Items Tagged With ptsd

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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The sun shines on an empty Iraqi street. A Blackhawk helicopter circles overhead. The aromas of spices from a market fill the air.

University of Southern California

Suddenly, insurgents hiding on a roof launch a rocket-propelled grenade. The ground shakes violently and plumes of black smoke cloud your vision.

Those images, produced when a person puts on a headset, are at the heart of Virtual Iraq, a simulation created to treat Iraq war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

By repeatedly encountering sights, sounds, smells and rumblings that evoke painful memories, experts say, veterans with the disorder can begin to reprocess traumatic events and become desensitized to them, perhaps suffering fewer side effects like insomnia, nightmares and flashbacks.

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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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