Poor PTSD cure rates motivate research, again

Again and again they invest more and more money repeating research already done to death, and I do mean "death" since that has been the result of not paying attention to what has already been learned.

40 years ago there were plenty of excuses for these "trail and errors" because no one knew much at all. 30 years ago experts knew just about as much as they had to learn in order to treat PTSD. The success have been dropped replaced by what was already known to be failures.

Telling them it is their fault is the first problem. This has been the quiet basis of programs like Battlemind when the troops are told they are not mentally tough enough to experience combat so they can train their brains to be tough enough. Whopper of a failure that was with deadly results, they repeated this notion with different names expecting different results. How in the world did they expect any of the servicemen and women to take training and not end up blaming themselves for being hit with PTSD?

Then they further insulted them by saying they were just too sensitive. Way off base on this one when you consider that they are compassionate to the point where the life of someone else matters more to them then their own lives, they act out of courage to save someone no matter what price they may end up paying for doing it. How can you get tougher than that?

Leaving the families out of all of this destroyed families and left the veteran with little support. Giving them the wrong advice made PTSD worse, as a matter of fact, actually spreads PTSD throughout the family, known as "secondary PTSD" and left everyone wounded.

The Greeks use the word "trauma" for wound. It comes after an outside force strikes and does not begin within. It invades like an infection taking over healthy parts of the person and eating away until it reaches the core.

Another massive failure is not using Chaplains for what they do best. They address the spiritual ravages after combat actions. Killing someone leaves regrets no matter how justified. Seeing friends die leaves guilt because they wonder why it was someone else and not them. Ever talk to a soldier after his buddy took over his patrol and was killed? Survivor guilt in overdrive consumes them. When the DOD allowed some Chaplains to spend more time trying to get converts to their own group seeking butts in the pews instead of healed souls, this was another blunder. Telling a soldier they will go to hell if they don't convert is plunging the negativity poison into their soul.

When Vietnam veterans came home, families had no support. These men and women were in Vietnam one day and back home in civilian clothes the next. It was almost as if they had been regarded as simply as someone coming home from an extended vacation. Everyone expected them to just get back to "normal" including the veteran fresh back from combat.

There were no PTSD programs. There were no support groups. The internet had not been invented so families had no way of finding others. Newspapers only seemed interested in reporting on Vietnam veterans getting arrested or shot by police. The 24 hour cable news shows were not around and national news was limited to just 30 minutes. Not much time for telling the general public what was going on and even less of a chance for a Vietnam veteran to find someone else just like them. Most of them lost contact with the people they served with.

By 1978 the Disabled American Veterans commissioned a study showing there were already 500,000 Vietnam veterans with PTSD, over 70 Veterans Centers and way too many sad outcomes. Two reports put the number of suicides between 150,000 and 200,000 but that was only part of the story. We also had way too many arrests with nothing like what we see in Veterans Courts popping up all over the country. There wasn't a network to prevent suicides like we see today either. Families fell apart and there were 300,000 homeless veterans in the 80's and 90's followed by more homeless veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. This proved the simple fact that what worked was forgotten.

Why? Money? Maybe mostly money because the programs that did work didn't cost much at all.

Poor PTSD cure rates motivate research
By Patricia Kime - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Dec 9, 2011 13:48:03 EST
Medications and psychotherapy work for fewer than half the patients diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, an abysmal success rate the Defense Department wants to change within 18 months to two years.

Since 2006, the Army’s Medical Research and Materiel Command has spent $297 million on 162 research programs to dissect PTSD’s causes and find ways to prevent or treat it.

Among the most promising solutions: therapy using virtual reality programs enhanced with sensory input like smells, sounds and vibration to mimic a traumatic event, and the use of FDA-approved medications to enhance sleep and memory processing.

The aim of the research blitz, according to Ronald Hoover of the command’s Military Operational Medicine Research Program, is to create a standard of care with an 80 to 90 percent cure rate.

“We envision a program that combines prolonged exposure therapy, technology and drug therapy,” Hoover told practitioners, doctors and researchers attending the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury Trauma Spectrum Conference in Bethesda, Md., on Friday.
read more here

Point Man International Ministries is one of the forgotten successes.


Iraq veteran talks about coming home with his life like a "train wreck" and how he didn't want to live.

This begins with talking about having the gun in his mouth and how his wife walked in before he pulled the trigger.


It was last year after I had done my presentation during a Point Man conference in Buffalo. I took my camera to the back of the room to video tape the church band. For some odd reason I still haven't figured out, but have some guesses, I kept the camera on when this veteran stood up to talk about his life. As you can tell, it wasn't planned with the shaking camera and poor audio.

After he was done I went over to him during a break, introduced myself and he knew who I was. I told him I filmed him. The color left his face until I assured him he had the choice to make. I could give him the tape, destroy it or put it up on YouTube. Without hesitation he said "get it up on YouTube. I'm tired of losing my men!"

All the members of Point Man Ministries feel the same way. Outpost leaders have been there and done that, expect me. I am an exception simply because of how long I've been doing this and how much I do understand. While they lived with what happens after war comes home inside of them, I know what it is like to have the war invade my family. All of us know the pain and suffering but we also know the healing power available to all of us through faith. We are not selfish and want to share this with everyone so that we stop reading reports about men and women suffering instead of healing, or losing hope when they only need help to get to where we are, or feeling so much pain they reach for a gun instead of reaching for a hand, pick up that gun instead of picking up a phone.

Point Man doesn't cost millions of dollars but it works and has been working since 1984. We also know support groups work, yet again, not expensive, usually lead by volunteers, maybe operating on donations to cover coffee and other refreshments. So why aren't these types of programs supported? Simple. There isn't any money in it for anyone. No huge corporations coming up with research needing lab rats and government funding to the tune of millions a year. We don't have lobbyists rubbing elbows with Congressmen in Washington. The only time we end up in Washington is Memorial Day and a trip Congress is not on the list of events to attend. While we do the best we can to find as many in need as possible, each one of us struggle to get to where we need to be. Most of the time the money comes out of our own pockets or from small donations to help us. One huge problem with having a small financial need is most people figure we just don't need it but it sure could help cover the cost of doing what works vs what is nothing more than pricy failures.

We're going to keep reading reports like the one on Army Times over and over again until the DOD and the VA go back to "lessons already learned" and stop trying to change the past. One more thing already learned is, while no one can changed their past, they can in fact make peace with it if they have the right kind of help to do it.