Latest news with #NavyVeterans
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
New Pennsylvania program helping veterans recover from PTSD, depression
(WHTM) — Twenty veterans a day take their own lives. It's an alarming and tragic statistic, but a new healthcare regimen hopes to reverse the pain of PTSD and depression. The Aurelius Program at Harrisburg University is a pilot, and it's showing promise. 'My depression is gone,' Mike O'Keefe said, who completed the Aurelius Program. 'I'm just motivated. Like, I feel the fog is lifted.' Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now A fog that enveloped O'Keefe nine years ago after an armed robbery on the turnpike where he worked. He ran for his life from the gunman, thankfully, the bullets missed, but the pain didn't. O'Keefe shared his anguish with us in 2017. He was suffering from PTSD, anxiety and depression. Years of doctors, drugs and therapies didn't help, but the Aurelius Program did. 'I'm back to normal,' O'Keefe said. 'Joking. Having a good time carrying on.' Support dairy farms around the state during Pennsylvania's 2025 Ice Cream Trail Promising results for the fledgling program that combines exercise, hyperbaric oxygen, and magnetic pulses to the skull. It is hours a day for several weeks straight. 'We had no idea about the damage it was doing to our heads,' one veteran said. This vet drove a Navy speedboat where he was routinely slamming into waves. For he and his colleagues, the aftermath is becoming routine. The Navy veterans were suffering from speech problems, insomnia, speech problems and outbursts. For those symptoms, these vets from across the country hope to ease at Aurelius headquarters in Harrisburg University. 'We're seeing a lot of success,' Aurelius Human Performance Director & Researcher Audrey Johnson said. Johnson's collecting data from these vets, hoping to prove what she suspects. That oxygen and brain stimulation together can change lives. 'They have all these wounds and lesions on their brain,' Johnson said. 'So that tissue healing and getting oxygen to that area to heal those cells, they're still able to be healed.' Dr. Joseph Maroon is a neurosurgeon and brain researcher at UPMC Pittsburgh. He's also an Aurelius consultant who sees great promise. 'Every day is a Memorial Day for 20 veterans, plus or minus, who commit suicide due to depression, anxiety and PTSD,' Maroon said. 'So the question is, what do you do about that.' The private businessmen funding Aurelius hope it is the answer, and they're not charging the veterans in the program. Download the abc27 News+ app on your Roku, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Apple TV devices 'To try to move the needle with the VA,' Aurelius co-founder Anson Flake. 'With our government, and just find a way to accelerate the recovery cycle for these guys before the Depression gets too significant and suicides and suicides start to take place.' Right now, 11 states provide hyperbaric chambers for veterans battling PTSD. Pennsylvania is not one of them. Something advocates here would like to change. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Surprising fix brought crippled aircraft carrier home during WW2
(NewsNation) — Memorial Day is a time to pause and remember the U.S. service members who made the ultimate sacrifice. A new book about World War II, 'The Sailing of the Intrepid: The Incredible Wartime Voyage of the Navy's Iconic Aircraft Carrier,' also recognizes enlisted personnel who defied the odds through determination and resourcefulness. The USS Intrepid is today a museum ship docked on the Hudson River in New York. But before it became a tourist attraction, the aircraft carrier known as 'The Fighting I' was a hard-working member of the Pacific Fleet. 100-year-old Navy vet keeps World War II spirit alive In February 1944, a deadly torpedo strike jammed the ship's rudder so that the vessel could only move in circles, more than 3,000 miles from its Pearl Harbor base. 'The Sailing of the Intrepid' tells the story of problem-solving under desperate conditions. 'We're living in a nation that's so divided,' co-author Montel Williams told 'Elizabeth Vargas Reports' on Friday, the start of Memorial Day weekend. 'Think about 3,000 young men from all over the country who came together to realize, 'We are not going to let this thing fall into the hands of an enemy.'' Surviving crew members scrambled to find canvas aboard the ship and created a massive sail that was affixed to the ship's front. 'Not to actually be the propulsion,' Williams explained, 'but to actually counterbalance the effects of the wind and the currents, to allow it to sail straight 3,300 miles back to Hawaii.' He said the Intrepid was repaired and redeployed and suffered additional attacks from the Japanese in the Pacific Theater. The aircraft carrier was decommissioned in 1974 and set to be scrapped. Instead, it was privately purchased and turned into a museum. Williams, a former television host who served in the Navy and Marines, collaborated with author David Fisher to write the ship's story. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
