Not so new peer support partners heroes with proper treatment

Saving our soldiers: New technology matches heroes suffering from psychiatric disorders with proper treatment
FoxNews.com
Published August 22, 2013

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This is not "new" and it has been working for almost 40 years. Point Man International Ministries started working with veterans and their families back in 1984 because a Seattle police officer was tried of arresting Vietnam veterans. The biggest problem we have going on today is that aside from brain scans, nothing new has been learned on what combat does to veterans and their families.

"PMIM is run by veterans from all conflicts, nationalities and backgrounds. Although, the primary focus of Point Man has always been to offer spiritual healing from PTSD, Point Man today is involved in group meetings, publishing, hospital visits, conferences, supplying speakers for churches and veteran groups, welcome home projects and community support."

It’s like Match.com for soldiers returning home from war.

But instead of pairing them with a mate, new technology called PEER Interactive is helping doctors match heroes suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) with the proper treatment.

“It's one of the biggest emerging public health issues we've got,” George Carpenter, CEO of CNS Response, the California neuroscience company behind PEER Interactive told FoxNews.com. “They're now estimating that about a million soldiers of the 2.5 million that were in Afghanistan or Iraq will develop depression, PTSD, or blast injury.”

Every year, there are 38,000 suicides in the United States alone. And 2012 saw more casualties among American troops as a result of suicide than in combat, with 349 soldiers taking their own lives.

“None of these kids in basic training were ever told that…the person most likely to kill you, is yourself,” Carpenter said. “There's no test in this area, unlike every other part of medicine. There's blood tests, X-rays, bone scans, (but) for psychiatry, diseases of the brain, there really isn't any test that says which medication you'll respond to.”

Research shows that 60 percent of the time, medications prescribed to for conditions like depression, PTSD and anxiety don’t work for the patients taking them.