PTSD study seeks to locate, help women veterans

Study seeks to locate, help women veterans: Post-traumatic stress disorder is its focus [Albuquerque Journal, N.M.]
Jan. 18--An unintended consequence of allowing women in the U.S. military to serve in combat has led a local psychologist to launch a four-year, $1 million research project centered on women with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

The bad news is that about 22 percent of female veterans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan develop PTSD, compared with 15 percent of combat veterans in general.

Even worse, said Diane T. Castillo, a psychologist with the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Health Care System, between 80 percent and 90 percent of the women veterans being treated at the local VA clinic list sexual trauma as the source of their PTSD. That's 10 times higher than the number of women who attribute their PTSD to combat trauma alone. About 20 percent report sexual trauma and at least one other source of trauma as causes of their PTSD.

With more than 20 years of research and a renewed, war-induced focus on posttraumatic stress disorder, medical practitioners are in near unanimous agreement about how to best treat the debilitating effects of PTSD.

The focus now, Castillo said, is finding the most efficient way of providing proven PTSD treatments to the burgeoning number of soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Castillo, coordinator for the Women's Stress Disorder Treatment Team at the New Mexico VA Health Care System, an adjunct assistant professor in UNM's Psychiatry Department and an associate professor in UNM's Psychology Department, has been treating PTSD patients for more than 20 years.
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Study seeks to locate, help women veterans