PTSD? Why wait until it's too late?

PTSD? Why wait until it's too late?

by Chaplain Kathie

While it is never too late to seek help for PTSD, the damage being done to you and your life goes on until you do. Much like an infection stops getting worse with proper treatment, so does PTSD.

We have the Vietnam veterans as living proof PTSD is not the end of your ability to live a life worth living, achieving goals, having a successful family life, career and yes, even be happy. Consider the fact that these men and women did not receive treatment or therapy until 10, 20 or even 30 years after they came home. Some still have not sought treatment, and sadly so.

As the years ticked away between combat and therapy, the damage was being compounded by living their lives. PTSD got worse with more stress and their lives got worse because of PTSD. Marriages fell apart. Jobs were lost. Overall health was worsened. Back then, there were plenty of excuses to not receive help. The biggest one was that there wasn't any help available until the Vietnam veterans fought for it.

Now there is the excuse of an overwhelmed VA but that is being addressed. There are other ways of getting help from groups all over the nation offering to help veterans and support groups in many areas of the country but above all, support groups online. There are groups for the spouses as well.

This is just part of what is going on for PTSD

CTU-Online, the Clinician's Trauma Update, is an electronic newsletter produced by the VA National Center for PTSD. CTU-Online provides summaries of clinically relevant publications in the trauma field withlinks to published abstracts or full text articles when available.

For COMPLETE summaries, see this CTU-Online in html format on ourwebsite:

VA National Center for PTSD

Telehealth Promises and pitfalls in telehealth care for PTSD: Three recent papers illustrate the ways in which telehealth can be used to improve the care of people with PTSD. Methods such as video and computer-assisted delivery are being applied to clinical assessment and treatment. For theVA, increased use of these strategies promises evidence-based assessment and treatment for Veterans for whom distance from specialists remains abarrier to care. These new studies provide preliminary support forteleheath as a viable approach to care and offer information about limitations that need to be addressed in order to promote more widespread use of telehealth in clinical care.

Abstract
Telehealth, or health care via video conferencing, constitutes a clinical option that makes it possible to treat patients remotely. A growing number of studies have demonstrated that telehealth is a feasible and effective method for diagnostic interviews and psychiatric consultations. However, few studies have assessed the effectiveness of psychotherapy given by videoconference. This study examines the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) administered by video conference for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Forty-eight participants with PTSD were recruited for the study: 16 in the video conferencing condition and 32 in a control face-to-face condition. Each participant received CBT for 16 to 25 weeks and completed various questionnaires before and after treatment. The results show a significant decline in the frequency and severity of posttraumatic symptoms after treatment in both conditions. A clinical improvement in overall functioning was also observed. No significant difference was observed in the effectiveness of the two therapeutic conditions. The examination of effect sizes supports these results. A number of clinical implications and certain avenues for future research are discussed.

To find the help you need all you have to do is Google it! Is it that hard? So why are you still hear reading this when you could be starting to heal?