Do researchers ever read research papers already done?

Psychotherapy Useful In Treating Post-traumatic Stress Disorder In Early Stages

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2007) — When treated within a month, survivors of a psychologically traumatic event improved significantly with psychotherapy, according to a new study presented at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) annual meeting.

Lead researcher and ACNP member Arieh Shalev, M.D., Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and founding Director of the Center for Traumatic Stress at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, studied 248 adults with early symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a traumatic event that had occurred no more than four weeks earlier. His goal was to determine which forms of treatment given soon after the traumatic event can prevent the development of chronic PTSD.

Officially, PTSD cannot be diagnosed until four weeks after a traumatic event. However, symptoms that occur before four weeks often persist, and effective early intervention may prevent subsequent trauma-related suffering.

Patients were treated for 12 weeks with cognitive therapy (which helps people change unproductive or harmful thought patterns), cognitive behavioral therapy (which helps densensitize patients' upsetting reactions to traumatic memories), an antidepressant (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) known to be helpful in treating chronic PTSD, placebo or no intervention at all.

"We found that cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy worked well on these patients, whose symptoms and duration of PTSD were compared at the end of 3 months of intervention.
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I'm glad they did this study because it brings back into the public's mind the fact that the sooner treatment begins for PTSD, the better the recovery. Yet I've been reading these reports for years. Why can't researchers read what has already been done and try something new?

Right after 9-11 two doctors I know were rushed to Washington and New York to treat the survivors with the best experience and abilities immediately after 9-11. We rush in mental health professionals into schools when there is a shooting. We rush mental health workers into every crisis for this very reason. So why study what has already been done and then treat it as if it is a new approach? PTSD under different names has existed since the beginning of time and yet too many act as if it is a new illness. The time to study the way to heal it is now, coming up with new treatments is now, but to study what has already been done thousands of other times is a waste of time. They need to stop studying how fast to act and come up with ways to do it instead.