Alternate PTSD Therapy for Vets Ruffles VA Feathers, but Shows Results

[longknife]

There are always alternatives. But the bureaucrats and know-it-all medics refuse to accept them.



EMDR is designed to help the brain unlock traumatic memories and reprocess them into more positive thoughts. During a session, the client may be asked to focus on a memory while stimulation is used such as eye movements, tapping or sounds. After each association is processed, the "bilateral" stimulation continues until the original issue is no longer disturbing.



Story @ Alternate PTSD Therapy for Vets Ruffles VA Feathers, but Shows Results | Military.com

 

[ABikerSailor]

You know, the VA should listen to all those vets in CO who are using cannabis to help with their PTSD and other conditions.

I've met many vets who came back and were messed up, but after CO legalized marijuana, they started to see if it would help, and many of them ended up being able to wean themselves off of the antidepressants and other pills that they were taking.

I met one guy who after he'd gotten out was on a 12 pill a day regimen. When he was able to buy marijuana legally, he was able to get all the way down to just one pill per day.

I say let the veterans see if cannabis will help with their PTSD. I've met many who were helped greatly by it.

 

[longknife]

This is a subject I've always been interested in and not because I suffered slightly after returning from 'Nam and having an absolutely crappy marital breakup.

I've written a length novel about PTSD using a lot of information I gained about altgernative treatments, specifically those used by American Indians. I think a lot of it has to do with an acceptance of the healing properties of nature. Take a long walk on a beach at sunrise or sunset. Sit upon a rock taking in the beauty of the deserts or mountains. Share myths and stories while sitting around a bonfire.

Anything but synthesized pills, capsules, and other such garbage.

 

[waltky]

Even the kids are being monitored now...

Schools to Begin Monitoring Students from Military Families
May 31, 2016 — Schools across the country are preparing to formally track students from military families, monitoring their academic progress as they move from military base to military base and state to state, under a new provision in the federal education law.

The change comes in response to concerns raised by the Department of Defense that the children of active-duty members of the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force and Marines have academic and emotional needs that schools are ill-equipped to meet. At Chula Vista's Veterans Elementary School, a new effort to support students from military families already is underway to help students like fifth-grader Victoria Ayekof. She had a rough start when she arrived last fall from a U.S. Navy base in Ghana where her father was stationed. Veterans Elementary is Victoria's fifth school in five years and in the beginning the adjustment was tough.

Her mother, Joyce Ayekof, said school staff reported her daughter was "always isolated and crying." "You have to adjust, but it's really hard to adjust," Victoria said. "You miss your old friends." Military children move an average of six to nine times before high school graduation, according to the Department of Defense, but repeating the social and academic upheaval doesn't necessarily make it easier. Having a parent away on military duty is a major stress on the family. Research has found military children who have a parent deployed are more frequently diagnosed with acute stress, depression and behavior problems than other children and that these mental health issues can affect learning.

California is home to the largest number of active-duty military in the country, according to the Council of State Governments. Half of the state's 60,000 military-connected students live in San Diego County, according to Kelly Frisch, regional school liaison officer for Navy Region Southwest. But even there, school districts don't always know which students are from military families or how to address the academic gaps and anxiety they are more likely to have, particularly in "outlier districts where there isn't a concentration of military-connected children," said Kate Wren Gavlak, chair of the Military Interstate Children's Compact Commission, a national organization run by the Council of State Governments. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act — the new federal education law passed in December that takes effect in the 2017-18 school year — school-age children in military families will be assigned an identification number known as a "military student identifier" that will allow schools to keep tabs on test scores, graduation rates and other metrics.

Implementation details have yet to be announced by the U.S. Department of Education. The mental health risks for these students can be serious. A 2015 study co-authored by Ron Avi Astor, a professor at the University of Southern California, found that California students in military families were more likely to have attempted suicide than students from civilian families, based on the California Healthy Kids Survey given to 390,000 high school students in 2012 and 2013. Of students from military families, nearly 12 percent answered "yes" when asked if they had attempted suicide in the past 12 months, compared to 7 percent of students with civilian parents.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Fireworks can set off PTSD in veterans...

Fireworks Season Can Trigger PTSD for Veterans
Jun 28, 2016 | JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. -- Stationed in Khandahar, Afghanistan, for nine months in 2012, Sgt. Matthew Thomason got used to falling asleep to the lullaby of gunfire and explosions -- so much so that he could tell what kind of weapon was being fired just by the sound. When he returned home to Clark County in September 2013, he thought he would miss the noise of war as he transitioned back to the quiet civilian world.

The first time he heard the crack of fireworks around July 4 the following year, he realized how wrong he was. Thomason, a 28-year-old Louisville native and Sellersburg resident, remembers being at that first Independence Day party when a flashback was suddenly triggered. He was either playing a game or in a conversation with his wife -- he can't remember which -- when someone behind him set off fireworks without warning. "When that happened, I physically just jumped and didn't really know where I was for a minute," he said. "I had a flashback and we had to leave, and that started to be a trend."

Several months prior, Thomason was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, at a local U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinic. He was later diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, though he doesn't know which explosion did it. Now when July 4 comes around, he and his wife go out of town, somewhere like the Smoky Mountains where Thomason can find peace and quiet. And he's not the only one. Thomason is one of an estimated 11 to 20 percent of veterans of the post-9/11 Iraq and Afghanistan wars diagnosed with PTSD, according to data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. While fireworks don't trigger PTSD for all soldiers or veterans, it seems to be a more common occurrence in recent years. Cindy Ramminger, coordinator of the PTSD clinical team at Robley Rex Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Louisville, said fireworks were an issue for veterans from as far back as the Vietnam and Gulf wars.

Fireworks light up the sky with dazzling display​

But with so many soldiers coming home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq it's becoming a bigger problem, Ramminger said. It's not uncommon for her to hear of veterans leaving their homes on the very holiday they fought in the name of, just to escape the noise. "It can remind them of what might sound like an incoming rocket or mortars or gunfire, which can cause them to get on alert and it can cause them to be frightened," Ramminger said. "It can push them into a flashback (and) can cause intrusive thoughts, so they'll start remembering a traumatic event like when they got blown up in an IED attack or lost a friend to some kind of explosion."

Thomason said as a solider, he was repeatedly trained to react quickly and defensively when there was a perceived threat. So when he unexpectedly hears fireworks in the weeks leading up to July 4, his body immediately jumps to attention. Unlike what you'll see in the movies, Thomason said his flashbacks aren't necessarily visual. It's more about the smell of the powder left behind by fireworks, a smell similar to a freshly fired M4. He calls it an overwhelming "feeling of terror."

MORE

See also:

Veteran: Therapy Wrongly Denied Because She Is HIV-positive
Jun 28, 2016 -- An Iraq War veteran claims in a federal lawsuit that she was unlawfully denied aquatic therapy at an orthopedic hospital in Pennsylvania because she has the virus that causes AIDS.

The lawsuit against OSS Health in York Township seeks a declaratory judgment stating that the alleged denial constitutes discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaintiff is a 40-year-old York County resident identified only by a pseudonym.

Members of U.S. Army Eagle Company 2-2 Cavalry Regiment patrol in the Hadar neighborhood=​

She says that a physical therapist recommended during a June 2015 visit that she receive aquatic therapy. She says when her medical records showed she was HIV-positive, she was turned away. Attorneys for OSS and two co-defendants, Drayer Physical Therapy Institute and the therapist, deny any wrongdoing. The lawsuit was filed last week.

Veteran: Therapy Wrongly Denied Because She Is HIV-positive | Military.com

 

[ogibillm]

Even the kids are being monitored now...

Schools to Begin Monitoring Students from Military Families
May 31, 2016 — Schools across the country are preparing to formally track students from military families, monitoring their academic progress as they move from military base to military base and state to state, under a new provision in the federal education law.

The change comes in response to concerns raised by the Department of Defense that the children of active-duty members of the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force and Marines have academic and emotional needs that schools are ill-equipped to meet. At Chula Vista's Veterans Elementary School, a new effort to support students from military families already is underway to help students like fifth-grader Victoria Ayekof. She had a rough start when she arrived last fall from a U.S. Navy base in Ghana where her father was stationed. Veterans Elementary is Victoria's fifth school in five years and in the beginning the adjustment was tough.

Her mother, Joyce Ayekof, said school staff reported her daughter was "always isolated and crying." "You have to adjust, but it's really hard to adjust," Victoria said. "You miss your old friends." Military children move an average of six to nine times before high school graduation, according to the Department of Defense, but repeating the social and academic upheaval doesn't necessarily make it easier. Having a parent away on military duty is a major stress on the family. Research has found military children who have a parent deployed are more frequently diagnosed with acute stress, depression and behavior problems than other children and that these mental health issues can affect learning.

California is home to the largest number of active-duty military in the country, according to the Council of State Governments. Half of the state's 60,000 military-connected students live in San Diego County, according to Kelly Frisch, regional school liaison officer for Navy Region Southwest. But even there, school districts don't always know which students are from military families or how to address the academic gaps and anxiety they are more likely to have, particularly in "outlier districts where there isn't a concentration of military-connected children," said Kate Wren Gavlak, chair of the Military Interstate Children's Compact Commission, a national organization run by the Council of State Governments. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act — the new federal education law passed in December that takes effect in the 2017-18 school year — school-age children in military families will be assigned an identification number known as a "military student identifier" that will allow schools to keep tabs on test scores, graduation rates and other metrics.

Implementation details have yet to be announced by the U.S. Department of Education. The mental health risks for these students can be serious. A 2015 study co-authored by Ron Avi Astor, a professor at the University of Southern California, found that California students in military families were more likely to have attempted suicide than students from civilian families, based on the California Healthy Kids Survey given to 390,000 high school students in 2012 and 2013. Of students from military families, nearly 12 percent answered "yes" when asked if they had attempted suicide in the past 12 months, compared to 7 percent of students with civilian parents.

MORE

That's great!

 

[waltky]

Army Surgeon General not too keen on Marijuana for PTSD Treatment...

Army Surgeon General Skeptical of Marijuana for PTSD Treatment
Aug 19, 2016 | Lt. Gen. Nadja Y. West, the Army Surgeon General, on Thursday was wary of endorsing the first trials approved by the government for using marijuana to treat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

West noted she was an Army officer and the military still considers marijuana an illegal substance despite growing public support for its decriminalization. If service members test positive for marijuana, they can be subject to a "wide range of actions," she said. In addition, research has found "that using marijuana has a lot of adverse health effects," West said at a breakfast with defense reporters. Marijuana "is more dangerous, with some of the carcinogens that are in it, than tobacco," West said. "The impact that it has long-term on certain areas of the brain, especially young people developing, that's been proven -- irreversible damage to the hippocampus and things like that that can really have impacts on individuals long-term," she said.

Marijuana is measured in 3.5-gram amounts and placed in cans for packaging at the Pioneer Production and Processing marijuana growing facility in Arlington, Wash.​

However, the surgeon general, who succeeded Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho in the position last December, said she would look at the results of the government-approved trials of marijuana for PTSD treatment "so long as it's evidence-based." She said some chemical components of marijuana short of a full dose might prove useful in treating PTSD. "I'm for looking at that," she said. "We're looking at all modalities," but "I don't know if we need to have the full spectrum of what's in marijuana as it's typically administered -- if that's necessary," she said. "We should always, at least, have an open mind to look at things in an evidence-based way for something that could be useful for our soldiers," West said. Currently, the various therapies available in the military have proven to be about 80 percent effective in easing the symptoms of PTSD, she said.

In April, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, approved the first-ever clinical trials backed by the government of marijuana as a treatment for PTSD in veterans. The trials were expected to begin next month with combat veteran volunteers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and at the Scottsdale Research Institute in Phoenix. In June, Quinnipiac University reported that 87 percent of 1,561 voters polled nationwide supported giving veterans marijuana for PTSD.

Army Surgeon General Skeptical of Marijuana for PTSD Treatment | Military.com

 

[ABikerSailor]

Army Surgeon General not too keen on Marijuana for PTSD Treatment...

Army Surgeon General Skeptical of Marijuana for PTSD Treatment
Aug 19, 2016 | Lt. Gen. Nadja Y. West, the Army Surgeon General, on Thursday was wary of endorsing the first trials approved by the government for using marijuana to treat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

West noted she was an Army officer and the military still considers marijuana an illegal substance despite growing public support for its decriminalization. If service members test positive for marijuana, they can be subject to a "wide range of actions," she said. In addition, research has found "that using marijuana has a lot of adverse health effects," West said at a breakfast with defense reporters. Marijuana "is more dangerous, with some of the carcinogens that are in it, than tobacco," West said. "The impact that it has long-term on certain areas of the brain, especially young people developing, that's been proven -- irreversible damage to the hippocampus and things like that that can really have impacts on individuals long-term," she said.

Marijuana is measured in 3.5-gram amounts and placed in cans for packaging at the Pioneer Production and Processing marijuana growing facility in Arlington, Wash.​

However, the surgeon general, who succeeded Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho in the position last December, said she would look at the results of the government-approved trials of marijuana for PTSD treatment "so long as it's evidence-based." She said some chemical components of marijuana short of a full dose might prove useful in treating PTSD. "I'm for looking at that," she said. "We're looking at all modalities," but "I don't know if we need to have the full spectrum of what's in marijuana as it's typically administered -- if that's necessary," she said. "We should always, at least, have an open mind to look at things in an evidence-based way for something that could be useful for our soldiers," West said. Currently, the various therapies available in the military have proven to be about 80 percent effective in easing the symptoms of PTSD, she said.

In April, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, approved the first-ever clinical trials backed by the government of marijuana as a treatment for PTSD in veterans. The trials were expected to begin next month with combat veteran volunteers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and at the Scottsdale Research Institute in Phoenix. In June, Quinnipiac University reported that 87 percent of 1,561 voters polled nationwide supported giving veterans marijuana for PTSD.

Army Surgeon General Skeptical of Marijuana for PTSD Treatment | Military.com

If the veterans suffering from PTSD are civilians now, she should have no problem with it. When they left the military, they regained all the rights they had before as citizens, and aren't subject to military rules any longer.

 

[longknife]

Army Surgeon General not too keen on Marijuana for PTSD Treatment...

Army Surgeon General Skeptical of Marijuana for PTSD Treatment
Aug 19, 2016 | Lt. Gen. Nadja Y. West, the Army Surgeon General, on Thursday was wary of endorsing the first trials approved by the government for using marijuana to treat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

West noted she was an Army officer and the military still considers marijuana an illegal substance despite growing public support for its decriminalization. If service members test positive for marijuana, they can be subject to a "wide range of actions," she said. In addition, research has found "that using marijuana has a lot of adverse health effects," West said at a breakfast with defense reporters. Marijuana "is more dangerous, with some of the carcinogens that are in it, than tobacco," West said. "The impact that it has long-term on certain areas of the brain, especially young people developing, that's been proven -- irreversible damage to the hippocampus and things like that that can really have impacts on individuals long-term," she said.

Marijuana is measured in 3.5-gram amounts and placed in cans for packaging at the Pioneer Production and Processing marijuana growing facility in Arlington, Wash.​

However, the surgeon general, who succeeded Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho in the position last December, said she would look at the results of the government-approved trials of marijuana for PTSD treatment "so long as it's evidence-based." She said some chemical components of marijuana short of a full dose might prove useful in treating PTSD. "I'm for looking at that," she said. "We're looking at all modalities," but "I don't know if we need to have the full spectrum of what's in marijuana as it's typically administered -- if that's necessary," she said. "We should always, at least, have an open mind to look at things in an evidence-based way for something that could be useful for our soldiers," West said. Currently, the various therapies available in the military have proven to be about 80 percent effective in easing the symptoms of PTSD, she said.

In April, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, approved the first-ever clinical trials backed by the government of marijuana as a treatment for PTSD in veterans. The trials were expected to begin next month with combat veteran volunteers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and at the Scottsdale Research Institute in Phoenix. In June, Quinnipiac University reported that 87 percent of 1,561 voters polled nationwide supported giving veterans marijuana for PTSD.

Army Surgeon General Skeptical of Marijuana for PTSD Treatment | Military.com

If the veterans suffering from PTSD are civilians now, she should have no problem with it. When they left the military, they regained all the rights they had before as citizens, and aren't subject to military rules any longer.

The problem is for those veterans seeking treatment from the VA. The Army Surgeon General does not speak for them but has a great deal of influence on their policies.

 

[ABikerSailor]

You know, back in the 60's, the U.S. government did marijuana research with the military. Back then, they were simply trying to say it was bad, but the research proved otherwise, so it was abandoned.

We currently have good medical research that PROVES that marijuana helps those with PTSD a great deal. Since we did studies with active duty military in the 60's, then why can't we (in light of the positive medical benefits), use the military again (and trust me, they will volunteer in large numbers), and let them be the guinea pigs for cannabis and PTSD.