Study:DOD and VA can't prove PTSD help works,,,,,dah!

THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR

Military and veteran suicides are higher even though billions are spent every year trying to prevent them. After years of research most can be connected to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD has been researched for 40 years yet most of what was known has been forgotten. Families are left blaming themselves for what they were never told. Reporters have failed to research. Congress failed at holding people accountable. The military failed at giving them the help they need. We failed to pay attention.

Well it looks like someone is finally paying attention to this story even though my book came out last year, and my site, well, that's almost 7 years old now. The kicker is, everything had come from news reports and public government reports. The numbers proved the "care" isn't working years ago. No one noticed other than the veterans and their families.

DOD and VA Can't Prove Their PTSD Care is Working, Study Claims
NBC News
BY BILL BRIGGS
2 hours ago

The Defense Department and the VA cannot say if their own doctors are successfully treating hundreds of thousands of troops and veterans with PTSD because neither agency is adequately tracking long-term patient outcomes, the Institute of Medicine said Friday.

Combined, the two departments spend $3.3 billion annually on medications and therapies meant to curb or cure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But physicians at the DoD and Veterans Affairs Department also don’t share with one another information on the medical hits or misses they’ve documented from their differing attempts to ease PTSD symptoms, IOM members claim in a new report.

Those tracking and communications lapses all seem to lead to one question: Do some or most ex-troops with post-combat anxiety eventually get better?

“We are hoping this serves as a clarion call and blueprint to guide where we should be,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, chair of the IOM committee that carried out a Congressionally mandated assessment of PTSD programs at the two departments.

“We found it surprising that no PTSD outcome measures are used consistently to know if these treatments are working or not," added Galea, professor and chair of the department of epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City. "They could be highly effective, but we won't know unless outcomes are tracked and evaluated.”

The IOM, an independent, nonprofit organization, also urged the two agencies to begin collaborating on the health progress of all current and former military members diagnosed with PTSD –- “regardless of where they receive treatment.”
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