What scientists know about PTSD in war veterans

Whenever I am talking about experts the DOD and the VA need to listen to, this is one of the reasons. I track this every day of the week and that makes me painfully aware of just how little the people making decisions really know about PTSD. I pointed out back in March what I learned from attending Mental Health First Aid when we talked about the way the mind "grows up" along with the age of the men and women entering the military. Paula Schnurr VA’s National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be heard loud and clear.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Are the troops just too young to go?
For the last few years I've been brining up the fact about re-deployments and the increase risk, along with screaming my fool head off there was nowhere near enough being done.

Well,in this one report you have it all and it's a wonderful thing. Now if the DOD and the VA would only come up with programs that work best and the cities and towns these veterans return home to step up, then we can really be proud of all we've learned through all these years.

EarthSky Health Interviews
Paula Schnurr on what scientists know about PTSD in war veterans

Post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that affects up to 30% of soldiers returning from Iraq. That’s according to a June 2010 study by Army medical researchers. Its results were that: “Prevalence rates for PTSD or depression with serious functional impairment ranged between 8.5% and 14.0%, with some impairment between 23.2% and 31.1%.”

If you or someone you know is troubled by PTSD, go to The National Center for PTSD for help.

For the latest on what scientists know about PTSD, EarthSky spoke with Paula Schnurr. She’s deputy executive director of the VA’s National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She said PTSD involves changes in a person’s psychological state and their neurobiological state

Paula Schnurr: That is, their brain changes. The systems in the brain that help us deal with stress and regulate fear and emotional responding are changed as you might expect in response to the extreme trauma of combat.

Paula Schnurr: One factor is the person’s age. Up to early adulthood, the younger a person is, the more likely they are to develop PTSD. The more education they have, the less likely. If they’ve had childhood stressors and trauma, they’re more likely. The way that I think about it, at least, is that part of what a person has to do when a person has experienced a trauma is to try to make sense of it. And a person who’s had more education, who is a little bit older, would have greater cognitive abilities to try to make meaning out of this horrible event.

Another thing scientists know, said Schnurr, is that the more severe the exposure, the greater the risk of PTSD.

Paula Schnurr: One of the more significant findings of this war is how multiple deployments matters. So we’ve had some military personnel who’ve been deployed three, perhaps even four times. These individuals are at particular risk because they’ve essentially experienced more and more severe trauma.

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Paula Schnurr on what scientists know about PTSD