senior officers, unanimously recognized ETM TRT’s theoretical, application ethical and performance ascendance over all competing models.(1) It also showed that the model, albeit administered secularly (2) in treatment settings, would not adversely affect spiritual – religious beliefs' relationships existing between Chaplains, combatants and their families.

The group consisted of the senior commanding officers of the educational programs established at the military’s and other most well known and respected PTSD related facilities. They included such prestigious combat and medical programs and institutions at, for example, Fort Campbell’s 82nd Airborne Division, the US Army’s educational facility in New Jersey, the United States Marine Corps, Brooks Burn Unit and Fort Sam Houston Hospital in San Antonio, and the most famous of all, our country’s jewel of treatment for US Army combat veterans, Walter Reed Hospital.

After their original ETM TRT studies, I wrote a document, and then as always presented by Craig, as a special consultation for the DOD. It explained how to administer ETM TRT starting with the address of the trauma at the combat event. Then after identifying the relationship of the combatants to that event, ETM TRT would follow the combatants to more secure zones still in theater where some of the clinical component, for example, its short form address of near term trauma (under 90 days), could be administered. Once begun, ETM TRT provided for the continuing address of the event’s etiological effects to the individual’s home base, or following discharge.

That model had a strategic effect. When perpetrators applied traumatic events to individuals for the purposes of controlling them for the sake of power aggrandizement, removal of the trauma’s etiologies (there are two) would remove those perpetrators' controls. Intervention on perpetrators was the consequence.

That consultation which I wrote for the DOD (it would take high levels of authority to implement this strategic aspect of ETM) is recorded as it was in the ETM Tutorial at Etiotropic.com / ETM Tutorial / Professional / Strategic site location. But the best place to read about the strategic aspects of ETM TRT is in the summary (free eBook) version (with examples for near term application in relatively secure theater) entitled Guerrilla Warfare’s Pathogenesis and Cure found on the Etiotropic Trauma Management Trauma Resolution Therapy home, tutorial and online school pages, and also as an addendum to chapter 12 in the online ETM School’s text. It is entitled Etiotropic Trauma Management (ETM) Trauma Resolution Therapy (TRT) Online Training Certification. That latter book is one of a compendium of school supporting texts and is quite voluminous and published on demand with 680 pages of 8 ½ by 11 page size. Because, as I’m chagrined to say, that text book costs $75.00 (also the sales price - free to combat theater Chaplains and therapists) to build, or hand out as a course text, I recommend reading the free Guerrilla Warfare eBook found on the home page to get the idea if you are just forming an initial interest.

The strategic ETM TRT consultation, theory and application referenced in the just noted books is based on Vietnam combat and my experience in ground combat and helicopter operations where I was directly engaged in the processing of the wounded and killed in action. A summary of that experience is described in the ETM Tutorial’s development section. I did not write the consultation strategic focused document based on my personal traumatic experiences of that duty, for example, as if telling a combat story. Instead, I wrote as a combatant in a unique role that gave me tremendous insights into the traumatization of combatants, first respondents, and supervising managers. Of course, I did not think of trauma management at the time, but did so later when learning about trauma through development of ETM. I was also the body guard in all operations of the Commanding Officer, Colonel William Gentry Johnson, later to be Major General Johnson. Being that he was the TACA (onsite - over and on the battlefield, integration of helicopter and fixed wing combat with infantry activities) of every operation, approximately 1 per week lasting from 3 to 21 days, I saw the war and the various infantry - air (helicopter and fixed wing) and ground support (trucks and jeeps) activities, and then how they were evaluated and appraised by the Colonel when sending the "lesson's learned back to the DOD."

I also made those missions such as troop, reconnaissance insertion, emergency medevac, resupply and strike activities from the perspective of the helicopter combatant role, and often and importantly, being left in zones to accommodate helicopters too full with wounded. That fact is important because not only had I been in my own battle scenes, but I was able to see first hand what a responding trauma manager would see and experience entering a battle just following it or during it, and without having direct duties with the ground infantry (grunt / units). That freed me to observe the process. Later again after becoming a student and author of trauma, those observations underpinned the strategic and humane application recommendations I incorporated into the ETM on site trauma managers' duties.

At another time, I will post an article that shows more capacities to apply ETM starting with the battle scene so that you don't have to read the whole book. But quickly, here, so that there is no theoretical or application confusion with Jeffry Mitchell’s CISD, ETM only calls for identification of the event’s relationship to each combatant at the battle site – no grief therapy or CISD client centered methods are applied at the scene, except of course caring for the psychologically and physically debilitated within the parameters of knowing combatants must be stoic if possible and do their jobs during times of carnage.

On return to their respective commands, the study group’s officers began implementation of Etiotropic TM™. For example, at senior staff meetings, ETM TRT was described from the perspective of its theory and application and the study group officer’s descriptions. Application in treatment settings was to begin in tandem with additional professional training of staff therapists, counselors and chaplains. This was the process employed at all referenced institutions and was ongoing throughout the summer when on August 19, 1990, Sadam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, beginning the Gulf War of 1990-1991.

Immediately upon the start of the war, the research group’s members were re ordered to participate directly in the war effort. Duty assignments and commands were changed to accommodate the massive deployments to the Gulf region. ETM TRT implementation was put on hold until the war’s end, at which time it was to restart. Regrettably, when that ending came it was followed by a change in administrations at the Executive (Presidency) level, which then engineered a reduction in military and DOD personnel. Our ETM study group and its recommendations were lost in the ensuing military personnel changes beginning in 1992. We then began to apply the ETM strategic values to school districts engaged nearly in guerrilla warfare with terrorist like gangs. That activity, actually starting in 1989, and lasting until 1997 for Craig, is summarized in another post on this blog.

Hence, Sadam Hussein's unfortunate legacy includes derailing the most progressive stance the US Government took on trauma management. The legacy left us with today's PTSD management mess, exemplified in the Walter Reed Hospital scandal described by the Washington Post in a June 17, 2007 article.

(1) From the DOD – Military Study Group (1 of multiple conclusion testimonials)

“For both personnel and organizations, Etiotropic Trauma Management (ETM) is the most effective and comprehensive crisis and trauma treatment program in the country. My interest in crisis debriefing and trauma treatment dates back to working with soldiers on the battle field in Vietnam, returning prisoners of war, and medical personnel in hospital trauma settings. Since the Vietnam war, I have continuously worked with victims of trauma and their families. My studies in crisis and trauma resolution include: Harvard University, the International Society for Traumatic Studies, the programs of Dr. Jeff Mitchell (author of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing), National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) and others.

Etiotropic Trauma Management is a program with integrity. It provides quality treatment and delivers on all of its claims. Other programs tend to decrease anxiety in the debriefing process and the crisis worker tends to feel better for awhile. Later, issues arise, and trauma symptoms may go unrecognized and unattended. Only Etiotropic Trauma Management provides a method for dealing with the acute trauma manifestations.
This trauma management system greatly reduces the chance of a crisis experience affecting their professional and personal functioning. My thoughts are that this system would minimize the worker's compensation claims from traumatic reactions (PTSD) and the acting out behaviors of traumatic stress symptomatology.
When conferring with several professional colleagues who are well versed in crisis debriefing and trauma treatment, all agreed that Etiotropic Trauma Management offers the only complete program for emergency medical service personnel. I am a career Army Officer and currently assigned to Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas. Etiotropic Trauma Management is the program we are considering for use in our medical center.
We recently trained personnel so that the program can be recommended. ETM does not create victims; it resolves the impact of crisis and trauma. I urge EMS (Emergency Medical Services) organizations to give their personnel the best program possible, Etiotropic Trauma Management (ETM) and Trauma Resolution Therapy (TRT).

Very truly yours,

Gerald W. Conner CH (LTC) US Army”

Editorial Perspective - Bias

This editorial support to the ETM TRT site is written from a perspective of, and thus bias toward, how the clinical and management worlds look when the capacity to cure psychological trauma and PTSD are completely and wholly available for practical implementation into the decision making processes of free civilizations. That awesome power has never been presented, secularly, to humankind in its history, until the last 30 years through the application of Etiotropic TM. However, severe injury and illnesses for 14 of those years have prevented the story's being fully told at the public debate level. It would not be coming out today except that the return to Vietnam era psychiatric / bureaucratic management abuse of American veterans demonstrates a new and apparently always continuing, under the current management anyway, need for active advocacy. The abuse comes from that group's inability to cure psychological trauma or PTSD. The subsequent coping, or Nosotropic as it is called, approach failure produces an ever burgeoning treatment response subject to burnout, changing politics, devisive intra and inter helping agency idealogical struggles, Y and I (young and inexperienced) therapists and managers, perpetual experiments on veterans and constant unnecessary requirements of funding increases from the taxpayer. This real quagmire can be ended by simply switching the formal psychological trauma psychiatric designation from disorder to injury, and addressing as the latter is Etiotropically instead of Nosotropically. Stop treating deep wounds with psychological bandaids so that veteran's don't have to spend the rest of their lives in polypharmacological medicated growth groups trying to overcome being additionally and negligently psychiatrically disabled by psychiatrists.

Jesse W. Collins II

What is the Cause that this Writing Serves?

Because Etiotropic Trauma Management and Trauma Resolution Therapy (herein ETM TRT) represent not only a higher level of trauma treatment and management services than its competition, ETM TRT also brings a completely different PTSD management paradigm from that used by our government. Hence, ETM TRT can do lifetimes more than that for which our leaders and thus the public can even hope, not to mention expect on a routine basis. In that regard, here is what ETM TRT can do for our country, America, therein delineating, without hyperbole - grandiosity - exception, the cause to which this blog is dedicated. Functioning etiotropically (focus on etiology), as different from the nosotropic (symptom focused) model, ETM TRT can:

1. Remove all of psychological trauma's adverse effects from every returning and qualifying war veteran (no more combat caused PTSD).

2. Remove all of trauma's effects from every qualifying individual citizen and system (crisis management styled organization) in the US.

3. Stop preventable, (as attends alcoholism and violent crime) thus prospective future, trauma causing events from occurring.

4. Remove the weapon of terrorism as a methodological option for advancing political control by Islamic jihadists, (or other people who want to rule the world through dictate), by killing unbelievers such as free thinking - open religion choosing Americans, and in the process trying to “annihilate” this beautiful, just, caring and honorable country.

A Blog Intent: End US and State Government PTSD Treatment and Management Malfeasance

As the Executive Director, founder, and CEO of a family based national chain of chemical dependency and psychological trauma treatment centers, and more, and author of Etiotropic Trauma Management and Trauma Resolution Therapy (herein ETM TRT), it was recommended to me by medical staff to address competitive theories and models in the following manner. “When a person presented with his hands amputated because they had warts, I should say only that ‘We don't treat warts that way.’" Saying that method was barbaric wasn't done. Appearing mild, non reactive and above all politically correct was supposed to benefit me by making me seem more professional. Not saying bad things about the competition was a good thing to do, I was told. Of course, since I've learned that the true benefits go to the medical - psychological professions, the businesses that professionals create out of their practices.

I followed that method for almost thirty years. Although I compared the competing concepts, for example, the nosotropic trauma management approach to our etiotropic one, I did so by not beating up on those thinkers. My mantra was to do the best I could for patients and clients, and not engage in public professional altercations. Taking a cue from public relations persons, that is also a great marketing model used today by most corporations.

To show compliance with the non attack model, you'll see that neither the 100 MB Etiotropic Tutorial nor the similarly sized Online Professional Training School says even a sardonic word against competitive theories and methods. Again, I did that for nearly 3 decades, holding firm to the commitment to the PC concept.

That began to change last fall (2006) and this summer (2007). Following the appalling PTSD treatment scandal where Iraq War veterans with the injury were warehoused in a rundown motel infested with rodents and no care, another article about malfeasance in the treatment and management of Iraq War PTSD affected combat veterans was published in the Washington Post on June 17, 2007. It showed that Walter Reed Hospital, the agency causing both scandals, and the battlefield to treatment system were not just incompetent, but the consequences of their failures could, if not corrected, be horrendous for many veterans' lifetimes to come. And it was greatly anger producing to me to see arrogant professionals like those having treatment management responsibilities at the top try to duck the issue. They did not need more inadequately trained and still incompetent therapists. Their problem was poor research and study of all available methods, especially those already historically approved, as was ETM TRT probably long before the current staff had completed medical school. Had these government leaders done their research job thoroughly, they would have found that 17 years ago Walter Reed, and the entire military's crisis trauma management Chaplain based responders to tragedy, had, respectively, elected to put ETM TRT into its facility and virtually to all major education training branches of the armed services. It had been studied resolutely, being in the end resoundly decided to be "the best psychological trauma treatment and crisis management model available in this country."

Apparently the Gulf War, followed by military cutbacks during the 1992 - 1998 administrations, sent the Hospital as well as the military back into the dark ages of PTSD understanding, which was the period prior to the 1980 promulgation of PTS as a disorder by the DSM III. As new groups of professionals, that is, therapists and managers, were assigned duty to the Hospital, and the military, they stayed ignorant as were their previous leaders.

I intend to show in this blog that the VA's PTSD treatment system, considering itself the pinnacle of knowledge of treatment of combat trauma, was an accomplice in that malfeasance. Consequently, our discharged service men and women suffered greatly and have continued to do so. Moreover, that group is looked to for expertise, as in the VA's National Center for PTSD. But they suffer the same theoretical and application failures.

From this point on, one of the missions of this blog is to reverse Government mal-study, mal-research, mal-treatment and mal-management of psychological trauma. I will keep the ETM TRT professional and patient education programs politically correct, but do the best I can to bring about absolute positive and perfect, even guaranteed, address of psychological trauma as it is especially caused by combat, by confronting where deserved moronic theories, methods, professionals and whole paradigms. There'll be no more ruination of veteran's lives by Walter Reed Hospital styled shameful gross negligence. On my life of this last thirty years bringing the finest care to and that can be had by trauma victims, I will make it so until I am no more.

And we'll put the professionals in prison who amputate people's hands because they have warts.

Sincerely,

Jesse Collins

Etiotropic TM Thesis and Mission Scope: A Revolutionary Trauma Management Paradigm

In its often referenced as “revolutionary” paradigm, Etiotropic TM, which is the trademark for Etiotropic Trauma Management (ETM), manages psychological trauma's individual and systemic, including organizational, effects starting with their occurrences and proceeding to their reversals, reconciliations, or resolutions. These "effects" when presenting in individuals are medically called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As different from every other attempt (which always focuses on symptoms) to manage trauma that is available today, ETM focuses on etiology. Hence medically speaking, the problem solving focus delineation and name are considered and called “Etiotropic.” Because the other model (with lots of methods doing similar things) focuses on symptoms, its medical management problem solving delineation and name are termed “nosotropic.”

In ETM in fact, the Etiotropic focus is structured so tightly on its goal that ETM precludes attempts to change, or even identify, symptomatic thoughts and behavior while ETM's clinical treatment component, Trauma Resolution Therapy (TRT), expunges the trauma's etiology. If that axiom of ETM, that is, address etiology first and never try to control or change symptoms, for example, through learning to cope, is not followed, the symptoms will maintain their existences, albeit in other manifestations or through dormantcy, and will preclude, usually unknowingly by Nosotropic administrators or their patients, the address of etiology, thus perpetuating forever symptom existences.

Why is it that way? Etiology and symptoms are mutually inclusive. You can’t have one without the other. And they dance with each other forever, that is, as long as a hint of etiology remains.

Professional clinicians and managers will find that once the etiology is reversed, there is no remaining need to teach people to cope with symptoms, as they will not exist absent their etiologies. Can you imagine? Nosotropic (such as cognitive behaviorial) dedicated therapists will never again have to tell trauma victims how to live life. That is, symptoms will disappear automatically and completely upon the trauma etiologies' resolutions. That’ll be all there is of psychological trauma and its effects. When applied under ETM TRT administrative rules, that amazing outcome is guaranteed.

ETM and TRT are made available through free tutorials and fee based course training and certification for professionals found at this blog's primary educational site. It is Etiotropic Psychological Trauma Management at http://etiotropic.org. The ETM Tutorial also provides complete layman based education for patients or clients of licensed ETM TRT clinicians and managers.

This blog supports etiotropic.com and its educational programs by providing discussion and support for Certified ETM clinicians, managers, researchers, and any person who is interested in psychological trauma as it is addressed by ETM TRT.

Because of ETM TRT's extraordinary treatment capacities, it has an equally extraordinary value in the management of traumatized systems and perpetrators of trauma causing events intended for the purpose of manipulating people, including entire populations. For example, one symptom element fosters denial of the severity of the damage by the victims' supporting the perpetrator. When the etiology is removed, so goes the denial. The perpetrator is cooked and can no longer function in that system he is attempting to control through administration of the traumatic events.

So it naturally follows that this blog also has a great global and necessary cause. It is to engage government (such as the VA and DOD), social cultural, and all supporting Nosotropically based epistemologies with the intent to shift our culture's trauma management approaches from Nosotropically focused paradigms, which have always failed miserably (witness Walter Reed Hospital, June 17, 2007, Washington Post articles as a tip of the iceberg of malfeasance), and will continue to fail, to Etiotropic ones, in this instance referring to the ever successful ETM TRT. It is the only purely (unfettered even by partial Nosotropic designs) Etiotropic trauma management model available. Should we, that is, I and those who agree with this theory and plan, be successful in this effort, Americans can expect in the minimum, and without hyperbole – grandiosity – exaggeration, to achieve the following:

1. Remove all of psychological trauma's adverse effects from every returning and qualifying war veteran (no more combat caused PTSD).
2. Remove all of trauma's effects from every qualifying individual citizen and system (crisis management styled organization) in the US.
3. Stop preventable, (as attends alcoholism and violent crime) thus prospective future, trauma causing events from occurring.
4. Remove the weapon of terrorism as a methodological option for advancing political control by Islamic jihadists, (or other people who want to rule the world through dictate), by killing unbelievers such as free thinking - open religion choosing Americans, and in the process trying to “annihilate” this beautiful, just, caring and honorable country.

Hence, this blog is not just about PTSD information and treatment by one of many programs. It is about a cause worth fighting for if ever there was one: Changing cultural management paradigm from one which has never worked, to one that is guaranteed to perform its duties as described in its literature every single time, in the process effacing trauma and its repetitive effects from the hearts and minds of our people and in the interim ending the uses of psychological trauma by perpetrators to control or destroy our lives.

Since its inception starting nearly 30 years ago, I’ve always known what ETM TRT can achieve both individually and systemically: they are the magnificent things that I've presented here. This is nearly my 30th year in making a contribution to this wonderful calling.

Sincerely,

Jesse Collins

PS. Please read as support to this statement "Etiotropic TM: Author's Background as Related to Blog Mission."

EtiotropicTM OPED: Just Effective or Cure? Integrity? Only Complete Trauma Management?