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Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

663 points by thelastgallon 2y ago

ViktorRay 2y ago
This is excellent journalism. Digging into an issue that is affecting lives in such a drastic way and bringing these issues to light. Like this part of the article for example: Until The Times told the Navy of the lab’s findings about the SEALs who died by suicide, the Navy had not been informed, the service confirmed in a statement. A Navy officer close to the SEAL leadership expressed audible shock, and then frustration, when told about the findings by The Times. “That’s the problem,” said the officer, who asked not to be named in order to discuss a sensitive topic. “We are trying to understand this issue, but so often the information never reaches us.”
vunderba 2y ago
This was a really well-written article. I think for years I had naturally thought that traumatic brain injury as a result of explosives basically caused the brain to rattle so hard that it smashed against the skull causing contusions, but apparently this is something different. The way it's explained in the article is that this is actually a result of the blast energy wave bouncing off of differently dense brain tissue sections and causing cavitation. I'm glad that these issues are finally being brought to light, It's truly unfortunate that no matter how highly trained and skilled some of these soldiers are, that blast waves from IEDs or in this case from their own munitions can result in such insidious physiological changes.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  From what I’ve heard from people in artillery is that the brass hardly cares about occupational safety. If they need to get rounds down field they get rounds down field first and make sure you have proper ppe for that second. And what ppe they do have is seen as improper. Not much you can even do when the issue is local blast damage and the gun design demands you to be so close to it.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Yet another reason to not join the military. You’re just fuel for the machine. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/06/14/armys-recruiting-problem-male.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/06/14/armys-recruit...
    - mc32 2y ago
      These days we have a senate committee approving a bill that would register women for the draught… it’s getting closer. Men aren’t enough, for this machine, apparently.
      - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
        Equality should mean equality! :D
        mc32 2y ago
        I hear you. But women can continue the line —society. Men can’t bear children —society dies. Men get sent to war, women stay in the homeland, many of the men may not return and the women may have to persevere, with sacrifice but society can push on. If it were reversed, that society may well collapse. The Spartans didn’t send their women off and let the men stay back in the homeland.
        toomuchtodo 2y ago
        This sounds like discrimination. Only women can produce offspring? Too bad, so sad. Everyone serves if it is required.
        throwaway22032 2y ago
        It doesn't sound like discrimination, it is discrimination, tautologically. The onus is on you to show that it is bad in this case. We discriminate routinely, children are exempt from working for example.
- munificent 2y ago
  This would also explain why accounts of "shell shock" and PTSD rose so dramatically during WWI but were less common in prior wars where explosions were less common.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    I always wonder if it occurred more, or, in a modern society, was recorded more. Just thinking aloud.
    - munificent 2y ago
      I think it's probably both. I think the negative consequences of being in a war increased significantly after the invention of artillery, but also psychological stuff was under-reported the farther you go back in time.
  - joegibbs 2y ago
    That's interesting that at the time, in WW1, it was assumed to be a physical injury to the brain caused by the shockwave of exploding artillery shells (hence the name). A few years later a consensus evolved that it's a psychological problem caused by the stress of combat, which was the prevailing opinion for about 100 years. And now it's looking like it might actually be a physical injury caused by shockwave damage to the brain.
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      Shell shock was considered related to neurasthenia (weak nerves) which is the 18th century name for ME/CFS. TBI, ME/CFS and PTSD are highly correlated for what I believe are the same genetic predisposition plus an environmental trigger.
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        ME/CFS can also be triggered by viruses. Epstein-Barr virus and SARS-CoV-2 both are suspected triggers.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I swear I’ve read about something similar happening to athletes in bobsledding due to the vibration of the brain.
  - etc-hosts 2y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/sports/olympics/olympics-bobsled-suicide-brain-injuries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/sports/olympics/olympics-... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/sports/olympics/bobsled-travis-bell-joe-sisson.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/sports/olympics/bobsled-t...
snakeyjake 2y ago
I was an infantryman in the Army for ten years, from 1998 to 2008, and deployed three times, twice to Iraq, Encounters with IEDs were common, especially during the surge. So many of my friends have died to suicide or have killed themselves due to drugs and/or alcohol that it is hard to keep track. Now that primadonna seals are dying maybe someone will pay attention. Thankfully the only lasting effects of my deployments seem to be a bad back and distaste for authority.
- ein0p 2y ago
  Do you think it's because of whatever brain damage they may have encountered, or because they could not find meaning in their civilian lives? I've read it's often the latter in military men, especially the ones that really believed in the mission and experienced highly stressful life or death situations. They come back and they're taken aback by the mundane bullshit that our lives are in comparison to what they've been through. Intuitively that rings true, but having never served, I can't fully relate.
  - snakeyjake 2y ago
    >Do you think it's because of whatever brain damage they may have encountered, or because they could not find meaning in their civilian lives? I have no idea. Strangely the most common thread seems to be the ones who off themselves went back home after getting out. Almost everyone I know who got out and stayed away from home is doing ok. Almost everyone I know who got out and went back home is a wreck. Some had TBI exposures, some didn't.
    - nightowl_games 2y ago
      What do you mean by stayed away from home? Like stayed away from the wife and kids? For how long?
      - snakeyjake 2y ago
        Going home means going back to their hometown after getting out.
yieldcrv 2y ago
This is the kind of research I've been yearning to see on suicide. Just telling people not to, or to call a hotline, seemed like the worst most patronizing advice as it never solved the underlying thing. I've since learned that there is a subset of suicidal people where that's enough, where the suicidal tendency is a kneejerk decision that can be disrupted, but it bugged me that its not serving everyone that becomes suicidal with a recurring condition that's not improved by merely being present. It always feel like people are too uncomfortable to talk about it enough, or to question the response measures. A "I'm Helping!" sentiment by copy and pasting a suicide hotline memo, when they're not helping at all, just offloading their discomfort into a protective layer for their own psyche. In contrast, I'm comfortable enough to wonder whether suicide was the most rationale and objectively best choice, as someone with strong self preservation circuits you can see how far apart I am from everyone else. But this is opinion, a hunch, what I really want is a data driven analysis of the conditions. As with real science, I am accepting of any conclusion, instead of trying to conform a conclusion to preventing it if prevention isn't what winds up being on the table with our current infrastructure.
- pedalpete 2y ago
  It's important to view suicide not from the "I don't want to live" perspective and rather from the "I don't want to be in pain" viewpoint. I feel this article does a good job of not explicitly saying this when describing what must have been an agonizing existence for David Metcalf before he took his life.
  - theGnuMe 2y ago
    Correct. Pain is the explanation. It's obvious when you realize that opioids relieve depression. They aren't a good long term solution though.
    - jajko 2y ago
      Suffering as a more general term IMHO... I can imagine having no pain per se, but being so bogged down from few well placed catastrophes in life that continuing would be much harder than not.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
Of course it doesn't reach them. Same with any black project, the dangers get swept under the rug.
- Hnrobert42 2y ago
  The article doesn’t say why. It alludes to bureaucracy. Either way, I don’t think unsubstantiated cynicism is productive.
  - moron4hire 2y ago
    I suspect it's like a lot of DoD-funded research. The work gets done, the report gets written, and then it goes on a shelf (or rather, some ancient SharePoint site on a classified network with no functional search ability). When a crisis occurs, the word goes out to everyone, the one lifer analyst spending too much time in windowless rooms at the Pentagon pipes up about something he remembers, and then everyone is satisfied that the work got done, "the problem is understood". Everything goes back to normal until it happens again.
  - raisedbyninjas 2y ago
    I find it difficult to believe that a coterie of seal spouses coordinated a brain study of their dead husbands and after finding a smoking gun, none of them thought to fire off a message to anybody in the Navy.
    - kmeisthax 2y ago
      It's entirely possible that they actually did send messages, but the people they informed didn't give a fuck, and are in entirely separate divisions from the Navy officers The Times interviewed.
bikenaga 2y ago
From a couple of the sources referred to in the article: Impact of repeated blast exposure on active-duty United States Special Operations Forces - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313568121 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313568121 "We performed a multimodal study of active-duty United States Special Operations Forces (SOF)—an elite group repeatedly exposed to explosive blasts in training and combat—to identify diagnostic biomarkers of brain injury associated with repeated blast exposure (RBE). We found that higher blast exposure was associated with alterations in brain structure, function, and neuroimmune markers, as well as lower quality of life. Neuroimaging findings converged on an association between cumulative blast exposure and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), a widely connected brain region that modulates cognition and emotion. This work supports the use of a network-based approach, focusing on the rACC, in future studies investigating the impact of RBE on SOF brain health." Characterisation of interface astroglial scarring in the human brain after blast exposure: a post-mortem case series - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27291520/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27291520/ "The blast exposure cases showed a distinct and previously undescribed pattern of interface astroglial scarring at boundaries between brain parenchyma and fluids, and at junctions between grey and white matter. This distinctive pattern of scarring may indicate specific areas of damage from blast exposure consistent with the general principles of blast biophysics, and further, could account for aspects of the neuropsychiatric clinical sequelae reported. The generalisability of these findings needs to be explored in future studies, as the number of cases, clinical data, and tissue availability were limited."
- MarkMarine 2y ago
  In bootcamp my SDI was a stinger gunner. It cost something like 60k for him to "practice" firing, including the cost of the drone. He was a SSGT, had been in for 11 years at the time I knew him, and he'd actually fired the weapon once. There was another gunner there training at the same time, so two people fired at the same drone. We can train everyone without this level of exposure, and I can imagine a world where your dose is tracked like radiation, kept to a safe level, and people are forced into retirement after they hit the limit.
nunez 2y ago
What an incredible article. The other articles referenced within are also excellent. My concern: given that this is becoming more common knowledge, in a world in which other, potentially adversarial, countries are more than fine sending their soldiers through the mental meat grinder, how can we prevent outcomes like the ones shared here while retaining hard power?
- mbrumlow 2y ago
  Robots and drones. Flesh and mind are weak. Metal and code is strong.
  - hammyhavoc 2y ago
    EMP says hi.
    - midjji 2y ago
      The only usable EMPs we have are nuclear weapons. So if you are willing to use one, then just detonate it a bit closer to the surface and it will work just as well against everything we have.
      - hammyhavoc 2y ago
        https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/the-specter-of-emp-weapons-in-space https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/the-specter-of...
- halJordan 2y ago
  In the medium term, these posts are all voluntary. They say you volunteer 3 times before you're a Ranger (enlisting, Airborne, Ranger). As people learn that they will likely kill themselves at 45, when you're supposed to retire at 40 and have 40 years of retirement, then they will leave SF early. In the short term I could see leadership pushing a fourth volunteering (volunteering to commit suicide so the Mission can continue)
Borrible 2y ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-mystery-of-shellshock-solved-scientists-identify-the-unique-brain-injury-caused-by-war-9981443.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-mystery-of-shellshock...
ohialehua 2y ago
I didn’t read the article. I mainly come here for the commentary and the backdoor links. But! Hormone replacement therapy is a game changer for a lot of men who have CTE. I’m a clinical social worker. I’ve worked in emergency medicine, correctional medicine, and now outpatient psychotherapy. I used to think HRT was for ego lifters and old ladies. But I have seen first hand the value of HRT for CTE patients. I’ve seen guys go from three OWIs and unable to manage an entry level job at Lowe’s to law-abiding, midlevel executive at national corporations within months of starting on HRT.
- reginald78 2y ago
  What do you think the mechanism behind this is? I wouldn't intuitively think HRT would help much with a damaged brain, unless the damage itself somehow caused a hormone imbalance.
  - pcthrowaway 2y ago
    Perhaps the stress of deployment and even training disrupts hormone production somehow?
  - Tao3300 2y ago
    I'd guess that it kicks off growth and regeneration.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    Low testosterone in adult men causes pretty severe fatigue and depression that resolves quickly with treatment. You become almost unable to experience joy or desire, so you go through the motions of life with as little effort as possible.
  - financltravsty 2y ago
    Damage to the brain causes damage to the HPTA. HPTA damage leads to out of "whack" hormones, leading to knock off problems. Hormone replacement would remedy some of these issues. The same can be seen in people under chronic stress or substance abusers.
  - 2y ago
jrmg 2y ago
Artillery crew members who fired thousands of rounds in combat came home plagued by hallucinations and psychosis Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts? Or is the order of magnitude of the exposure just wildly lower compared to the military, even in the most enthusiastic?
- deleted 2y ago
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- User23 2y ago
  The difference between small arms and artillery is absolutely enormous. Handguns and rifles make loud popping noises. Exploding artillery shells are concussive bombs that produce brain rattling blasts.
  - djmips 2y ago
    Navy Seals aren't firing artillery. The article says the Seals brains were damaged by their own weapons which I assume to be rifles but maybe I'm wrong.
    - serf 2y ago
      they're talking about blasts from open-air combustion shoulder mounted anti-tank weapons.. very nearly artillery, and very loud.[0] . The article linked is the one mentioned in the parent article. one of the major problems with such weapons is that although the support crew can shield themselves, often the firing soldier cannot due to operation of the weapon. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-rocket-launcher.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-...
    - mcmcmc 2y ago
      SEALs and other special forces use a lot of heavy weaponry and explosives in addition to small arms like rifles and sidearms. Think door breaching charges, grenades, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns.
  - 2y ago
golemiprague 2y ago
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DoreenMichele 2y ago
In many cases, doctors treating the injured troops give them diagnoses of psychiatric disorders that miss the underlying physical damage. Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts. I've said for years that people who are suicidal typically have very serious, intractable personal problems but get dismissed like it's "mental" or emotional. They need actual help for actual problems, not "attaboys" and not empty assurances that "Someone cares."
- ambicapter 2y ago
  Your comment doesn't reflect what you're quoting, you call it "personal problems" which implies extrapersonal problems occurring in their life, when the quote describes actual physical damage done to their brains.
  - DoreenMichele 2y ago
    Health problems are real problems. They're personal problems and can impact how your mind works. The quote says they frequently get psychiatric diagnoses but new research indicates it's brain damage, not something talk therapy will help. I'm saying the same thing: Suicidal people have real problems that need real solutions, not talk therapy or emotional encouragement.
    - jt2190 2y ago
      Maybe I’m missing something here… is there a “real” solution that they should be getting instead? My impression is that there aren’t any remedies for brain injuries yet, that we’ve only just been able to detect them, but I’d love to hear that I’m wrong about this.
      - DoreenMichele 2y ago
        Anecdotally, I know of cases of improved neurological function from alternative remedies. No, I'm not aware of any vetted medical studies, new research etc. I'm not really trying to say "Just give these people x drug, clearly!" I'm trying to make a broader point that people who are suicidal need some problem resolved. Homeless people are frequently suicidal. They need housing, not to be dismissed as "crazy." People with torturous medical problems are frequently suicidal. I'm pro right to die but I also would like to see the world take their problem seriously and not act like you are "crazy" to feel like your body is a prison, you just want the torment to end and to feel your only hope of escape is death. Etc. People who are suicidal are routinely dismissed as "crazy," like they don't have a real problem. This needs to stop.
deleted 2y ago
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vjust 2y ago
Land of the free, home of the brave - doesn't come cheap. By definition "Leadership" in this capitalistic society is predatory - this style extends to the armed forces, where everyone is expendable.
- localfirst 2y ago
  How is fabricating a justification for invading a country that never attacked America benefit the average citizen who's quality of life has fallen in the past three decades? I just don't understand this "freedom" argument that seems to gloss over the obvious--poor people dying for a small group of people that benefit massively from war
- deleted 2y ago
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freen 2y ago
4x more soldiers killed themselves than died in combat since 9/11. [0] At least 2X more soldiers kill themselves in peacetime than die in combat in every war that we as a species has tracked suicide rates for veterans. [0](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-deaths-mental-health-crisis https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-...)
- jart 2y ago
  Life is hell if the world won't let you be who you were born to be. I'm not sure if I would have made it if I'd been born into a world without computers.
Doxon 2y ago
Misc info on weapon sound pressure. The Carl Gustav 8.4cm recoilless rifle now be procured by the Marines has a big back-blast through the typical venturi used by these kinds of weapons. In training, (Sweden at least) they are limited to the number of rounds they can fire. I do not know if this for merely hearing loss, or if there are concussive effects. Also, while "small arms" do not typically have concussive effects, I have stood behind a.50 Barrett rifle discharge and there was a noticable shock wave in the air. I didn't feel it in my head, but my intestines were not happy. If you were in the front hemisphere of the muzzle blast it would be far worse. Muzzle brakes on rifles usually make the blast wave propagate more to the side. A high caliber rifle with a muzzle brake could easily hit 160db. Maybe a .50 cal could go higher. So now you are even punishing your friends, not just folks downrange.
- japhyr 2y ago
  I live in a small town with a gun dealer who is not particularly thoughtful about others. One year he had a truck-mounted cannon made for the fourth of july parade, and he fired it off numerous times throughout the parade. Everyone who didn't already have their ears covered, including so many young kids, doubled over each time it went off. He just laughed at everyone, even with kids crying on both sides of the street. People were talking in person and online about how their ears rang for days afterward.
  - Semaphor 2y ago
    And that’s not a crime?
    - japhyr 2y ago
      I have no idea; it's certainly not one that's seen any prosecution.
      - mrob 2y ago
        The only people who could do anything about it probably have age-related hearing loss and don't see it as a problem. Same reason nobody does anything about extremely loud motorcyclists.
Animats 2y ago
"It was not chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which is found in football players and other athletes who have been repeatedly hit in the head. It was something new." OK, so not that. There are going to be a huge number of people with this problem from the Ukraine war. There haven't been years of artillery duels since WWII.
kragen 2y ago
> Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts. that is to say, it's actually shell shock? as in, actual physical shock from actual shells? george carlin would be so proud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc the article also mentions that they'd all trained extensively in diving deep underwater, which is also known to cause brain damage, but the 'interface astroglial scarring' pathology lab results sound pretty specific to big shock waves i'm skeptical that firing a rifle produces shock waves that induce cavitation in brain tissue, though
- midjji 2y ago
  If I understood it right, its firing artillery, not rifles. Even then I doubt cavitation, but not shock echos at density borders tearing he tissues at the border.
- baxtr 2y ago
  I wonder if the Havanna syndrome is somehow correlated with this as well
  - emsign 2y ago
    Pressure buildup in the cranium due to microwave heating? Victims have reported a feeling as if their heads are about to explode.
    - zxexz 2y ago
      Huh. I feel like that almost daily nowadays. Maybe I should grab some tinfoil. Unless it's coming from inside the head...
      - hdjrldbrhrh 2y ago
        Go see a doctor. Run. Don't walk.
midjji 2y ago
If this is accurate there is likely very little to be done, and the solution will likely be to have less training and retire a decade sooner.
- TomK32 2y ago
  There's plenty to be done mostly in research: Regular checks on every solider after they had a blast that potentially affected their brain. Training can certainly be adapted as well as the gear that protects their heads and brains. I bet there's something of a gradient in the brain damage and not just a single event that causes it to go bad, the ages of those mentioned in the article are all within a decade. Reassigning soldiers earlier in their career to tasks without risk for their brain will save them and their families lots of pain.
  - squirclepants 2y ago
    [dead]
giovannibonetti 2y ago
This reminds me of the movie Concussion (2015) with Will Smith, which is about a similar pattern of brain damage and suicide in football players.
- funnym0nk3y 2y ago
  However the article states that that is a different damage.
emsign 2y ago
This isn't new knowledge. I've heard about blasts causing sudden pressure buildup in the brain via the spinal cord years ago. Of course this is now a much bigger problem for the military as it affects all combat soldiers even during training exercises.
aplskdfjp452345 2y ago
[flagged]
camkego 2y ago
The article says "The vast majority of blast exposure for Navy SEALs comes from firing their own weapons, not from enemy action." Is it possible damage can be modeled with something like: total_damage = incident_count * Impulse - or - total_damage = incident_count * Energy Density It seems like the question of potential damage from small arms and personal weapons should be investigated.
manuelmoreale 2y ago
There’s an Apple podcast that touches on some of the aspects related to this: https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/the-line-podcast/ https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/the-line-podcast/
wyldfire 2y ago
From a NYT article about the Lewiston, Maine shooter's brain injuries [1]: > Researchers found that before they worked around blasts, the instructors brains looked healthy. But in follow-up scans five months later, their brains were teeming with an abnormal protein called beta amyloid that is associated with Alzheimer’s disease. > “In a young brain you should see no amyloid. None. Zero,” said Dr. Carlos Leiva-Salinas, the University of Missouri neuroradiologist who ran the study. “We were surprised, very surprised.” [1] http://archive.today/ju6iq http://archive.today/ju6iq
medo-bear 2y ago
I think it is pretty obvious that there should be more government funding to determine whether the brain damage occurred while defending our freedom within the US borders or outside it.
tokai 2y ago
Prisoners is another population where we would find pervasive brain damage if we scanned them.[0] In time I believe we will find that a ton of destructive/aggressive behavior is due to physical issues in the brain. [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00406-013-0403-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00406-013-0403-6
- Invictus0 2y ago
  And then what? Do you kill/indefinitely confine the ones with brain lesions? Can you grant them parole in good conscience?
  - fwip 2y ago
    When we learned that lead poisoning was bad for you and increased aggression, we didn't kill everybody with lead poisoning. We changed our society to reduce lead poisoning, by getting rid of leaded gasoline, lead paint, etc.
  - tokai 2y ago
    treat them obviously
jack_riminton 2y ago
A lot of special forces have been doing what we used to call "door kicking" in the last few wars. Lots of explosive breaches, firing weapons and throwing grenades indoors. I'm sure this is the main contributing factor. The percussive force of firing and explosives indoors is horrible and I say this as an ex artillery officer, so I'm used to chest-breaking bangs from firing big artillery guns
- HoochTHX 2y ago
  As a 13B1O that saw all three sides of this, loading/firing, driver for platoon leader, and while deployed with orders to act in the door-to-door fashion. You are correct. I will add that while operating the gun, the percussive forces are pretty well shielded on the inside of the at least motorized versions, was a paladin crew member here.
- Trow849fj 2y ago
  Any source for this? Artillery was around for 500 years and shell shock was hugely discussed for past 100 years. There is much better corellation with divorce. Soldiers returns home with PTSD, only to have their house, children, savings and pension stollen. Because they were not around to guard it! And they may get thrown into prison for being too poor! Shell shock is very convinient excuse, when victims do not get proper recovery!
  - bumby 2y ago
    From the article, they have objective evidence from studying the brains of deceased servicemembers: "It was not chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which is found in football players and other athletes who have been repeatedly hit in the head. It was something new. The lab’s research team started looking for similar damage in other brains. In civilians’ brains, they did not find it. Nor was it in the brains of veterans who had been exposed to a single powerful explosion like a roadside bomb. But in veterans exposed repeatedly to blasts, they found it again and again."
  - nonrandomstring 2y ago
    Those words were spoken almost exactly 100 years ago "Shell shock" is a made up term. Other than on hearing the effects of high impulse on a human are long-term, complex and still an areas of research. In WW1, in Northfields hospital they started to define PTSD in ways that didn't quite add up. Some soldiers had never been under bombardment but had the same symptoms. Nonetheless, the term remained in use because 1) "Shell shock" was deemed curable with rest, and the main objective was to get soldiers patched up and back to the front. 2) It was a way to avoid getting shot for desertion. A decent officer would not order traumatised men disciplined but send them on to hospital with "shell shock". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
sharpshadow 2y ago
Mandatory shock absorbing helmet during training would be helpful I guess. What other preventive measures could be employed?
erva 2y ago
Qualifier: Former US special operations operator that served in multiple wars. My anecdotal take is there are many ways that shock and trauma can accumulate through training and war that are far beyond the minimal effects of an M4. Firearms: While the primary weapons systems are the M4 and side arm (pistol), there are many weapons systems utilized by special operations such as sniper rifles, crew serve weapons, and niche small arms. The M82 sniper rifle shoots a 50 BMG round. In either the bolt action or semi-auto versions they feel like you are getting punched in the face when you shoot them. Crew serve weapons like the MK19 and M2 do pack a punch. The MK19 is a machine gun that shoots 40mm grenades. The M2 is a .50 cal machine gun. These weapons systems are mounted, but the percussion of them is still far greater than an M4. More niche arms like the M249 SAW, M16 HBAR, full-auto AKs, M240 Golf, MP9, etc are not as mild as the standard M4/M16. Blasts: There are many types of blasts encountered such as Mortars (inbound and outbound), Flash Bangs, Entry charges, IEDs, Landmines, etc. These do make your head ring if you are close enough to them. In my own personal experience there are many other daily jarring events that aren't nearly as sexy to talk about. Riding in the back of a 5 ton will almost shake your brain out of your head. Riding in an LCAC (hovercraft) is like riding in a 5 ton. Doing boat work in Zodiacs will bounce you all over the place, especially when doing surf passages. Doing hydrographic surveys right where the surf breaks will pound you for hours and make you a little sick afterwards. When your chute opens on a jump, if jumping round chutes, will make you see stars...the landing is not a soft pretty one like rectangle chutes...you hit the ground hard. There are many more ways your body gets pounded on a daily basis far in excess of the weapons you use.
- bumby 2y ago
  The article links to a USSOCOM-funded study. In your opinion, are they (as a whole) seriously concerned with mitigating this issue or is it just checking the box? The worry is this can be similar to the buried diesel tank issue contaminating water, which was known for decades but seemed to be ignored (possibly out of liability concerns).
  - erva 2y ago
    I'm not sure how much of it you can minimize. You can only control what you can control...and war/combat is chaos. Honestly it seems most things in relation to this over the years has been on treatment, not so much prevention.
noisy_boy 2y ago
Wonder if something similar happens to people who have exposure to drilling sound for significantly continuous amount of time (few hours a day). I often see construction/roadworks crew around my area without ear protection while drilling is going on.
00_hum 2y ago
the way people understand mood and suicide is completely wrong. i have had very unusual bipolar disorder symptoms in the past and it allowed me to experience extreme depression one day and then good mood the next day. i have experienced depression that is so bad that it was difficult to physically move. i remember not being able to stand up from being seated in a chair. this is what i consider to be basically the far side of the spectrum of symptoms — the worst that depression can be. its absolutely deadly because at this point you are effectively experiencing unbearable pain as well as, for some reason, having trouble moving. it hurts to think about the future. every moment is agony. people in this situation kill themselves to end the pain most of all and because they feel trapped. and also because in this state of mind you are unable to work, support yourself or even have relationships. but the real insight is whats next. luckily i only experienced those lows for a period of time. and some days i would be lifted out of it and feel perfectly normal. this experience is what made me realize what almost nobody realizes: that there is no situation where a healthy person will feel the desire to kill themselves. this is because mood is an illusion. i would go from having this entire world view that my life is hopeless and being completely lost and almost instantly switch over to having lots of things on my mind and looking forward to many things and wanting to get on with life. having a normal mood involves being blind to negative things as much as being depressed involves seeing bad things that arent bad. the human mind is designed to translate sensory input into action by any means and when this system breaks down it weirdly feels painful and makes you want to kill yourself. i think the breakdown of this system can be isolated to a domain, concept or situation or be global. and i think that high stress can cause this effect through inflammatory dysregulation or some other stress pathology giving the incorrect impression that suicide is a reaction to stress. if there were a pill to stop the root cause of depression, nobody would ever kill themselves except for terminally ill people. and just because someone killed themself doesnt mean that their life was especially hard, hopeless or messed up or whatever. it just means they were sick. thats it. and yet every time theres a suicide, all people talk about are the circumstances surrounding the suicide even though they probably are indirectly involved at best! when i was in those deep depressions i would connect the dots of all the things about my life into a causal web and would be convinced myself that it was the circumstances of my life were the reason i felt depressed. but then within hours that mental framework would disappear completely and i would feel fine. its an extremely powerful illusion. thats why the word trapped resonates so powerfully with people who have been through it. the illusion makes you feel trapped. this realization has made me basically immune to depression. i recognize mood disfunction immediately now and i have coached myself to remember its an illusion. i am sure that i have experienced significant mood dysfunction in the past, and that most people have, and gotten lost in it simply because i didnt understand what was going on. i think that this is a huge component of the decision to commit suicide: people start experiencing pain, they think its intrinsic to their life situation, they get lost in it, and they would hold on if only they had some context. i wish there was a way to induce severe depression temporarily to show people what it is and educate them so they could not go into it completely blind when the time comes. that would really help people.
MisterDizzy 2y ago
I've said for several years that my estimation of the United States military's treatment of its enlistees makes it basically indistinguishable from psychological torture in my eyes. I'm glad there's finally research that says something essentially similar.
sklargh 2y ago
I really don’t know how to move forward on some of the effects of these “lighter” crew served weapons. Carl G comes to mind.
fallingfrog 2y ago
Topical: just a few minutes from where I live, in Lewiston Maine, a former grenade range instructor walked into a bar recently and killed 18 people. His brain was found to have the same kinds of damage- he had been hearing voices and experiencing other psychotic symptoms and he had access to guns. It seems likely that the repeated concussions at the grenade range were a contributing factor. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/maine-shooting-brain-injury.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/maine-shooting-brain-i...
47282847 2y ago
Interesting how the obvious exposure to violence and what psychosomatic/organical damage it causes also to those merely exposed to it, regardless of which “side“ you’re on, is not mentioned at all. The correlations are well researched in trauma studies.
haltingproblem 2y ago
https://archive.ph/MzZMw https://archive.ph/MzZMw

663 points by thelastgallon 2y ago

This is excellent journalism. Digging into an issue that is affecting lives in such a drastic way and bringing these issues to light. Like this part of the article for example: Until The Times told the Navy of the lab’s findings about the SEALs who died by suicide, the Navy had not been informed, the service confirmed in a statement. A Navy officer close to the SEAL leadership expressed audible shock, and then frustration, when told about the findings by The Times. “That’s the problem,” said the officer, who asked not to be named in order to discuss a sensitive topic. “We are trying to understand this issue, but so often the information never reaches us.”

vunderba 2y ago

This was a really well-written article. I think for years I had naturally thought that traumatic brain injury as a result of explosives basically caused the brain to rattle so hard that it smashed against the skull causing contusions, but apparently this is something different. The way it's explained in the article is that this is actually a result of the blast energy wave bouncing off of differently dense brain tissue sections and causing cavitation. I'm glad that these issues are finally being brought to light, It's truly unfortunate that no matter how highly trained and skilled some of these soldiers are, that blast waves from IEDs or in this case from their own munitions can result in such insidious physiological changes.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
From what I’ve heard from people in artillery is that the brass hardly cares about occupational safety. If they need to get rounds down field they get rounds down field first and make sure you have proper ppe for that second. And what ppe they do have is seen as improper. Not much you can even do when the issue is local blast damage and the gun design demands you to be so close to it.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Yet another reason to not join the military. You’re just fuel for the machine. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/06/14/armys-recruiting-problem-male.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/06/14/armys-recruit...
  - mc32 2y ago
    These days we have a senate committee approving a bill that would register women for the draught… it’s getting closer. Men aren’t enough, for this machine, apparently.
    - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
      Equality should mean equality! :D
      - mc32 2y ago
        I hear you. But women can continue the line —society. Men can’t bear children —society dies. Men get sent to war, women stay in the homeland, many of the men may not return and the women may have to persevere, with sacrifice but society can push on. If it were reversed, that society may well collapse. The Spartans didn’t send their women off and let the men stay back in the homeland.
        toomuchtodo 2y ago
        This sounds like discrimination. Only women can produce offspring? Too bad, so sad. Everyone serves if it is required.
        throwaway22032 2y ago
        It doesn't sound like discrimination, it is discrimination, tautologically. The onus is on you to show that it is bad in this case. We discriminate routinely, children are exempt from working for example.
munificent 2y ago
This would also explain why accounts of "shell shock" and PTSD rose so dramatically during WWI but were less common in prior wars where explosions were less common.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  I always wonder if it occurred more, or, in a modern society, was recorded more. Just thinking aloud.
  - munificent 2y ago
    I think it's probably both. I think the negative consequences of being in a war increased significantly after the invention of artillery, but also psychological stuff was under-reported the farther you go back in time.
- joegibbs 2y ago
  That's interesting that at the time, in WW1, it was assumed to be a physical injury to the brain caused by the shockwave of exploding artillery shells (hence the name). A few years later a consensus evolved that it's a psychological problem caused by the stress of combat, which was the prevailing opinion for about 100 years. And now it's looking like it might actually be a physical injury caused by shockwave damage to the brain.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    Shell shock was considered related to neurasthenia (weak nerves) which is the 18th century name for ME/CFS. TBI, ME/CFS and PTSD are highly correlated for what I believe are the same genetic predisposition plus an environmental trigger.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      ME/CFS can also be triggered by viruses. Epstein-Barr virus and SARS-CoV-2 both are suspected triggers.
Aeolun 2y ago
I swear I’ve read about something similar happening to athletes in bobsledding due to the vibration of the brain.
- etc-hosts 2y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/sports/olympics/olympics-bobsled-suicide-brain-injuries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/sports/olympics/olympics-... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/sports/olympics/bobsled-travis-bell-joe-sisson.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/sports/olympics/bobsled-t...

snakeyjake 2y ago

I was an infantryman in the Army for ten years, from 1998 to 2008, and deployed three times, twice to Iraq, Encounters with IEDs were common, especially during the surge. So many of my friends have died to suicide or have killed themselves due to drugs and/or alcohol that it is hard to keep track. Now that primadonna seals are dying maybe someone will pay attention. Thankfully the only lasting effects of my deployments seem to be a bad back and distaste for authority.

ein0p 2y ago
Do you think it's because of whatever brain damage they may have encountered, or because they could not find meaning in their civilian lives? I've read it's often the latter in military men, especially the ones that really believed in the mission and experienced highly stressful life or death situations. They come back and they're taken aback by the mundane bullshit that our lives are in comparison to what they've been through. Intuitively that rings true, but having never served, I can't fully relate.
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  >Do you think it's because of whatever brain damage they may have encountered, or because they could not find meaning in their civilian lives? I have no idea. Strangely the most common thread seems to be the ones who off themselves went back home after getting out. Almost everyone I know who got out and stayed away from home is doing ok. Almost everyone I know who got out and went back home is a wreck. Some had TBI exposures, some didn't.
  - nightowl_games 2y ago
    What do you mean by stayed away from home? Like stayed away from the wife and kids? For how long?
    - snakeyjake 2y ago
      Going home means going back to their hometown after getting out.

yieldcrv 2y ago

This is the kind of research I've been yearning to see on suicide. Just telling people not to, or to call a hotline, seemed like the worst most patronizing advice as it never solved the underlying thing. I've since learned that there is a subset of suicidal people where that's enough, where the suicidal tendency is a kneejerk decision that can be disrupted, but it bugged me that its not serving everyone that becomes suicidal with a recurring condition that's not improved by merely being present. It always feel like people are too uncomfortable to talk about it enough, or to question the response measures. A "I'm Helping!" sentiment by copy and pasting a suicide hotline memo, when they're not helping at all, just offloading their discomfort into a protective layer for their own psyche. In contrast, I'm comfortable enough to wonder whether suicide was the most rationale and objectively best choice, as someone with strong self preservation circuits you can see how far apart I am from everyone else. But this is opinion, a hunch, what I really want is a data driven analysis of the conditions. As with real science, I am accepting of any conclusion, instead of trying to conform a conclusion to preventing it if prevention isn't what winds up being on the table with our current infrastructure.

pedalpete 2y ago
It's important to view suicide not from the "I don't want to live" perspective and rather from the "I don't want to be in pain" viewpoint. I feel this article does a good job of not explicitly saying this when describing what must have been an agonizing existence for David Metcalf before he took his life.
- theGnuMe 2y ago
  Correct. Pain is the explanation. It's obvious when you realize that opioids relieve depression. They aren't a good long term solution though.
  - jajko 2y ago
    Suffering as a more general term IMHO... I can imagine having no pain per se, but being so bogged down from few well placed catastrophes in life that continuing would be much harder than not.

LorenPechtel 2y ago

Of course it doesn't reach them. Same with any black project, the dangers get swept under the rug.

Hnrobert42 2y ago
The article doesn’t say why. It alludes to bureaucracy. Either way, I don’t think unsubstantiated cynicism is productive.
- moron4hire 2y ago
  I suspect it's like a lot of DoD-funded research. The work gets done, the report gets written, and then it goes on a shelf (or rather, some ancient SharePoint site on a classified network with no functional search ability). When a crisis occurs, the word goes out to everyone, the one lifer analyst spending too much time in windowless rooms at the Pentagon pipes up about something he remembers, and then everyone is satisfied that the work got done, "the problem is understood". Everything goes back to normal until it happens again.
- raisedbyninjas 2y ago
  I find it difficult to believe that a coterie of seal spouses coordinated a brain study of their dead husbands and after finding a smoking gun, none of them thought to fire off a message to anybody in the Navy.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    It's entirely possible that they actually did send messages, but the people they informed didn't give a fuck, and are in entirely separate divisions from the Navy officers The Times interviewed.

bikenaga 2y ago

From a couple of the sources referred to in the article: Impact of repeated blast exposure on active-duty United States Special Operations Forces - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313568121 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313568121 "We performed a multimodal study of active-duty United States Special Operations Forces (SOF)—an elite group repeatedly exposed to explosive blasts in training and combat—to identify diagnostic biomarkers of brain injury associated with repeated blast exposure (RBE). We found that higher blast exposure was associated with alterations in brain structure, function, and neuroimmune markers, as well as lower quality of life. Neuroimaging findings converged on an association between cumulative blast exposure and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), a widely connected brain region that modulates cognition and emotion. This work supports the use of a network-based approach, focusing on the rACC, in future studies investigating the impact of RBE on SOF brain health." Characterisation of interface astroglial scarring in the human brain after blast exposure: a post-mortem case series - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27291520/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27291520/ "The blast exposure cases showed a distinct and previously undescribed pattern of interface astroglial scarring at boundaries between brain parenchyma and fluids, and at junctions between grey and white matter. This distinctive pattern of scarring may indicate specific areas of damage from blast exposure consistent with the general principles of blast biophysics, and further, could account for aspects of the neuropsychiatric clinical sequelae reported. The generalisability of these findings needs to be explored in future studies, as the number of cases, clinical data, and tissue availability were limited."

MarkMarine 2y ago
In bootcamp my SDI was a stinger gunner. It cost something like 60k for him to "practice" firing, including the cost of the drone. He was a SSGT, had been in for 11 years at the time I knew him, and he'd actually fired the weapon once. There was another gunner there training at the same time, so two people fired at the same drone. We can train everyone without this level of exposure, and I can imagine a world where your dose is tracked like radiation, kept to a safe level, and people are forced into retirement after they hit the limit.

nunez 2y ago

What an incredible article. The other articles referenced within are also excellent. My concern: given that this is becoming more common knowledge, in a world in which other, potentially adversarial, countries are more than fine sending their soldiers through the mental meat grinder, how can we prevent outcomes like the ones shared here while retaining hard power?

mbrumlow 2y ago
Robots and drones. Flesh and mind are weak. Metal and code is strong.
- hammyhavoc 2y ago
  EMP says hi.
  - midjji 2y ago
    The only usable EMPs we have are nuclear weapons. So if you are willing to use one, then just detonate it a bit closer to the surface and it will work just as well against everything we have.
    - hammyhavoc 2y ago
      https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/the-specter-of-emp-weapons-in-space https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/the-specter-of...
halJordan 2y ago
In the medium term, these posts are all voluntary. They say you volunteer 3 times before you're a Ranger (enlisting, Airborne, Ranger). As people learn that they will likely kill themselves at 45, when you're supposed to retire at 40 and have 40 years of retirement, then they will leave SF early. In the short term I could see leadership pushing a fourth volunteering (volunteering to commit suicide so the Mission can continue)

Borrible 2y ago

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-mystery-of-shellshock-solved-scientists-identify-the-unique-brain-injury-caused-by-war-9981443.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-mystery-of-shellshock...

ohialehua 2y ago

I didn’t read the article. I mainly come here for the commentary and the backdoor links. But! Hormone replacement therapy is a game changer for a lot of men who have CTE. I’m a clinical social worker. I’ve worked in emergency medicine, correctional medicine, and now outpatient psychotherapy. I used to think HRT was for ego lifters and old ladies. But I have seen first hand the value of HRT for CTE patients. I’ve seen guys go from three OWIs and unable to manage an entry level job at Lowe’s to law-abiding, midlevel executive at national corporations within months of starting on HRT.

reginald78 2y ago
What do you think the mechanism behind this is? I wouldn't intuitively think HRT would help much with a damaged brain, unless the damage itself somehow caused a hormone imbalance.
- pcthrowaway 2y ago
  Perhaps the stress of deployment and even training disrupts hormone production somehow?
- Tao3300 2y ago
  I'd guess that it kicks off growth and regeneration.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Low testosterone in adult men causes pretty severe fatigue and depression that resolves quickly with treatment. You become almost unable to experience joy or desire, so you go through the motions of life with as little effort as possible.
- financltravsty 2y ago
  Damage to the brain causes damage to the HPTA. HPTA damage leads to out of "whack" hormones, leading to knock off problems. Hormone replacement would remedy some of these issues. The same can be seen in people under chronic stress or substance abusers.
- 2y ago

jrmg 2y ago

Artillery crew members who fired thousands of rounds in combat came home plagued by hallucinations and psychosis Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts? Or is the order of magnitude of the exposure just wildly lower compared to the military, even in the most enthusiastic?

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User23 2y ago
The difference between small arms and artillery is absolutely enormous. Handguns and rifles make loud popping noises. Exploding artillery shells are concussive bombs that produce brain rattling blasts.
- djmips 2y ago
  Navy Seals aren't firing artillery. The article says the Seals brains were damaged by their own weapons which I assume to be rifles but maybe I'm wrong.
  - serf 2y ago
    they're talking about blasts from open-air combustion shoulder mounted anti-tank weapons.. very nearly artillery, and very loud.[0] . The article linked is the one mentioned in the parent article. one of the major problems with such weapons is that although the support crew can shield themselves, often the firing soldier cannot due to operation of the weapon. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-rocket-launcher.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-...
  - mcmcmc 2y ago
    SEALs and other special forces use a lot of heavy weaponry and explosives in addition to small arms like rifles and sidearms. Think door breaching charges, grenades, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns.
- 2y ago

golemiprague 2y ago

[dead]

DoreenMichele 2y ago

In many cases, doctors treating the injured troops give them diagnoses of psychiatric disorders that miss the underlying physical damage. Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts. I've said for years that people who are suicidal typically have very serious, intractable personal problems but get dismissed like it's "mental" or emotional. They need actual help for actual problems, not "attaboys" and not empty assurances that "Someone cares."

ambicapter 2y ago
Your comment doesn't reflect what you're quoting, you call it "personal problems" which implies extrapersonal problems occurring in their life, when the quote describes actual physical damage done to their brains.
- DoreenMichele 2y ago
  Health problems are real problems. They're personal problems and can impact how your mind works. The quote says they frequently get psychiatric diagnoses but new research indicates it's brain damage, not something talk therapy will help. I'm saying the same thing: Suicidal people have real problems that need real solutions, not talk therapy or emotional encouragement.
  - jt2190 2y ago
    Maybe I’m missing something here… is there a “real” solution that they should be getting instead? My impression is that there aren’t any remedies for brain injuries yet, that we’ve only just been able to detect them, but I’d love to hear that I’m wrong about this.
    - DoreenMichele 2y ago
      Anecdotally, I know of cases of improved neurological function from alternative remedies. No, I'm not aware of any vetted medical studies, new research etc. I'm not really trying to say "Just give these people x drug, clearly!" I'm trying to make a broader point that people who are suicidal need some problem resolved. Homeless people are frequently suicidal. They need housing, not to be dismissed as "crazy." People with torturous medical problems are frequently suicidal. I'm pro right to die but I also would like to see the world take their problem seriously and not act like you are "crazy" to feel like your body is a prison, you just want the torment to end and to feel your only hope of escape is death. Etc. People who are suicidal are routinely dismissed as "crazy," like they don't have a real problem. This needs to stop.

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vjust 2y ago

Land of the free, home of the brave - doesn't come cheap. By definition "Leadership" in this capitalistic society is predatory - this style extends to the armed forces, where everyone is expendable.

localfirst 2y ago
How is fabricating a justification for invading a country that never attacked America benefit the average citizen who's quality of life has fallen in the past three decades? I just don't understand this "freedom" argument that seems to gloss over the obvious--poor people dying for a small group of people that benefit massively from war
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freen 2y ago

4x more soldiers killed themselves than died in combat since 9/11. [0] At least 2X more soldiers kill themselves in peacetime than die in combat in every war that we as a species has tracked suicide rates for veterans. [0](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-deaths-mental-health-crisis https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-...)

jart 2y ago
Life is hell if the world won't let you be who you were born to be. I'm not sure if I would have made it if I'd been born into a world without computers.

Doxon 2y ago

Misc info on weapon sound pressure. The Carl Gustav 8.4cm recoilless rifle now be procured by the Marines has a big back-blast through the typical venturi used by these kinds of weapons. In training, (Sweden at least) they are limited to the number of rounds they can fire. I do not know if this for merely hearing loss, or if there are concussive effects. Also, while "small arms" do not typically have concussive effects, I have stood behind a.50 Barrett rifle discharge and there was a noticable shock wave in the air. I didn't feel it in my head, but my intestines were not happy. If you were in the front hemisphere of the muzzle blast it would be far worse. Muzzle brakes on rifles usually make the blast wave propagate more to the side. A high caliber rifle with a muzzle brake could easily hit 160db. Maybe a .50 cal could go higher. So now you are even punishing your friends, not just folks downrange.

japhyr 2y ago
I live in a small town with a gun dealer who is not particularly thoughtful about others. One year he had a truck-mounted cannon made for the fourth of july parade, and he fired it off numerous times throughout the parade. Everyone who didn't already have their ears covered, including so many young kids, doubled over each time it went off. He just laughed at everyone, even with kids crying on both sides of the street. People were talking in person and online about how their ears rang for days afterward.
- Semaphor 2y ago
  And that’s not a crime?
  - japhyr 2y ago
    I have no idea; it's certainly not one that's seen any prosecution.
    - mrob 2y ago
      The only people who could do anything about it probably have age-related hearing loss and don't see it as a problem. Same reason nobody does anything about extremely loud motorcyclists.

Animats 2y ago

"It was not chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which is found in football players and other athletes who have been repeatedly hit in the head. It was something new." OK, so not that. There are going to be a huge number of people with this problem from the Ukraine war. There haven't been years of artillery duels since WWII.

kragen 2y ago

> Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts. that is to say, it's actually shell shock? as in, actual physical shock from actual shells? george carlin would be so proud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc the article also mentions that they'd all trained extensively in diving deep underwater, which is also known to cause brain damage, but the 'interface astroglial scarring' pathology lab results sound pretty specific to big shock waves i'm skeptical that firing a rifle produces shock waves that induce cavitation in brain tissue, though

midjji 2y ago
If I understood it right, its firing artillery, not rifles. Even then I doubt cavitation, but not shock echos at density borders tearing he tissues at the border.
baxtr 2y ago
I wonder if the Havanna syndrome is somehow correlated with this as well
- emsign 2y ago
  Pressure buildup in the cranium due to microwave heating? Victims have reported a feeling as if their heads are about to explode.
  - zxexz 2y ago
    Huh. I feel like that almost daily nowadays. Maybe I should grab some tinfoil. Unless it's coming from inside the head...
    - hdjrldbrhrh 2y ago
      Go see a doctor. Run. Don't walk.

midjji 2y ago

If this is accurate there is likely very little to be done, and the solution will likely be to have less training and retire a decade sooner.

TomK32 2y ago
There's plenty to be done mostly in research: Regular checks on every solider after they had a blast that potentially affected their brain. Training can certainly be adapted as well as the gear that protects their heads and brains. I bet there's something of a gradient in the brain damage and not just a single event that causes it to go bad, the ages of those mentioned in the article are all within a decade. Reassigning soldiers earlier in their career to tasks without risk for their brain will save them and their families lots of pain.
- squirclepants 2y ago
  [dead]

giovannibonetti 2y ago

This reminds me of the movie Concussion (2015) with Will Smith, which is about a similar pattern of brain damage and suicide in football players.

funnym0nk3y 2y ago
However the article states that that is a different damage.

emsign 2y ago

This isn't new knowledge. I've heard about blasts causing sudden pressure buildup in the brain via the spinal cord years ago. Of course this is now a much bigger problem for the military as it affects all combat soldiers even during training exercises.

aplskdfjp452345 2y ago

[flagged]

camkego 2y ago

The article says "The vast majority of blast exposure for Navy SEALs comes from firing their own weapons, not from enemy action." Is it possible damage can be modeled with something like: total_damage = incident_count * Impulse - or - total_damage = incident_count * Energy Density It seems like the question of potential damage from small arms and personal weapons should be investigated.

manuelmoreale 2y ago

There’s an Apple podcast that touches on some of the aspects related to this: https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/the-line-podcast/ https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/the-line-podcast/

wyldfire 2y ago

From a NYT article about the Lewiston, Maine shooter's brain injuries [1]: > Researchers found that before they worked around blasts, the instructors brains looked healthy. But in follow-up scans five months later, their brains were teeming with an abnormal protein called beta amyloid that is associated with Alzheimer’s disease. > “In a young brain you should see no amyloid. None. Zero,” said Dr. Carlos Leiva-Salinas, the University of Missouri neuroradiologist who ran the study. “We were surprised, very surprised.” [1] http://archive.today/ju6iq http://archive.today/ju6iq

medo-bear 2y ago

I think it is pretty obvious that there should be more government funding to determine whether the brain damage occurred while defending our freedom within the US borders or outside it.

tokai 2y ago

Prisoners is another population where we would find pervasive brain damage if we scanned them.[0] In time I believe we will find that a ton of destructive/aggressive behavior is due to physical issues in the brain. [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00406-013-0403-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00406-013-0403-6

Invictus0 2y ago
And then what? Do you kill/indefinitely confine the ones with brain lesions? Can you grant them parole in good conscience?
- fwip 2y ago
  When we learned that lead poisoning was bad for you and increased aggression, we didn't kill everybody with lead poisoning. We changed our society to reduce lead poisoning, by getting rid of leaded gasoline, lead paint, etc.
- tokai 2y ago
  treat them obviously

jack_riminton 2y ago

A lot of special forces have been doing what we used to call "door kicking" in the last few wars. Lots of explosive breaches, firing weapons and throwing grenades indoors. I'm sure this is the main contributing factor. The percussive force of firing and explosives indoors is horrible and I say this as an ex artillery officer, so I'm used to chest-breaking bangs from firing big artillery guns

HoochTHX 2y ago
As a 13B1O that saw all three sides of this, loading/firing, driver for platoon leader, and while deployed with orders to act in the door-to-door fashion. You are correct. I will add that while operating the gun, the percussive forces are pretty well shielded on the inside of the at least motorized versions, was a paladin crew member here.
Trow849fj 2y ago
Any source for this? Artillery was around for 500 years and shell shock was hugely discussed for past 100 years. There is much better corellation with divorce. Soldiers returns home with PTSD, only to have their house, children, savings and pension stollen. Because they were not around to guard it! And they may get thrown into prison for being too poor! Shell shock is very convinient excuse, when victims do not get proper recovery!
- bumby 2y ago
  From the article, they have objective evidence from studying the brains of deceased servicemembers: "It was not chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which is found in football players and other athletes who have been repeatedly hit in the head. It was something new. The lab’s research team started looking for similar damage in other brains. In civilians’ brains, they did not find it. Nor was it in the brains of veterans who had been exposed to a single powerful explosion like a roadside bomb. But in veterans exposed repeatedly to blasts, they found it again and again."
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  Those words were spoken almost exactly 100 years ago "Shell shock" is a made up term. Other than on hearing the effects of high impulse on a human are long-term, complex and still an areas of research. In WW1, in Northfields hospital they started to define PTSD in ways that didn't quite add up. Some soldiers had never been under bombardment but had the same symptoms. Nonetheless, the term remained in use because 1) "Shell shock" was deemed curable with rest, and the main objective was to get soldiers patched up and back to the front. 2) It was a way to avoid getting shot for desertion. A decent officer would not order traumatised men disciplined but send them on to hospital with "shell shock". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock

sharpshadow 2y ago

Mandatory shock absorbing helmet during training would be helpful I guess. What other preventive measures could be employed?

erva 2y ago

Qualifier: Former US special operations operator that served in multiple wars. My anecdotal take is there are many ways that shock and trauma can accumulate through training and war that are far beyond the minimal effects of an M4. Firearms: While the primary weapons systems are the M4 and side arm (pistol), there are many weapons systems utilized by special operations such as sniper rifles, crew serve weapons, and niche small arms. The M82 sniper rifle shoots a 50 BMG round. In either the bolt action or semi-auto versions they feel like you are getting punched in the face when you shoot them. Crew serve weapons like the MK19 and M2 do pack a punch. The MK19 is a machine gun that shoots 40mm grenades. The M2 is a .50 cal machine gun. These weapons systems are mounted, but the percussion of them is still far greater than an M4. More niche arms like the M249 SAW, M16 HBAR, full-auto AKs, M240 Golf, MP9, etc are not as mild as the standard M4/M16. Blasts: There are many types of blasts encountered such as Mortars (inbound and outbound), Flash Bangs, Entry charges, IEDs, Landmines, etc. These do make your head ring if you are close enough to them. In my own personal experience there are many other daily jarring events that aren't nearly as sexy to talk about. Riding in the back of a 5 ton will almost shake your brain out of your head. Riding in an LCAC (hovercraft) is like riding in a 5 ton. Doing boat work in Zodiacs will bounce you all over the place, especially when doing surf passages. Doing hydrographic surveys right where the surf breaks will pound you for hours and make you a little sick afterwards. When your chute opens on a jump, if jumping round chutes, will make you see stars...the landing is not a soft pretty one like rectangle chutes...you hit the ground hard. There are many more ways your body gets pounded on a daily basis far in excess of the weapons you use.

bumby 2y ago
The article links to a USSOCOM-funded study. In your opinion, are they (as a whole) seriously concerned with mitigating this issue or is it just checking the box? The worry is this can be similar to the buried diesel tank issue contaminating water, which was known for decades but seemed to be ignored (possibly out of liability concerns).
- erva 2y ago
  I'm not sure how much of it you can minimize. You can only control what you can control...and war/combat is chaos. Honestly it seems most things in relation to this over the years has been on treatment, not so much prevention.

noisy_boy 2y ago

Wonder if something similar happens to people who have exposure to drilling sound for significantly continuous amount of time (few hours a day). I often see construction/roadworks crew around my area without ear protection while drilling is going on.

00_hum 2y ago

the way people understand mood and suicide is completely wrong. i have had very unusual bipolar disorder symptoms in the past and it allowed me to experience extreme depression one day and then good mood the next day. i have experienced depression that is so bad that it was difficult to physically move. i remember not being able to stand up from being seated in a chair. this is what i consider to be basically the far side of the spectrum of symptoms — the worst that depression can be. its absolutely deadly because at this point you are effectively experiencing unbearable pain as well as, for some reason, having trouble moving. it hurts to think about the future. every moment is agony. people in this situation kill themselves to end the pain most of all and because they feel trapped. and also because in this state of mind you are unable to work, support yourself or even have relationships. but the real insight is whats next. luckily i only experienced those lows for a period of time. and some days i would be lifted out of it and feel perfectly normal. this experience is what made me realize what almost nobody realizes: that there is no situation where a healthy person will feel the desire to kill themselves. this is because mood is an illusion. i would go from having this entire world view that my life is hopeless and being completely lost and almost instantly switch over to having lots of things on my mind and looking forward to many things and wanting to get on with life. having a normal mood involves being blind to negative things as much as being depressed involves seeing bad things that arent bad. the human mind is designed to translate sensory input into action by any means and when this system breaks down it weirdly feels painful and makes you want to kill yourself. i think the breakdown of this system can be isolated to a domain, concept or situation or be global. and i think that high stress can cause this effect through inflammatory dysregulation or some other stress pathology giving the incorrect impression that suicide is a reaction to stress. if there were a pill to stop the root cause of depression, nobody would ever kill themselves except for terminally ill people. and just because someone killed themself doesnt mean that their life was especially hard, hopeless or messed up or whatever. it just means they were sick. thats it. and yet every time theres a suicide, all people talk about are the circumstances surrounding the suicide even though they probably are indirectly involved at best! when i was in those deep depressions i would connect the dots of all the things about my life into a causal web and would be convinced myself that it was the circumstances of my life were the reason i felt depressed. but then within hours that mental framework would disappear completely and i would feel fine. its an extremely powerful illusion. thats why the word trapped resonates so powerfully with people who have been through it. the illusion makes you feel trapped. this realization has made me basically immune to depression. i recognize mood disfunction immediately now and i have coached myself to remember its an illusion. i am sure that i have experienced significant mood dysfunction in the past, and that most people have, and gotten lost in it simply because i didnt understand what was going on. i think that this is a huge component of the decision to commit suicide: people start experiencing pain, they think its intrinsic to their life situation, they get lost in it, and they would hold on if only they had some context. i wish there was a way to induce severe depression temporarily to show people what it is and educate them so they could not go into it completely blind when the time comes. that would really help people.

MisterDizzy 2y ago

I've said for several years that my estimation of the United States military's treatment of its enlistees makes it basically indistinguishable from psychological torture in my eyes. I'm glad there's finally research that says something essentially similar.

sklargh 2y ago

I really don’t know how to move forward on some of the effects of these “lighter” crew served weapons. Carl G comes to mind.

fallingfrog 2y ago

Topical: just a few minutes from where I live, in Lewiston Maine, a former grenade range instructor walked into a bar recently and killed 18 people. His brain was found to have the same kinds of damage- he had been hearing voices and experiencing other psychotic symptoms and he had access to guns. It seems likely that the repeated concussions at the grenade range were a contributing factor. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/maine-shooting-brain-injury.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/maine-shooting-brain-i...

47282847 2y ago

Interesting how the obvious exposure to violence and what psychosomatic/organical damage it causes also to those merely exposed to it, regardless of which “side“ you’re on, is not mentioned at all. The correlations are well researched in trauma studies.

haltingproblem 2y ago

https://archive.ph/MzZMw https://archive.ph/MzZMw