America the Traumatized:How 13 Events of the Decade Made Us the PTSD Nation

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Video help for soldiers with PTSD...

Interactive Video Helps US Soldiers With Combat Stress
March 08, 2013 — Soldiers around the world who fight in war zones often face similar issues once they return home, including trying to get back to their normal routines. They may have problems readjusting and experience severe anxiety known as post-traumatic stress that can even lead to suicide. Psychological counseling may help, but so may interactive videos designed to help soldiers deal with combat stress. One video is helping some US soldiers who return from war.

Army veteran Robert Menendez knows this scenario all too well. This video simulation brings back memories of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I was always having dreams, you know, certain things that happened during deployments, especially my last one, that has to do with other people we may have lost,” he said. Like the actor in the video, Menendez often felt anxious and angry. He became distant from family and friends. “So I only told people that I felt comfortable with who had experienced it and may be going through it as well,” he said.

So, a military friend suggested he download this free, interactive video called The War Inside. It dramatizes different scenarios about the challenges of coming home after combat. Menendez identified with a soldier experiencing post-traumatic stress who is trying to understand and control his behavior. “I think, once I acknowledged that I did have issues, it actually helped me cope with it," said Menendez. The War Inside is produced by WILL Interactive. Sharon Sloane, the company's founder, said the scenarios are based on real stories. “I think it’s very important to give someone something that he or she can use in the privacy of their own home when they can really get in touch with their feelings. They give people the opportunity to experiment with choices in what they want to do to handle a situation,” said Sloane.

Those choices are in the form of questions that pop up on the screen during the scenes and users can think about how they would respond. Menendez said, depending on the answer he picks, the outcome will be different. “It tells you what could happen and, if you had done something else, what would happen then. I started trying each individual reaction and some outcomes were better than the others,” he said.

The War Inside has been viewed by tens of thousands of soldiers, individually and in groups. It’s an effective tool, said psychiatrist Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, a retired army colonel. “Sometimes it resonates with their war-time experiences. These are realistic. It brings them back to being in Iraq, but that engages them and draws them in,” said Ritchie. Even though Menendez still struggles with post-traumatic stress, he said the video has helped him open up to family and friends, and control his anger. “If somebody invites me somewhere, and I don’t want to go, and they ask me again, I say I don’t want to go. Instead of slamming a door in his face, I’ll just say 'I’m sorry,'” said Menendez. While no video can erase the trauma of combat, The War Inside is helping ease its lingering effects.

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New drug could block effects of PTSD...

Researchers Develop Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
June 06, 2013 > Researchers have developed a possible treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental condition characterized by increased anxiety, depression and problems with memory triggered by witnessing a traumatic event. Scientists say the drug potentially could be given to someone immediately following a trauma to prevent development of the psychiatric condition.

An international team of researchers has identified a gene linked to the development of post -traumatic stress disorder. Raul Andero Gali, a researcher at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, studies the molecular mechanisms underlying PTSD. It is the only psychiatric disorder, according to Gali, that has a known trigger, such as a car accident or being in a combat zone. “So we can even define more clearly which is the stimulus or the stressor that trigger the disease, whereas with other psychiatric diseases it is way more difficult. For example, with depression or schizophrenia it is more uncertain what is triggering that disease," he said.

Gali and colleagues at Emory, the University of Miami in Florida, Scripps Research Institute in Florida and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany identified a gene that is abnormal in PTSD. In some people experiencing a high degree of stress, the gene, called OPRL1, releases a protein receptor for a molecule called nociceptin in the brain. When that happens, Gali says they experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But researchers found a compound that blocks the receptor, reducing symptoms of anxiety and fear in a mouse model of PTSD.

Gali says investigators tested their drug, called SR8993, in rodents conditioned to fear a foot shock whenever they heard a particular tone. The rodents, learning that the sound was a danger signal, became very stressed out upon hearing the tone. Immediately after the pairings of sound and foot shocks, Gali says some of the mice were given a placebo or compound with no effect, while researchers administered SR8993 to another group of rodents. “The day after the animals were tested to see how afraid they were for the tone. And the animals that got the compound SR8993 presented less fear to the tone. So their conservation of fear memories is decreased," he said.

Gali says much work needs to be done to see whether the compound is effective in humans. But he envisions giving the drug to soldiers returning home from a war zone, for example, to keep them from developing PTSD. An article on a possible treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Researchers Develop Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

 

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Granny says is from all dat drug dealin' goin' on...

PTSD at home: High rates of trauma found in civilian population
February 3, 2014 ~ Americans in violent neighborhoods are developing PTSD at rates similar to combat veterans. Why aren’t hospitals screening them? It costs money.

Chicago’s Cook County Hospital has one of the busiest trauma centers in the nation, treating about 2,000 patients a year for gunshots, stabbings and other violent injuries. So when researchers started screening patients there for post-traumatic stress disorder in 2011, they assumed they would find cases. They just didn’t know how many: Fully 43 percent of the patients they examined — and more than half of gunshot-wound victims — had signs of PTSD. “We knew these people were going to have PTSD symptoms,” said Kimberly Joseph, a trauma surgeon at the hospital. “We didn’t know it was going to be as extensive.”

What the work showed, Joseph said, is, “This is a much more urgent problem than you think.” Joseph proposed spending about $200,000 a year to add staffers to screen all at-risk patients for PTSD and connect them with treatment. The taxpayer-subsidized hospital has an annual budget of roughly $450 million. But Joseph said hospital administrators turned her down and suggested she look for outside funding. “Right now, we don’t have institutional support,” said Joseph, who is now applying for outside grants.

Rescue personnel respond to the scene of a shooting at The Mall of Columbia in Columbia, Md. A growing body of research shows that Americans with traumatic injuries or who experience traumatic events develop PTSD at rates comparable to veterans of war. Just like veterans, civilians can suffer flashbacks, nightmares, paranoia, and social withdrawal.

A hospital spokeswoman would not comment on why the hospital decided not to pay for regular screening. The hospital is part of a pilot program with other area hospitals to help “pediatrics patients identified with PTSD,” said the spokeswoman, Marisa Kollias.“The Cook County Health and Hospitals System is committed to treating all patients with high quality care.” Right now, social workers try to identify patients with the most severe PTSD symptoms, said Carol Reese, the trauma center’s violence prevention coordinator and an Episcopal priest. “I'm not going to tell you we have everything we need in place right now, because we don't,” Reese said. "We have a chaplain and a social worker and a couple of social work interns trying to see 5,000 people. We're not staffed to do it."

A growing body of research shows that Americans with traumatic injuries develop PTSD at rates comparable to veterans of war. Just like veterans, civilians can suffer flashbacks, nightmares, paranoia, and social withdrawal. While the United States has been slow to provide adequate treatment to troops affected by post-traumatic stress, the military has made substantial progress in recent years. It now regularly screens for PTSD, works to fight the stigma associated with mental health treatment and educates military families about potential symptoms.

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