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Doctors have little quality evidence to rely on when deciding how best to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in returning U.S. veterans, a new government-sponsored review of the data concludes.
The Institute of Medicine study was requested by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which noted that about 12.6 percent of personnel fighting in Iraq, and 6.2 percent of those returning from Afghanistan, have experienced symptoms of PTSD.
Unfortunately, an overabundance of studies with inadequate or flawed designs make it impossible to say whether drug treatments or most psychotherapies can help fight PTSD, the authors of the report told reporters at a press conference Thursday.
Only exposure therapy -- where the patient is re-exposed to the original stressor in a safe, controlled environment -- shows some solid data bolstering its claim to effectiveness, the researchers said.
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The Internet is changing not just the way patients get medical
information, but the way they interact with doctors, their families,
and even with strangers.
A new report
from the Pew Internet & American Life Project gives a glimpse of
some of that change. It studies people with disabilities and chronic
conditions, who are some of the most avid users of Internet health
sites. Fewer of them go online than the overall population, probably
because many are elderly, a group that is still less likely to use the
Internet. But when people with disabilities and chronic conditions do
use the Internet, they are more likely than other users to look up
health information and use that knowledge to question a doctor, manage
pain or change the way they cope with a chronic condition.
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Bupropion (Wellbutrin XL) is the first drug approved by the Food and
Drug Administration for the prevention of seasonal affective disorder,
or winter depression. About 5 percent of Americans, three-quarters of
them women, experience SAD each year. But do you need medication to
prevent or treat it? Here are answers to five questions about this type
of depression.
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Thousands of military personnel have been dismissed for
"personality disorders" since the war in Iraq began.
The
military says the soldiers had pre-existing mental conditions that it
is not responsible for treating. But soldiers, their families and
veterans' groups counter that the mental condition is post-traumatic
stress disorder caused by their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Daniel
Zwerdling says if a soldier's medical unit diagnoses him with PTSD, the
treatment could last months and make the military liable for the
soldier's disability benefits. But if the soldier is diagnosed with a
personality disorder — a condition that predates his military service —
then the treatment would only last a couple weeks and the military
would not be liable for the disability benefits.
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Among elderly patients
who have recovered from an episode of major depression, maintenance
treatment with antidepressant drugs is superior to placebo in
preserving the improvements in health-related quality of life,
according to a recent report.
"Depression is one of the major causes of decline in the
health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) of elderly persons," write
Dr. Alexandre Y. Dombrovski and colleagues, in the Journal of the
American Geriatrics Society.
The researchers, from University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
examined the effectiveness of antidepressant maintenance therapy
with paroxetine and interpersonal psychotherapy in retaining the
gains in HR-QOL achieved during initial short-term treatment in
patients 70 years or older with depression.
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