Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide
Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide
A military lab found distinctive damage from repeated blast exposure in every brain it tested, but Navy SEAL leaders were kept in the dark about the pattern.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
David Metcalf’s last act in life was an attempt to send a message — that years as a Navy SEAL had left his brain so damaged that he could barely recognize himself.
But just before he died, he arranged a stack of books about brain injury by his side, and taped a note to the door that read, in part, “Gaps in memory, failing recognition, mood swings, headaches, impulsiveness, fatigue, anxiety, and paranoia were not who I was, but have become who I am.
“We have a moral obligation to protect the cognitive health and combat effectiveness of our teammates,” Rear Adm. Keith Davids, the commander of Navy Special Warfare, which includes the SEALs, said in a statement.
In March 2014, three months after placing the frantic pre-dawn call to his wife, he went to return a few library books, dropped off a tuition check at his son’s kindergarten, and then drove to a secluded side street.
Dr. Perl said privacy rules bar him from discussing specific cases, but members of the families who provided brains to study say the lab found interface astroglial scarring in six of the eight SEALs who died by suicide.
Star-shaped helper cells called astrocytes in their brains appeared to have been repeatedly injured and had grown into gargantuan, tangled masses that barely functioned.
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