Remember the old comedy line with "thats my story and I'm sticking to it" made you laugh? It isn't so funny when the Army is sticking to their story with "resilience" no matter what the outcome has been. Well folks, it looks as if they are still blaming the soldiers with this piece of news.
“Now we’re trying to take a more holistic [approach], which is going to really get a more complex view of how the different factors start to interact,” Lane said. “The alcohol and substance abuse, the risk that our soldiers and their families undergo, the stresses, everything that goes into that picture, [and] trying to get a more complex interaction.”
Substance abuse and relationship problem are caused by PTSD but it shouldn't have taken decades to discover what was already known back in the 70's. Looks like the Forgotten Warrior Project was forgotten about.
As for "new" data" everything old is new again.
Army suicide prevention takes on new, data-driven form
Federal News Radio
By Nicole Ogrysko
November 30, 2015
The Army says it’s found a way to use data it already has to learn more about its soldiers and the stressors that might affect their readiness and resilience.
In June, the service finished a roughly five-year project as part of the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS), which looked at the characteristics of suicide and other mental and behavioral health issues.
Army STARRS collected and organized 40 different datasets, mostly administrative information the Army already had about its soldiers. Data scientists studied demographic information, medical and law enforcement history, in addition to military characteristics like a soldier’s rank, deployment location, number of tours and when a soldier moved up a rank.
To protect soldiers’ identities, the Army STARRS team detached individual names from the actual data. read more here
Guest Post: As a policy, allowing guest post does not signify an endorsement. Any questions, see links.
A New Treatment That Addresses The Real Cause of PTSD
PTSD is a serious problem. Why isn’t anyone really paying attention? There are countless statistics quoted by the media, yet how many veterans with PTSD are really treated to remission?
The drugs aren’t working and we need alternative solutions.
We are all frustrated at how our heroes and loved ones have been treated. They deserve better. What’s the solution?
According to a group of forward-thinking therapists and doctors, the reason a solution has not been developed is that the medical field doesn’t truly understand PTSD. This causes doctors and medical organizations to take the easy way out and just prescribe medications.
Prescription medications only treat the symptoms of PTSD, not the underlying illness. The flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares and other symptoms are NOT the illness. They are a symptom of a much deeper issue.
Blue Morpho Foundation has discovered the true source of PTSD – it is a problem of consciousness.
PTSD happens when a person experiences a negative or damaging shift in consciousness during trauma. After the traumatic event, prolonged symptoms pattern the trauma into PTSD. To cure the illness, there needs to be a new shift in consciousness - a peak experience to allow for a positive shift in consciousness and a method to integrate it.
A new treatment that actually works?
We have treated PTSD into remission without medication or decades of psychotherapy. In fact, there are now thousands of former PTSD sufferers worldwide who swear by our treatment’s effectiveness. They attest to the results that they have experienced firsthand, which includes lasting relief without the return of their illness.
The treatment works without medications and the common side effects thereof. It works by using propriety technology to address the underlying issues in the patient’s psyche. Through a series of healing shifts in consciousness, the release of a traumatic past is achieved.
The BMF advisory board, comprised of forward-thinking therapists, is treating PTSD into remission without side effects or medication using these new techniques.
This isn’t your average psychotherapy.
It leverages all four modalities of human experience, harnessing the power of imagination, cognition, body, and emotion individually and in unison to shift consciousness to a new state where the mental illness is no longer present.
We truly want to help our veterans and have dedicated our lives to treating mental illness. Our goal is to fund a long-term research study that will prove to the world what we have discovered - that our treatment works. Our veterans desperately need a solution and we need to make this available to them. Thousands can already testify to the efficacy of our treatment; now we just have to prove it to the modern medical establishment so that we can legally distribute it.
If you want to know why the military has not decreased suicides or really addressed PTSD, here's a great clue for you. They still don't understand it. Now of all things, they want to use a brain chip to prevent PTSD believing if they can change how folks remember things, everything will be hunky-dory.
Does anyone have a brain chip for the deciders since they are lacking a connection to reality?
Could brain chips treat PTSD? US military says future implants will boost memory and eradicate stress in soldiers
Daily Mail
By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 20:57 EST, 18 November 2015
Chips will come in the form of wireless neuroprosthetic brain implants
Scientists are working on understanding how brains encode memories
They want to create computer models that mimic a functioning brain
Will lead to chips that trigger brain activity if neurons are damaged
The US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (Darpa) is working on chip implants to restore memory functions and heal traumatic brain injuries. The agency is getting closer to perfecting wireless 'neuroprosthetic' brain implants that will help with trauma and improve memory
About 2.7 million Americans served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and at least 20 per cent of them have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (Darpa) says it can reduce this number by treating war veterans using chip implants.
Researchers at the organisation say wireless 'neuroprosthetic' brain implants will also help restore memory functions and heal traumatic brain injuries.
To create the chips, researchers say figuring out the puzzle of how the brain encodes memories is the first step. Once the pieces are put in order, scientists will be able to create computer models that mimic a functioning brain
Darpa, with the assistance of $12 million, is digging deep into the brain's soft tissue to record, predict and possibly treat anxiety, depression and other ailments of the mood and mind. read more here
Flawed PTSD research under fire from Texas legislators
Dallas Morning News
Sue Ambrose
Staff Writer
Published: 12 October 2015
The contracts for the PTSD research wouldn’t have been included in the committee’s inquiry, since the money came in three phases, each less than $1 million.
Texas lawmakers are saying they’d like to know why a state agency spent $2 million for a flawed research project on veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But the head of the Health and Human Services Commission says that would be tough. Many people involved with funding the research — which included spinning combat veterans in a chair to stimulate their brains — no longer work at the agency.
That makes “a comprehensive timeline difficult to re-create,” Chris Traylor, executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, wrote in a letter responding to one lawmaker’s questions. The agency also gave him hundreds of pages of documents previously requested by The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV (NBC5) as part of their five-month investigation into the research.
That didn’t sit well with Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, who now wants an internal investigation.
“I am requesting … a full forensic reconstruction of the events surrounding the decisions,” Turner, a member of the House ethics committee, wrote last week in a letter to Traylor. read more here
Clinic that got public funds for questionable PTSD study alters its account
Dallas Morning News
By Sue Ambrose and Scott Gordon
Published: 06 October 2015
Cerebrum also said this week that Padilla had resigned from his job at the clinic but was still providing “limited” medical oversight.
An Irving clinic that spent $2 million in taxpayer funds on questionable PTSD research on veterans has a new name.
It now says the doctor it identified as its medical director really wasn’t.
And it has changed the way it describes the services it offers.
The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV (NBC5) on Sept. 23 reported on their joint five-month investigation into a state-funded project that tested whether a spinning chair could help veterans suffering from PTSD. Medical experts criticized the research project, saying it wasn’t scientifically sound.
The clinic, registered as a chiropractic facility, changed its name from Carrick Brain Centers to Cerebrum Health Centers. It sought to trademark that name in June.
A clinic spokeswoman said early this week that Dr. Marlon Padilla was not medical director as it had claimed when answering questions for the investigation. The clinic also said this week that it had used the term “medical director” to indicate that Padilla, a physician, was the most senior medical staff member at the center.
read more here
This editorial pretty much sums up what is going on all over the country. Folks want to help so they will just fall for anything claiming to work then never bother to check claims against facts, or even demand proof afterwards.
That’s how Texas taxpayers were bamboozled into funding a $2.2 million study by the Irving-based Carrick Brain Centers that experts say shows no scientific merit for the treatments its advocates assert.
With all this "study" work going on do you think they will finally learn?
UT Dallas awarded $6.4 million grant to study PTSD treatment
Project will explore vagus nerve stimulation as a treatment for PTSD
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS
A federal agency has awarded a four-year grant that could result in funding of up to $6.4 million to the Texas Biomedical Device Center at UT Dallas to study a potential new therapy for individuals who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant began Sept. 15 and will continue for four years. The project will explore a PTSD treatment that uses targeted plasticity therapy. Targeted plasticity therapy uses vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) during exposure therapy to reduce the fear response.
VNS is an FDA-approved method for treating various illnesses, such as depression and epilepsy. It involves sending a mild electric pulse through the vagus nerve, which is in the neck, and relays information about the state of the body to the brain.
UT Dallas researchers already have demonstrated the safety and potential efficacy of targeted plasticity therapy as potential treatments for stroke patients and individuals suffering from tinnitus, which is constant ringing in the ears. Those treatments are in trial and review. read more here
OK and what about this money?
The Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas was awarded a $3 million grant from the Department of Defense in 2011 to further investigate the effectiveness of a paired treatment for PTSD. This no-cost, non-drug treatment combined Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS).
State representative asks funding agency for more information about $2.2 million PTSD study
Dallas Morning News
Sue Ambrose
Published: October 2, 2015
Cerebrum Health Centers is an Irving chiropractic clinic that received more than $2 million in state funds to conduct PTSD research on veterans.
A member of a Texas House investigations committee has asked for more information about how the state vetted a $2.2 million project to try to treat post traumatic stress disorder in veterans using a spinning chair.
In a letter to the head of the Health and Human Services Commission, State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Arlington, said the state’s decision “to spend over $2 million on an unproven treatment… with little to no oversight by the state, is deeply concerning.”
A spokesman said HHSC will respond to Turner.
“We will attempt to address every facet of his inquiry as best we can,” said HHSC spokesman Enrique Marquez. “We will absolutely be responsive to Rep. Turner’s inquiries early next week.”
The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV (NBC5) published a joint investigation into the state project last month. The study took place at an Irving clinic now known as Cerebrum Health Centers. According to state records, it treated about 140 veterans with PTSD by trying to stimulate the brain’s balance system. The treatment included spinning the veterans upside down in a chair. read more here
Oversight for vet research project raises questions
Chiropractors defend work but critics say it fell short
The Dallas Morning News
By Sue Ambrose | Staff Writer and Scott Gordon | NBC5
Published September 23, 2015
“Poor studies are funded when you subvert the peer review process,” said Carl Castro, a retired Army colonel and psychologist at the University of Southern California.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry urged Dr. Kyle Janek, the man he picked to head the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, to look into the Carrick Brain Centers' PTSD treatment for veterans. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Government agencies typically fund a research proposal only after experts have concluded it has merit — and that the researchers have the training to carry it out. But Dr. Kyle Janek turned that process upside down when he headed the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
Janek decided to fund an Irving chiropractic clinic that wanted to treat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder with a spinning chair.
The contract, signed in December 2013, called for “research and analysis.” Ultimately, Carrick Brain Centers’ Irving clinic treated 140 veterans, and the state paid out more than $2 million. But experts say the results fell far short of what a medical research project is expected to produce.
Janek, presented with those criticisms, recently described the clinic’s work as a “pilot project” — something that is typically less ambitious in scope, involves fewer patients and costs significantly less than a full-blown research project.
If the clinic’s work was just a pilot project, one expert said, the state spent too much money and got precious little for it.
The clinic won an $800,000 contract in December 2013 to test its PTSD treatment. That included time in the chair, a procedure the clinic said could activate the brain’s balance system and relieve veterans’ PTSD symptoms. read more here
Texas taxpayers pay to spin vets in chair
Experts say $2.2 million paid for shoddy PTSD research
By Sue Ambrose | Staff Writer and Scott Gordon | NBC5
Published September 23, 2015
But the clinic still won a no-bid contract. There were virtually no checks and balances on the study. The number of patients grew from about 50 to about 140. The original cost was $800,000 but grew to $2.2 million.
The clinic claimed “remarkable results.”
Scientists say the research was a waste.
The gyrating chair, cocooned inside a gleaming oval capsule, looks like an astronaut’s training device.
Patients spin upside down and sideways after they buckle in. White-coated healers sitting at a computer control the angle and speed.
Aging Dallas Cowboys like Tony Dorsett and Randy White, their brains and bodies battered, said it made them feel better. A retired general said it improved his vision. And a Texas governor with presidential aspirations wanted to use it to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries in war heroes.
So the state of Texas said yes, sure, and poured 2 million taxpayer dollars into a study to see whether a spinning chair — described as an “Off Vertical Axis Rotational Device” — could help.
Experts say there was no medical reason to think that spinning traumatized combat veterans upside down could help them — and every reason to think it wouldn’t. Most of the researchers in the study were chiropractors, not medical doctors. They didn’t work at an established research lab, but at the Carrick Brain Centers, a chiropractic clinic in Irving that opened its doors about six months before the state funding began. read more here
US Navy buys Israeli ‘brain zapper’ to treat vets
Brainsway’s Deep TMS therapy system helps treat PTSD, bipolar, depression and other conditions
Times of Israel
BY DAVID SHAMAH
September 20, 2015
A Brainsway device in action. (photo credit: courtesy)
The US Navy will be using an Israeli-developed transcranial magnetic stimulation system to treat patients with a range of psychological conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), stress, major depressive disorder, and others.
The Navy has ordered several Deep TMS therapy helmets made by Jerusalem-based Brainsway for use in several of its medical facilities to help treat sailors and their families, as part of a therapy plan that could include counseling, anti-depressives, and other therapies.
“Our validation as a supplier to the US Navy is an important stepping stone for our company into the US market,” said Brainsway CEO and president Guy Ezekiel. “The Navy provides health services to many service people and to their families at a large number of treatment centers, and we are proud to be a part of those services.” read more here
This is why nothing has changed on PTSD research. They did it again. Over and over and over again, repeating studies other researchers discovered over 30 years ago! And I thought you couldn't get into MIT unless you were able to read?
This is the headline
MIT: PTSD could be prevented
And this was the "shocker"
“That was really surprising to us,” said lead author and MIT postdoc Michael Baratta. “It seems like stress is enabling a serotonergic memory consolidation process that is not present in an unstressed animal.”
Yep, they blamed serotonin
Blame it on the serotonin
The specific pathway of this disease involves a part of the brain known as the amygdala, an almond-sized structure involved in responding to and remembering stress and fear. In mice with chronic stress who experience a trauma, a neurotransmitter known as serotonin acted on the amygdala to promote the process of memory consolidation. (Memory consolidation is the process by which short-term memories are turned into long-term memories.)
This shows it goes back to 1972
40 Years of Academic Public Psychiatry
edited by Selby Jacobs, Ezra Griffiths
Page 80
"Pioneering research on the role of specific brain areas (locus coeruleus, raphe nuclei, midbrain dopamine neurons) regulating brain norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine functions the systems targeted by out current psychiatric medications.
Easy to see why everything I started reading over 30 years ago has been forgotten. Guess there is no money in actually paying attention to what was learned before the internet actually gave them the ability to learn what was done long before most of them were even born!!!!!
Military veterans
Information about PTSD in veterans of the Vietnam era is derived from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Survey (NVVRS), conducted between 1986 and 1988. The estimated lifetime prevalence of PTSD among American veterans of this war is 30.9% for men and 26.9% for women. An additional 22.5% of the men and 21.2% of the women have been diagnosed with partial PTSD at some point in their lives. The lifetime prevalence of PTSD among veterans of World War II and the Korean War is estimated at 20%.
And this shows who started all the research new researchers have avoided at all costs,,,and I do mean costs since they get paid to do new research no matter how many times it has been done before.
Causes
When PTSD was first suggested as a diagnostic category for DSM-III in 1980, it was controversial precisely because of the central role of outside stressors as causes of the disorder. Psychiatry has generally emphasized the internal weaknesses or deficiencies of individuals as the source of mental disorders; prior to the 1970s, war veterans, rape victims, and other trauma survivors were often blamed for their symptoms and regarded as cowards, moral weaklings, or masochists. The high rate of psychiatric casualties among Vietnam veterans, however, led to studies conducted by the Veterans Administration. These studies helped to establish PTSD as a legitimate diagnostic entity with a complex set of causes.
Do Memories Matter?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 13, 2015
Saturday was a great day, at least it started that way. I went to the VFW to film veterans, especially female veterans, because they never get enough attention. Any after uploading the video and the pictures, my Mac decided it had enough. After 5 years of constant use and memory nearly used up, despite having external hard rives, I got the wheel of death. That's when the loading wheel spins until it is ready. It decided it was just going to spin a last dance.
I took it to the Geeks at Best Buy to see what they could do with it and bought a HP Laptop, figuring if they could fix my Mac, I'd give the laptop to my husband after I got my Mac back. Now I finally fully understand when people say "Once you go Mac, you don't go back.
Yesterday I found out that it locked up during diagnostics, meaning the problem is most likely in the hard drive. I had to buy another one simply because waiting a couple of weeks to see if it can be fixed, was not an option.
After years of having to replace PC after PC, the constant-long updates and resets, I bought my Mac while taking Digital Media classes and everything was done on Macs. All this time and never had a problem with it until Saturday. Great record and it was a loyal friend.
I filled it with two books, thousands of pictures, music and over 200 videos. It worked hard for me and will be missed but now I have a new one with no memories in it. Sure, most of the ones I needed are on the external hard drive but the others are trapped in the Mac. One day I'll be able to afford getting the files out but for now, it is sitting on the floor.
This got me thinking about some researchers talking about blocking memories for PTSD veterans. I never thought it was a good idea especially when they are using rodents for research on what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does. Memories in humans are tied to emotions. No one can look at a picture of someone they loved and not get a warm, tingling feeling triggering memories of them.
How does a rat feel about family and friends? Do they feel guilt? Do they feel remorse? Do they feel lost or hopeless? Do they risk their lives for another rat or pray to God, Higher Power or the universe for help or grieve when help does not come in time? Do they ever wonder why they were born? Do they keep memories of their youth beyond what food smells like? Do their memories become intertwined with emotions at all?
No one seems to know yet researchers have studied rats to better understand PTSD. Some came a conclusion that blocking or erasing memories is the best way to treat PTSD but they are never able to explain what else folks will lose.
The involuntary intrusions are vivid, highly emotional, and involve a sense of reliving the original trauma. In contrast, the voluntarily recalled trauma narratives do not share this same intensity, but their content is notable for being significantly disorganized. Such disorganization can be found very soon after the traumatic event and hence is not attributable to poor recall, but to the very nature of these traumatic memories themselves.
It sounded good until I reached this part,
More recently, Dr. Kandel and his colleagues identified a molecule, a prion protein called CPEB, (cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding protein 3) that plays a key role in the maintenance of long-term memories in the sea slug Aplysia and in mice. In a 2015 study, Kandel and his colleagues trained mice to memorize a way to navigate through a maze, then the researchers knocked out the mouse homolog of the CPEB gene called CPEB3 and this knocked out the maintenance of long-term memories and caused the mice to forget how to navigate the maze.
They were researching Alzheimer's disease as well leaving out the simple fact that PTSD comes into the person after a traumatic event. It is caused by trauma, not genetics but researchers are still trying to figure out why it occurs to 1 out of 3 exposed to trauma. (Ok, some researchers are using 1 out of 5 but for decades it has been 1 out of 3)
As long as they keep using rats it will end up as if they used a typewriter instead of a computer able to store memories tied to emotions of the user. And yes, I am still worried the work in the other Mac maybe lost.
I cannot access the files stored in my other Mac but there are still there and most of them are still in my mind. Thousands of pictures collected over 5 years are tied to my heart like this one,
The best researchers are like the experts able to fix computers and the worst ones are still trying to figure out what the hell defragging a hard drive is. The best have understood there is a difference between what happens after trauma to rats and what happens to humans.
If PTSD is tied to memory and emotions, then why do they study anything but humans?
A conversation with Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Dr. Eric R. Kandel
Medical Express
by Shaili Jain, Md, Plos Blogs
August 12, 2015
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been described as a disorder of memory. It has become quite apparent that there are two types of memory in PTSD: the first being the involuntary intrusions of the trauma, and the second being the voluntarily recalled memories that constitute the trauma story, also known as the trauma narrative. Both are fundamentally different in their quality and form.
The involuntary intrusions are vivid, highly emotional, and involve a sense of reliving the original trauma. In contrast, the voluntarily recalled trauma narratives do not share this same intensity, but their content is notable for being significantly disorganized. Such disorganization can be found very soon after the traumatic event and hence is not attributable to poor recall, but to the very nature of these traumatic memories themselves.
In essence, there is an inability to put into words the most emotional part of a traumatic event, a period of time which could have lasted anywhere from several seconds to several hours. Traumatic memories are also unstable, so what is under voluntary and involuntary control varies over time. For this reason, the recall of trauma over different points in time creates different trauma accounts, with such discrepancies being more noticeable as the symptoms of PTSD become more severe.
read more here
They say it is the first study in the world? Seriously? Then I guess this didn't really happen in 2008 or any of the other studies already done and undone to be redone again.
The authors examined the longitudinal association between persisting posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and multiple domains of life functioning in a community sample of 1,377 American Legionnaire Vietnam veterans first assessed in 1984 and followed-up 14 years later. Almost 30 years after their return from Vietnam, 10% of veterans continued to experience severe PTSD symptoms. At all levels of combat exposure, persisting severe PTSD symptoms were associated with worse family relationships, more smoking, less life satisfaction and happiness, more mental health service use, and more nonspecific health complaints at the 14-year follow-up. Further investigation is needed to determine whether the PTSD-functioning relationship is causal and if successful treatment of PTSD is associated with improvement in functioning.
In this study, we first examine whether the association between higher combat exposure and worse functioning documented in 1984 is still evident in 1998. We then test whether persisting PTSD symptoms are associated with deficits in four important areas of current functioning: family relationships, negative health behaviors, personal well-being, and nonspecific health problems, after stratifying by combat exposure.
Plus this
The association of PTSD with current smoking and nonspecific health complaints deserves further attention. A smaller proportion of veterans with persisting PTSD quit smoking between 1984 and 1998. Over 50% of veterans with PTSD in the medium and high combat groups were current smokers in 1998 compared to 30%−40% of those exposed to similar levels of combat, but who did meet criteria for severe PTSD symptoms. The significant association between combat-related PTSD and current smoking is consistent with other studies of veterans (Beckham, 1999; Eisen et al., 2004; Koenen et al., 2006; Schnurr and Spiro, 1999). Moreover, smoking has been posited as a mediator of the consistent association between PTSD and worse health and may be one reason veterans with PTSD had more nonspecific health complaints. Growing evidence suggests veterans with PTSD are at higher risk for future tobacco-related diseases including coronary heart disease and lung and other cancers (Boscarino, 2004, 2006; Kubzansky, Koenen, Spiro, Vokonas, and Sparrow, 2007). However, PTSD appears to have direct negative effects on self-reported health and coronary heart disease that are independent of the PTSD-smoking association (Kubzansky et al., 2007; Schnurr, Ford, et al., 2000; Schnurr and Spiro, 1999). In fact, path analytic studies suggest the direct effect of PTSD on health accounts for more of the variance than the indirect of PTSD through smoking (Schnurr and Spiro, 1999). Further longitudinal research aimed at clarifying the relationships among PTSD, smoking, and health problems in veterans is needed.
Remember as you read the following they have been doing research on PTSD for 40 years!
World-first study looks at PTSD's toll on Vietnam veterans' bodies
ABC Australia
By Tom Fowles
Posted about 10 hours ago
World-first research into the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on Vietnam veterans, including Test cricketer Tony Dell, will be unveiled in Brisbane next month.
The study looked at 300 veterans, half of them with PTSD, to work out the physical impact of the disease.
Former Test cricketer and PTSD sufferer Mr Dell, who served in Vietnam in the late 1960s, was one of the first to take part in the study.
"Lots of people with PTSD actually die younger from the physical ailments that you actually become more susceptible to," he said.
He said he hoped the research provided encouragement for the Federal Government to take action against the debilitating condition.
"We hope to go back to the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister and say 'You have to do something'," Mr Dell said.
"In army terms, you've marked time for too long. It's flown under the radar. It's underfunded, it's misunderstood and here's a definite way forward for you."
The full extent of the physical toll that PTSD places on the body will be announced at the PTSD 2015 international forum in Brisbane between September 10-11. read more here
Can we get serious? Seriously, isn't over 4 decades long enough to wait for these yahoo researchers to get their act together? After all, you'd think they would want to help ease the suffering of 8 million Americans with PTSD. That is what we're talking about. Isn't it?
For all the old researchers found treating veterans after combat trauma, they ended up helping regular folks with PTSD from other causes instead of just ignoring their pain while prescribing "get over it" and call them when there was a real problem.
In a review of medical literature over a 35-year period, researchers from the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury—a program in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center—and other institutions found that non-medical approaches to treat PTSD were effective in some patients but not in others, suggesting a need for broader, more personalized approaches to care.
OK, how about we start with what kind they are talking about? If the "non-medical" means they are doing talk therapy to address the real issues behind most of the suffering, like survivor guilt, forgiveness along with every other aspect of the spiritual part of the veteran, then they have a lot of success provided the practitioner actually understands the difference between "spiritual" and "religious" approaches. Two totally different disciplines.
Then add in the question of if the practitioner incorporates physical activities to help bring the body's reaction back to relative calmness instead of allowing PTSD to fuel the rush of adrenaline?
The folks doing this rehash of research must have skipped those parts. But what can we expect from these folks when they come up with a great way to get funding to do a study like this one?
Scientists find why bad memories stay with us while not studying humans,,,,,,
"The protein, called beta-catenin, transmits early signals in species ranging from flies to frogs to mice that separate an embryo into front and back or top and bottom. It also acts like Velcro, fastening a cell's internal skeleton to proteins on its external membranes that in turn connect them to other cells."
Back to the MedicalXPress article
Understanding the underlying mechanisms that occur in specific patients is key. A novel five-year multicenter study led by NYU Langone's Cohen Veterans Center is looking into objective biological markers of PTSD and TBI in returning soldiers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The goal is to transform the way mental health disorders are diagnosed by identifying specific brain imaging and blood and other biological markers that can tell clinicians definitively that a person is suffering from PTSD or TBI or a combination. Presently, there is no single valid diagnostic test that can independently confirm either diagnosis. Stanford University, Emory University and the U.S. Department of Defense Systems Biology Program at Fort Detrick, Maryland are partners in this research.
God these studies really frosts my cookies but it all comes down to funding for research into what boils down to studying why something isn't working instead of taking a look at what worked and then coming up with another study to figure out how they can get more money for more research. Like this one
Kathleen Chard, PhD, will be one of three co-principal investigators for the trial, which is expected to launch later this year. She is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry in the UC Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience and director of the department’s PTSD division, based at the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center facility in Ft. Thomas, Ky.
The grant is sponsored by the VA’s Cooperative Studies Program, the division of the VA’s Office of Research and Development that is responsible for the planning and conduct of large multicenter clinical trials and epidemiological studies.
Hey, the money keeps coming and veterans keep dying so they end up getting more money to study what they studied for 4 decades. This makes sense to member of Congress? It must considering they just keep writing the checks.
Ok, so moving on to another study they forgot was already done in 2008 and found they still didn't know which came first like the chicken or the egg.
“The size reduction in the hippocampus seems to occur sometime after the initial exposure to stress or trauma in childhood, strengthening the argument that it has something to do with PTSD itself or the stress exposure,” said Dawson Hedges, an author in the study and a BYU neuroscientist.
Previous studies have shown adults who suffered maltreatment as children had volume deficits in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with memory, but had not determined if the PTSD caused the deficit or if people born with such a deficit were more at risk for PTSD.
Back to the article
In fact, recently released findings from another study led by Dr. Marmar and published July 22, 2015 in JAMA Psychiatry —the National Vietnam Veterans Longitudinal Study—found that over 270,000 Vietnam veterans—40 years since the end of that war—are still suffering from clinically important levels of PTSD symptoms, and one-third of those have a current, major depressive disorder.
This article came out last month
Brain Scan Can Tell PTSD Apart from Traumatic Brain Injury
Healthline Written by R. Sam Barclay Published on July 11, 2015 When it comes to treating TBI and PTSD, it’s important to be able to tell the two apart. The treatments for one can be harmful for people with the other.
But in 2012, UCLA researchers thought they were right when it turned out they were wrong and millions of veterans ended by being mistreated as if TBI and PTSD were the same.
By Stuart Wolpert - UCLA life scientists and their colleagues have provided the first evidence of a causal link between traumatic brain injury and an increased susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Their new study, published Feb. 15 in the in the journal Biological Psychology, also suggests that people who suffer even a mild traumatic brain injury are more likely to develop an anxiety disorder and should take precautions to avoid stressful situations for at least some period of time.
The motivation behind the study, which was conducted in rats, was the observed correlation of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, and PTSD, particularly in military veterans returning from service overseas, said Michael Fanselow, a UCLA professor of psychology and the senior author of the study.
The reasons for this correlation are unknown. It could be simply that the events that cause brain injury are also very frightening and that the link between TBI and PTSD could be merely incidental. Fanselow and his colleagues, however, hypothesized that the two "could be linked in a more mechanistic way."
The motivation behind the study, which was conducted in rats, was the observed correlation of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, and PTSD, particularly in military veterans returning from service overseas, said Michael Fanselow, a UCLA professor of psychology and the senior author of the study.
And back to the article again,,,,,
"There is a pressing need for innovation in treatments for PTSD and TBI to protect a new generation of veterans," adds Dr. Marmar.
NEW GENERATION OF VETERANS? WTF? They haven't figured out how to take care of the older veterans yet!
This study is missing a lot of information including the simple fact is that when more Vietnam veterans were alive back in 1978, they knew they had 500,000 Vietnam veterans with PTSD. They also knew the numbers would go up from there.
When you read the "quarter of million" in your email, understand that there are less Vietnam veterans still alive today to count. They fought for everything done on PTSD but are the last to be remembered. They are the majority of veterans committing suicide. They are the majority of the backlog of VA claims. It is great to finally see this reminder but sad to be reminded of just how far we have not come.
Many Vietnam veterans still suffer from PTSD decades later
CBS News
By ASHLEY WELCH
Jul 22, 2015
Philip Paolini served four years in the Vietnam War as a marine. In the years since then, he's faced a number of hardships, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse and homelessness.
And Paolini's story is far from uncommon. New research shows that four decades after the Vietnam War ended, more than 270,000 veterans who served in the war zone suffer from symptoms of PTSD, a mental health condition characterized by painful flashbacks, severe anxiety, and uncontrollable thoughts about the disturbing events they experienced.
The study, published online Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, also found that at least one-third of those veterans exhibiting symptoms of PTSD suffer from major depression, as well.
Researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center followed up with Vietnam War veterans who had participated in a study from 1984 to 1988. Of the 1,839 men and women still alive from the original study, over 1,400 participated in at least one phase of the new study, which involved a health questionnaire, health interview and clinical interview. read more here
We keep talking about how long all of these "projects" have been researched, done, failed and then redone over and over again, but in the following article there is a fabulous reminder of what Wounded Times readers already know.
"In 1991, Roger Pitman, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, discontinued a pilot study of six Vietnam veterans treated with a technique similar to prolonged exposure, known as imaginal flooding, that resulted in two of the patients becoming suicidal and a third breaking 19 months of sobriety. Other patients became severely depressed or began suffering panic attacks between treatment sessions. The results were so unexpected that Pitman conducted a larger study using 20 Vietnam veterans as subjects, published in 1996 in Comprehensive Psychiatry, and found similar outcomes."
Yep, that long, even longer if you are new to Wounded Times.
Trauma Post Trauma
The “gold standard” treatment for PTSD makes many vets’ symptoms even worse.
Slate.com
By David J. Morris
Medics carry a soldier hit by an IED in 2011 in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is the world leader in research on post-traumatic stress disorder. No organization spends more money or expends more resources to treat it than the VA. Yet its efforts to stamp out the disorder, which afflicts upward of 30 percent of veterans today and is the fourth most common mental health condition in the world, are often strikingly wasteful and driven by shoddy science. In 2006, the VA began treating veterans with a form of therapy charmingly known as prolonged exposure. It is now a central piece in the VA’s war on PTSD and its most popular type of individual psychotherapy. Prolonged exposure is heavily promoted by the VA, which describes it as the “gold standard” treatment for PTSD.
Prolonged exposure therapy works roughly like this: After taking a brief inventory of the patient’s military service, the therapist asks the veteran to recount the story of his or her worst trauma over and over and over again with eyes closed until the memory of it becomes “habituated,” losing its traumatic charge and becoming like any other normal autobiographical memory. The typical course of treatment lasts about eight weeks and, according to Marsden McGuire, the deputy consultant for mental health care standards at the VA, produces some improvement in 60 percent of veterans who undergo it.
The problem with prolonged exposure is that it also has made a number of veterans violent, suicidal, and depressed, and it has a dropout rate that some researchers put at more than 50 percent, the highest dropout rate of any PTSD therapy that has been widely studied so far. read more here
Tampa Cannathon Raises Awareness and Funds for PTSD Research
Marijuana Investor Summit
By: Marguerite Arnold
July 17, 2015
By the time people organize road races to raise money and awareness for a health condition, it is well on its way to the mainstream. In Tampa last weekend, on July 11, 2015, FCCActive, a local non-profit promoting medical cannabis use as part of a healthy lifestyle, organized the state’s first 5K cannabis-themed road race to help veterans and their families understand post-traumatic stress disorder and how to treat it, including with the use of cannabinoids. The event took place near MacDill Air Force Base.
“PTSD is a debilitating illness and it’s for real and it’s a problem,” said Garyn Angel, CEO of Magical Butter, a Port Richey-based company sponsoring the event, told Creative Loafing Tampa, a local zine. “If you watch what’s happened with the suicide rate for veterans, it’s staggering.” Angel’s company manufactures kitchen plant extractors that medical users can use to make cannabutter at home.
While many different kinds of individuals suffer from PTSD, which is essentially the body’s triggering of extreme stress and flight-or-fight mechanisms long after a traumatic event, the vast majority of those suffering the most are the nation’s veterans, who are still routinely banned from using the drug even under a doctor’s care. Furthermore, veterans “convicted” of medical marijuana use can lose other benefits, and of course, can still be arrested for trying to treat a difficult-to-manage and life-long health condition. There is still no state in the country, including Colorado, where users, even for medical purposes, do not face discrimination on the job or the threat of being legally fired for off-the-job, medical use.
Veterans are also on the front lines of this war too. Last year, Princeton University made the news when an 18-year employee, who was also a military veteran, lost his job for being part of the New Jersey medical marijuana program.
“[Veterans] have sacrificed and suffered the most for our freedom. Yet today many of our nation’s veterans lack the freedom to safely and effectively treat the paralyzing effects the invisible scars of battle can leave behind,” said Pete Sessa, COO of the Florida Cannabis Coalition. read more here
From the Department of Veterans Affairs
Marijuana as a Treatment for PTSD
The belief that marijuana can be used to treat PTSD is limited to anecdotal reports from individuals with PTSD who say that the drug helps with their symptoms. There have been no randomized controlled trials, a necessary "gold standard" for determining efficacy. Administration of oral CBD has been shown to decrease anxiety in those with and without clinical anxiety (18). This work has led to the development and testing of CBD treatments for individuals with social anxiety (19), but not yet among individuals with PTSD. With respect to THC, one open trial of 10 participants with PTSD showed THC was safe and well tolerated and resulted in decreases in hyperarousal symptoms (20).
Read more from the VA on Medical Marijuana here
White House to Let Researchers Study Medical Marijuana for PTSD
Military.com
by Bryant Jordan
Jun 23, 2015
The move helps clear the way for an oft-delayed study into the use of marijuana in treating veterans with PTSD, Doblin said.
The White House has lifted a major obstacle long standing in the way of studies into the use of pot to treat victims of post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments.
The Health and Human Services Department has published in the Federal Register its announcement eliminating Public Health Service reviews of marijuana research projects not funded by the government.
"The significance is that the Obama Administration is making formal a decision that they made informally more than a year ago," said Rick Doblin, executive director of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which plans to conduct a study whose test subjects include 76 veterans.
The Veterans Affairs Department estimates that between 11 and 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffer from PTSD. For veterans of the Persian Gulf War, the estimate is 12 percent, and for Vietnam veterans, 15 percent.
The Public Health Service granted review approval to the association in March 2014, but also noted in its letter that what it had previously set down as requirements for approval were now suggestions.
The latest move, Doblin said, signals "the Obama Administration is open to ending federal obstruction of privately-funded medical marijuana drug development research." read more here
This is for anyone who cannot understand what trauma does. It is not mental illness. It is not just psychological. It is also emotional. The only way to get PTSD is by surviving traumatic events. Hope you caught the word "surviving" since the victims did not survive to tell us anything. You were stronger than the event when it happened and you are strong enough to defeat it now. Get help to fight for your life again.
Trauma Changes Your Brain’s Response To New Events, Increasing Activity In Emotional Memory Regions
Medical City
By Susan Scutti
Jun 23, 2015
“This traumatic incident still haunts passengers regardless of whether they have PTSD or not,” Palombo said. “They remember the event as though it happened yesterday.”
Following a trauma, we see the world through different eyes.
While many people intuitively agree with this statement, a new MRI study offers some hard evidence in support of this belief.
Remembering a near-plane crash they had experienced, a group of participants showed greater responses in brain regions involved in emotional memory — the amygdala, hippocampus, and midline frontal and posterior regions.
Interestingly, these same former passengers showed a remarkably similar pattern of brain activity when recalling the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which occurred shortly after the emergency plane landing, even though none of them had personal experience with the attacks.
“Mundane experiences tend to fade with the passage of time, but trauma leaves a lasting memory trace,” said Dr. Daniela Palombo, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher at Boston University School of Medicine, in a press release.
read more here
