Another PTSD study, another waste of time

When will they ever contemplate the fact they are getting this wrong constantly while veterans wait for healing? One of the biggest problems is short term memory loss. It does not go away or ease. Ask any Vietnam veteran and you'll know that fact but they never think to talk to older veterans living with PTSD all these years.

When will these researchers stop wasting time and money and start to include older veterans and their families to find out the real answers? After all, by 1978 there were 500,000 Vietnam veterans they could have talked to, but too many of them committed suicide. How many of our newer veterans will do the same while they refuse to open their eyes and their amazing minds to really understand them?

This is not that complicated because wives like me, well, we made all the mistakes you can make while living with our Vietnam Vet husbands. We ended up learning from those mistakes to find what works and what doesn't. Living with them also gave us the ability to understand what it is they need and what the newer families need to know to help their own veterans heal faster. The key word is "heal" because researchers have yet to come up with a cure.

This month, my husband and I are celebrating our 25th anniversary. An anniversary statistically we should not be having. Too many marriages with Vietnam veterans fell apart when there is this silent killer trying to reclaim them for the demon of combat. This is a battle for their lives, for our marriages and for our children. If families do not understand PTSD, they fall apart, kids suffer and veterans are left to fight or die on their own.

This is going to take an army of educators to go across the country to teach what we have already learned and we need to stop this kind of study that does not include older veterans so they can really find out what the facts are.

Study sheds light on post-combat mental problems


By Anne Harding
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are typical after deployment to a war zone, and may even represent a healthy reaction to stress, but can lead to problems with mental functioning if they persist, new research in Iraq vets suggests.

Past research has demonstrated that people exposed to life-threatening situations will show changes in their nervous and hormonal systems, Dr. Jennifer J. Vasterling of the VA Boston Healthcare System and her colleagues note, but it's not clear how long such symptoms last after exposure ends, and if they do last, what the consequences might be.

Vasterling and her colleagues are conducting a long-term study called the Neurocognition Deployment Health Study to help answer these questions.

In the current report, Vasterling and her team report the outcomes of neurological and psychological assessments of two groups of soldiers before and after deployment to Iraq

Attention problems can be very relevant to how a person functions in daily life, Vasterling noted in an interview, even though the deficits that she and her colleagues identified were relatively mild.

The hope, she said, is that these problems will resolve once a person's PTSD is treated. However, the researcher added, there are also strategies that can help people cope with their attention problems until they get better.
read more here
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58768F20090908