Experimental treatment for PTSD: Ecstasy

Experimental treatment for PTSD: Ecstasy
By Caleb Hellerman
CNN
December 1, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Rachel Hope suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for years
In 2005, she investigated an experimental new treatment: Ecstasy
Dr. Michael Mithoefer convinced the DEA to green-light a study of the treatment
More than 7 million Americans suffer from PTSD

Editor's note: This is the first installment of a three-day series on the controversial use of the drug Ecstasy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. On Sunday, read more about Rachel Hope's story and the history of MDMA, also known as Ecstasy. And don't miss "Sanjay Gupta MD" at 4:30 p.m. ET Saturday and 7:30 a.m. ET Sunday.

(CNN) -- Rachel Hope was 33 years old when she received a painful reminder: She couldn't outrun the past.

Hope was trying to help a new assistant at her Maui rental property business, but it wasn't going smoothly. Part of it was Hope herself.

"I had this startle reflex," she explained. "The phone would ring, and I'm literally three feet off the floor, screaming.

"My new assistant said, 'You're driving me crazy!' And I would say, 'I'm really sorry, just please try to ignore it. It's embarrassing, but let's keep working.' "

But the young man, a teacher on break, wasn't pushed off easily. Soon after, Hope said, "he walked over to my desk and dropped a stack of papers two inches thick. It was every single PTSD study that was online, and he just said, 'pick one.' "
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Australian veterans talk about benefits of Ecstasy

While there are many more reports on this blog about using Ecstasy to help with PTSD, the research goes back to 2007. Here are a few of them.

Israel tests Ecstasy on war trauma victims April 26, 2008

A New Look At Ecstasy To Treat PTSD February 11, 2008

Ecstasy Trials Was it a fluke -- or the future? November, 22, 2007

Soldiers from Royal Australian Engineers Corp fighting for life

Soldiers from Royal Australian Engineers Corp fighting for life after truck rolls over at Holsworthy army base
BY: CLEMENTINE CUNEO, PETER WAY, HENRY BUDD and AAP
From: The Daily Telegraph
October 08, 2012

A GROUP of soldiers injured in a vehicle rollover at Holsworthy Army Base today were engineers on a field training excursion.

The Daily Telegraph has been told the 20 soldiers from the Royal Australian Engineers Corp were returning from an exercise when the truck they were in rolled, just before 9am.

One of the rear cage passengers, a 21-year-old man, is on life support in Liverpool Hospital with critical head injuries, while another man, believed to be aged 19, is in a critical condition in Westmead Hospital with spinal injuries.
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Combat stress can cause soldiers long-term brain damage

Notice that this study did not come out of the US. It came from Australia.

Combat stress can cause soldiers long-term brain damage, research finds
Sydney Morning Herald
Date
September 4, 2012
Bridie Smith

A US marine has a close call after Taliban fighters opened fire. Photo: Reuters

THE stress of combat can change the way soldiers' brains are wired, resulting in a reduced cognitive function, such as the ability to focus on tasks.

Published in the journal PNAS this week, the results showed that exposure to ''combat stress'' - including armed combat, enemy fire, combat patrols and improvised explosive device blasts - affected the structural integrity of the midbrain and its ability to interact with the pre-frontal cortex.

Julie Krans, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of New South Wales, said the study findings illustrated that exposure to highly stressful situations wasn't just expressed via post-traumatic stress disorder.

''[The soldiers] may not be suffering a clinical disorder but they are still impairing their daily life,'' she said.

Dr Krans said more attention should be given to the effect of combat stress on cognitive functions such as attention, memory, problem-solving and decision-making.

The research studied a group of NATO soldiers before they were deployed to Afghanistan and compared the results with tests taken six weeks after the troops returned from a four-month stint.
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Australian Soldiers returning home with PTSD

Soldiers returning home with PTSD
Paula's husband Glenn is an Australian soldier, and after serving in Timor, and Afghanistan he has returned home, a changed man, and his family are finding it hard to reach out to him.

Paula's story is not an easy one to listen to. And she thought long and hard before telling it today.
The Brisbane mother and wife didn't want to - she wanted to work it out in her family. And then she wanted to work it out in the army.
None of that's worked. She even went to the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel minister Warren Snowdon. And now she's decided to tell it publicly.
Her husband Glenn is an Australian soldier. He went to Timor, and then Afghanistan.
And then last Christmas he came home. She almost didn't recognise him.
"He's like a shell.
"You see him and it looks like Glenn, but that's as far as you go, there's nothing there."
Paula says it took months before her husband Glenn was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and now he's being cared for at home.
Now Paula is asking how many other soldiers are suffering from PTSD.


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Soldiers returning home with PTSD

PTSD Dents in the Soul, Australian Army gets it right

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder initiative launched
10 December 2010

Dents in the Soul - DVD
The Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie launched the new Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) DVD “Dents in the Soul” at Lavarack Barracks in Townsville on December 8.

The wellbeing of our soldiers is top priority for the Australian Army.

Joined by soldiers and their families, General Gillespie spoke candidly of Army’s experience with PTSD.

“Early recognition and intervention in PTSD is our goal – seek help and seek it early. I am personally committed to the health, wellbeing and welfare of all our soldiers and their families.
read more here
http://www.defence.gov.au/defencenews/stories/2010/Dec/1210.htm

POW veteran fraudster 'living a lie'

POW veteran fraudster 'living a lie'

October 03, 2009
Article from: Australian Associated Press
THE Federal Government has referred a case of alleged fraud involving a man who claimed to be one of Australia's youngest prisoners of war to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.

South Australian Arthur Rex Crane, 83, has been on the highest level of service pension since 1988 and is the Federal President of the Prisoners of War Association of Australia, Fairfax Media reported.

He has alleged he was captured by the Japanese in 1942, became a prisoner of war at 15 and was imprisoned in Singapore's Outram Road jail.

But the Sydney Morning Herald reported that throughout the war the 83-year-old lived in Adelaide and had never served in the military.
read more here
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26159772-5006784,00.html

Traumatised soldiers get sub-standard care in Australia too

Traumatised soldiers get sub-standard care
AM - Monday, 30 March , 2009 08:22:00
Reporter: Jennifer Macey
TONY EASTLEY: An investigation into the Defence Force's mental health services reveals that most returned soldiers aren't getting adequate care.

The report commissioned by the Federal Government has been leaked to the ABC's Four Corners program and The Age newspaper.

It shows that two-thirds of veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are receiving sub-standard treatment.

Jennifer Macey reports.
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Traumatised soldiers get sub-standard care
ABC Online - Australia

Traumatised military doctor died from overdose

Traumatised military doctor died from overdose: inquiry
WA today - Perth,WA,Australia
February 25, 2009 - 3:25PM
A decorated military doctor who once served in Iraq was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder before his death from an overdose of medication, an inquiry has been told.

A defence force commission of inquiry, ordered by Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, is underway in Brisbane to determine if the force was directly linked to the death of RAAF Squadron Leader Adam Hughes.

Mr Hughes was found dead by his mother at his Newstead home in Brisbane on January 21, 2008, the inquiry was told on Wednesday.

She tried to resuscitate her son, whose home was littered with empty packets of various medication in his own name, and that of his cousin, the inquiry was told.

The cousin, Christian Hughes, who has been summoned to attend the inquiry but is yet to confirm he will appear, was the last person to see Mr Hughes alive.

Police found a typed note at the scene of the death but it did not appear to be a "suicide note," the inquiry was told.

The hearing was told Mr Hughes was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in July 2007.
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Australian Defence Force cannot take care of their PTSD veterans either

"Health facilities are somewhat fragmented," he said. "[The Australian Defence Force] doesn't have the necessary assets to provide the care he really required and this means there are a series of potential holes into which the passage of information falls."

Suicidal soldier's depression not revealed to carers, doctor says

Les Kennedy
January 24, 2008

A MILITARY inquiry into the death of an army captain has been told that the senior medical officer at the navy's Balmoral Hospital did not tell a private drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic the officer was a suicide risk when he was transferred for treatment.

The decision by George Blackwood not to tell the St John of God Hospital that Andrew Paljakka had threatened to kill himself and twice attempted it after returning from Afghanistan was because the hospital did not want to be "stuck with him", he said.

"If we disclosed everything then they may not have taken him and we would be stuck with him," Dr Blackwood told the inquiry at Randwick Barracks during evidence in a three-week closed hearing in November that was made public yesterday.

The doctor's evidence also revealed that Captain Paljakka, 27, was binge drinking while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and using heroin and amphetamines. He took his life in a Kings Cross hotel on February 26 last year.

Suspicions of his drug use were not revealed to the clinic, which, the inquiry heard, would still have taken him as a patient, assessed his mental condition and would not have allowed him to abscond.
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