Thursday 14 July 2016

Anthony Tata - The Grueling Condition That Is PTSD

Anthony Tata is a retired U.S. Army Brigadier General combat veteran and as such, has valuable inside knowledge on helping soldiers dealing with post traumatic stress disorder. While he himself did not suffer from this condition, he knows various combat veterans who had to deal with this grueling problem.

It’s important to understand that anyone can suffer from this disorder. While most people hear about this condition as something that mostly involves members of the army, you can develop it after any kind of high-stress situation. At first, this condition can be hard to understand from the outside.

When a person you know turns into someone you are not familiar with, it can be a shock to anyone involved. When this happens and there is a chance that it could be PTSD, it is important to not show hostility toward that person. They are not doing what they are doing to be mean or threatening, they simply suffer from extreme stress that took a tool on their psyche.

PTSD basically means that the nervous system cannot get out of this constant state of alertness. If you feel your loved one could be suffering from PTSD, it is important to seek professional help as soon as possible. Anthony Tata, a former army veteran emphasizes the importance of this process. No one can deal with PTSD alone, which makes the therapy all the more important. In some cases, getting a therapy dog is recommended, and can offer a tremendous help throughout the healing process.

Thursday 7 July 2016

Anthony Tata - The Work of the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency

Anthony Tata knows a thing or two about soldier safety issues. As a combat veteran himself and the former Deputy for Operations in the U.S. military organization called Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency, he saw first-hand how much effort it takes to reduce the threats military men and women had to face on a daily basis. What makes these IED threats so dangerous is a complicated issue of course.

The first reason is the sheer number of IED’s in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other factor is the nature of these extremely dangerous devices. Their unconventional construction often makes them harder to spot, and of course the disarming process can also be problematic or sometimes borderline impossible. This is not because these devices are sophisticated, it is actually the opposite.

Here, you don’t see blue, green and red cables, nor there are switches in the vast majority of cases. These bombs usually consist of an artillery shell and a single wire. They are designed to detonate when a soldier or a vehicle goes by. As a result, the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency made sure that the plan was to reduce the number of those deadly devices by attacking enemy bomb making networks and cells and better protecting deployed troops.

The idea was to significantly reduce the number of these devices during the late 2000’s. This not only happened, but the result of the joint effort was a 70% decrease. The organization – including Anthony Tata – deserved a lot of credit for this work, being able to lower the combat associated risks for themselves and their fellow soldiers in Iraq.