PTSD Drugs: Better Living through Chemistry

My friend Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma just did a great piece on medications you really should read.

PTSD Drugs: Better Living through Chemistry, or Purely Popping Pills for PTSD's Psychological Ills?

There was a story in the news recently about four young combat veterans in West Virginia, all seemingly in decent physical condition beforehand, who nevertheless all died in their sleep recently. Besides combat PTSD, one thing the vets all had in common was the cocktail of drugs they were taking: Paxil, Klonopin and Seroquel. (The Charleston, West Virginia Gazette-Mail reported this story on May 24, 2008 - it's linked here.) An investigation is pending, but the story obviously raises the question: what are vets with PTSD being prescribed, and is it really working, or what's best? (Continue reading, and you'll learn more about those specific medications as well.)
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Where to go for information about PTSD medications? Here are a few, carefully-chosen selections, and their pros and cons - as appropriate:

go here for more

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/ptsd-drugs-better-living-through-chemistry.html

Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, Marine, Hero and Loved

You want to know about PTSD or you would not be reading this blog. Do you really want to know about it? Do you want to know more of their stories? The families? Of their lives? I'm sure you do. While I try to post as much as possible about PTSD so that there is a place people can come to and get what they're looking for, I am not a reporter. I am more of an editor who puts in my two cents more than I should at times, but it's my life and they are my passion. It comes from investing my time and energy as if my life depends on it, simply because it does. It is personal to me because of my life with my husband and his life that I do this.

After they came home from Vietnam, men like Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs would never have their story told. It would have just been reduced to a few words in a crime section of your local paper. No one paid attention to their suffering. Because of the Internet, we have the ability to tell their stories and turn numbers into people. Names into faces. One life who touched many. This ability is part of the reason the stigma of PTSD is dying instead of many of them who have sought help finally understanding what it is. They are discovering that the only shame of PTSD belongs to the people who still want to deny the reality of this wound, uneducated, ignorant fools who would rather return to the dark ages when patients were bled to death than they would to understand the advancement of science. We know a lot more about the human mind, body and soul than we ever did before. Now those who serve this county will not simply pass from this life to the next in obscurity. Their stories are being told and people like Lily Casura at Healing Combat Trauma, are making their stories real. She's done a fantastic job covering the story of Travis Twiggs, going above and beyond where people like Tom Ricks would probably even bother to read. I am happy to call her friend and humbled by her dedication and talent.

June 07, 2008
SSgt. Travis Twiggs - Well-Loved U.S. Marine and PTSD-Struggling Hero - the Update
[In progress...check back later for more.] It's nice to know that the exceptionally tragic story of PSTD sufferer and well-loved Marine SSgt. Travis N. Twiggs hasn't completely faded from view -- a story we broke here, days before the national media even picked it up. This weekend it looks like the Times-Picayune has a two-part series about Twiggs on the NOLA.com website, linked here, and the story is both well-written, and contains - gasp - actual reporting, including conversations with the dad and stepmom, both Louisiana residents. (The Twiggs brothers spent their formative years in Alma, Louisiana.) It's a shock to me that CNN never covered the Twiggs story -- although they did cover the story of the Marine on leave who was murdered over $8 in his pocket. I guess the fear-mongering, anxiety-producing shock value of that "news," while terrifically sad in itself, beats the prospect of actually covering a story with some complexity and depth, in which we as Americans could stand to learn more about the life and background of an American hero whose death we mourn. Weird values, CNN (or maybe complete lack of them...)

One nice development since our original reporting on this story, back in mid-May when it happened. The Marine Corps Gazette, which originally published Travis Twiggs' story about his battle with PTSD, put the article back in print. It's available on their website now, linked here. And they added a nice little blurb about mourning his passing and extending their condolences to his family, which is appropriate. It also sounds like there was a Memorial Service for the extremely well-loved Staff Sergeant at Quantico a week ago, which allowed his fellow Marines and those he'd come in contact with over the years, to pay their respects. Also a very nice, and well-deserved touch. (So much better than just sweeping the whole situation under the rug, because it had such a tragic ending.)

go here for more

http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/06/ssgt-travis-
twiggs---us-marine-and-ptsd-hero---an-update.html

1st Sgt. Travis Twiggs wife hears of death on the news

Lily Casura is doing what a good reporter should do if they really care about the suffering of veterans more than getting the story in print and then dropping it as if the person really didn't matter at all. Well they did matter. They matter to their family, friends, neighbors and everyone else they came into contact with. Those who served with them have had tributes to him. Those who tried to help him in the VA have paid tribute to him. Yet we would know none of this if not for the tireless efforts of Lily. Now we know his wife did not even know he died or how he died until she saw the report on the news. How very sad it is that a hero falls due to wounds and the media finds nothing wrong with not giving us the rest of the story.

May 19, 2008
The Tragic Last Days of Travis "T-Bo" Twiggs:
Well, the national reporting on this story that we broke on Tuesday of last week has finally dribbled in – some of it good, most of it painfully mediocre – and none of it frankly enlightening, if you’ve been following his story here. (And btw, CNN hasn't covered it yet, though logically at some point they will have to, if only to keep up with the Joneses. It's pretty embarrassing to see what they deem worth covering instead, versus treating this American hero's death with any coverage at all.
Here is a slate of what CNN deemed more worthy of coverage just today (the breathless exclamation points are mine, but they seem in keeping with the "Mad magazine meets Entertainment Tonight!" reportage topics -- or is it becoming, "News of the World," with a little political commentary thrown in? More worth covering than Travis Triggs, four tours of duty and PTSD sufferer, we have: "Cancer survivor pitches no-hitter!" "Photographer snaps own javelin-spearing!" "Autistic boy, 13, banned from church!" "Wealthy Town Wants Its Own Currency!" and best/worst of all: "Yearbook [staff] switches kids' heads, bodies [in yearbook]!" I'm firmly convinced CNN is now staffed by 13 year old boys, who consider anything they'd talk about on at a sleepover camp, and how they'd talk about, to be the rule of thumb for how they choose the news.

A hard shock in the recent, actual news coverage about Travis Triggs was learning that his wife, Kellee, though she knew her husband was deeply troubled by PTSD, didn’t realize he was in Arizona, and didn’t learn that he killed himself, until she saw it on a news report. That has to just add to the horror of the whole situation. (At the end of this entry, we'll share some nice things people have been saying in Travis Twiggs' memory, about the man and the Marine.)
go here for more
http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/2008/05/t-bo-twiggs-tra.html