PTSD henchmen out in force again!

PTSD henchmen out in force again!

I can just imagine the kinds of posts I'll read after this. As if the henchmen needed any help in assaulting our veterans, our troops, police officers, firefighters, emergency responders and survivors of trauma. Believe me, they've had all the help they can get from a bunch of hacks that never knew or lived with a veteran with PTSD. This "research" is nothing new. They have been trying to paint veterans as simply looking for money and nothing more. Pharmaceutical make billions off treating "PTSD" so they point to the fact there is a lot of money involved. Doctors make millions of dollars every year treating it, so again, it has to be all about money. I'd like to see one of these hacks tell that to the family of a veteran that committed suicide. Plus how is it that when people have cancer, no one is every accused of being in it for the money?

I've been in this for far too long to ever once have second thoughts about the reality of PTSD. It's been researched to death since the 70's and even before that, it was called something else but the history of it was kept in a cone of silence like it was America's dirty little secret.

It was only up until the last 5 years or so that I did not have to search endlessly for reports on PTSD. The media finally picked up on this but anyone living through traumatic events has been suffering from it since the beginning of time. Part of the reason I track this so much is that I am looking for a cure for my husband and my own life! He is living a life again, but oh, how I wish I could have him back the same way he was when we met and PTSD was mild. Even back then, he was my best friend, so I was a bit jealous when we were around friends he had since he was really young and they told me what he was like. I can only imagine that Jack. Still, the Jack that got up and went to work, worked overtime and had dreams of doing things, frugal, responsible, thoughtful, would be wonderful to get back. Even with him being in treatment and on medication, things in this house are a balancing act on a roller coaster ride. I never know what each day will bring, what kind of mood he'll be in or what will set him off.

I did not spend almost 25 years with this man, never once spending the entire night in the same bed unless we were traveling and were forced to sleep in the same bed, for nothing! Believe me, even with a king size bed in a hotel room, I had to stay far away from him while we tried to sleep. I've seen him off medication and in denial. I've seen him without treatment. I never want to go through that kind of hell ever again.

Any "researcher" doubting the reality of PTSD, has never walked in my shoes or lived in my house. They have never seen what it is like as they lose so much hope they want to die. They have never had to bury someone in their family that committed suicide instead of living one more day with it. We buried my husband's nephew over this!

I have lived through many traumatic events in my life beginning with an alcoholic violent father. I saw what it did to my two brothers and my mother. I didn't end up with PTSD or a drinking problem but my brothers did. I didn't end up bitter, but my mother did. Am I blessed? Cursed? Stronger? Have more faith than they did? Than my husband did? Hell, I don't know and I'm still searching for that answer. There are many things in this world I don't understand and some things I will never understand, but there are things I know for a fact and that is the reality of PTSD. Is there one treatment that works for everyone? No. Is there one medication that works for everyone? No.

There is a fact that PTSD treated early can be reversed if they get help soon after the event. PTSD does stop getting worse as soon as treatment begins and it does get worse if it is left alone, not treated. I didn't spend more than half my life doing this to still be reading crap like this that some henchmen is still trying to say that this has to do with money. We had a lot of money when my husband worked! I was able to work full time and pull overtime with good jobs. We left Massachusetts so that I could work part time and do this work full time because it was that important to me to do it and there were increasing numbers coming in with PTSD and not enough hours in the day to keep up with it. Now, think if he didn't have PTSD, or there was ever a possibility PTSD was not real, I can assure you that I wouldn't be spending 70 hours a week working for free and praying for donations to come in so that I could actually not have to use credit cards and refinancing the house over and over again. That's how real PTSD is!

I don't want one more family going through what we did. I don't want one more veteran or anyone else for that matter, going through what my husband has. I'll be damned if I let one more jerk even attempt to link PTSD veterans to money!

RESEARCHERS: DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR PTSD UNSATISFACTORY
It is difficult to distinguish between the PTSD symptom cluster and what could be considered a normal human response to massive trauma.



NOTE from Larry Scott, VA Watchdog dot Org ... This is an interesting look at the diagnosis of PTSD. Something to think about: A high-ranking VBA employee told me, "If the VA didn't offer compensation for PTSD, it wouldn't exist." Click here for more about veterans and PTSD.

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Psychiatric Times. Vol. 26 No. 7

Point/Counterpoint

PTSD Has Unreliable Diagnostic Criteria

David Wilson, MS and Peter Barglow, MD

Mr Wilson is a medical student at the UC Berkeley–UC San Francisco joint medical program. Dr Barglow is clinical professor of psychiatry at UC Davis Medical School.



Currently the Veterans Administration (VA) is the world’s largest recipient of per patient funding for PTSD. The VA treats 200,000 veterans with this diagnosis annually at a cost of $4 billion. But research calls into question the very existence of the “PTSD” syndrome, and its diagnostic formulation remains invalid. We do not minimize the suffering of those who experience trauma or the need for comfort and restitution. We seek only to reexamine research evidence, to clarify the impact of culture on diagnosis, to reevaluate the consequences of trauma, and to ensure optimal allocation of resources.

The 1980 edition of DSM (DSM-III) included PTSD after lobbying by antiwar psychiatrists, Vietnam veterans’ organizations, social workers, and psychologists.1 According to Scott,2 these advocates argued that traumatic memories of war were reemerging in more virulent form as PTSD. This perspective focused on the aftereffects of war rather than the psychodynamics of individual patients.3 It was assumed that an organic brain change had occurred secondary to the psychological arousal of stress. A second assumption was that those treated would become chronically disabled.

There is a more fundamental problem: PTSD symptoms may not be linked to trauma. Bodkin and colleagues7 showed that among those for whom pharmacological treatment of major depression was considered, patients with and without a trauma history met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD at identical rates (78%). Gold and coworkers8 showed that college students without a traumatic experience were more likely to meet the other diagnostic criteria of PTSD. In 1988, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study found that 30.9% of Vietnam veterans had full-blown PTSD—but only 15% of these vets had been assigned to combat units.9 Analyses using narrower diagnostic criteria and verified reports of trauma exposure reported rates from 2.9% to 15.5%.10

read more here
DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR PTSD UNSATISFACTORY

One more note here, if there is no trauma, there is no PTSD! That's why it's called Post Traumatic! It means it is something else but these "researchers" must not know what it is. If a psychiatrist is looking for anything other than PTSD, they will find it because the symptoms mimic other illnesses. PTSD comes after trauma and the two are not the same.