Secondary PTSD over diagnosed?

Considering I met my husband way back in 1982, you may be shocked to hear I agree with this study. Why? It is not that I do not believe there is such a thing as "secondary PTSD" since I know what it is like to live with a veteran with PTSD, but it is more I believe the spouses have been able to avoid it by understanding what it is and their role in all of this.

Do wives end up with paying the price for their husbands' service? You bet they do. It isn't just the stress of deployments they are under or the constant worry of the strange car in the driveway, but it is more of a case of basically watching them die inside. The family of a PTSD veteran has to walk on eggshells, never knowing what will set off a situation. Even something as simple as walking up a husband in the middle of a nightmare can produce a black eye or bloody nose if it is not done right. There is constant stress until they begin to heal. By that time, most wives have figured out what works and what doesn't. Now, we can hang onto anger and hurt feelings and allow them to eat away whatever happiness we should have, or we can understand it enough to be able to forgive and find our own kind of normal to live a happier life together.

Keep in mind this does take two to do it. There are many spouses actually being abused, physically and emotionally. If they have no clue what's going on, it is like living in hell. The kids pay the price as well. Emotional roller coasters are not much fun at all for anyone even if there isn't any kind of abuse.

Living with PTSD can be depressing to the point where we don't eat, don't sleep and some will stop doing things they enjoyed. We go to work, hear other wives complain about stupid silly things and we wish we had their problems instead of facing what we will go home to. I remember those darks days well but maybe I'm one of the lucky ones since I knew all along what PTSD was and what it was doing to my husband.

Over the years I've met a lot of other wives with stories worse than what I had been through and many of them ended up having to bury their husband because of suicides no one wanted to talk about at the time. Support was no where to be found for them, so they had to do it on their own. When I say older wives had nothing, consider the Internet was not around until the 90's.

Today a spouse, female or male, has the ability to find a lot of support out there and a means to heal the family.

I went to see a psychologist even knowing what I knew because the stress caused me to actually feel angry. I'm the type of person slow to anger, and if I get angry, I blow then get over it. I was at a point where I couldn't let go of it. I saw a psychologist for several months fully aware of what PTSD was and talking to her because she understood helped me more than anything else could at the time. I strongly suggest that to avoid "secondary PTSD" a spouse needs to find a support group with people knowing what life is like for her/him.

If this turns out to be a story with a twist and it is under-diagnosed as later suggested in this article, then the need to have support for the spouse can no longer be dismissed.

When none of us get the support and help we need to heal from combat, it all goes beyond our front door and will carry on for generations.

Study: Secondary PTSD Overdiagnosed
May 31, 2011
Military.com|by Amy Bushatz

More than half of military spouses who think they are suffering from secondary PTSD symptoms may have been misdiagnosed, a new study finds.

"A lot of times, people see a spouse that's distressed and say it's secondary PTSD," said Keith Renshaw, a psychology professor at George Mason University who authored the study. "There's kind of an over-assumption that this is prevalent, and that anything and everything that comes up for a spouse is due to that."

Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder has become a common catch-all label in the military community for the intense stress many spouses feel while living with a veteran suffering from PTSD. Unlike caretaker stress or stress from traumatic events in their own lives, secondary PTSD has sudden, specific characteristics including vivid dreams about the servicemember's traumatic event or avoiding reminders of that event, Renshaw said.

The study, due for release this fall, found that up to 41 percent of the 190 spouses it surveyed had symptoms similar to those linked with secondary PTSD. But when questioned further, only about 15 percent of respondents pointed to their husbands' military experience as the sole cause for their stress -- a key trait of secondary PTSD.

The popularity of the term "secondary PTSD" may have been caused by the desire among spouses to give a name to the feelings they are experiencing, Renshaw said. But without mental health expertise to sort through their issues, spouses can easily misidentify their symptoms -- a mistake that may lead to improper treatment, he said.

read more here
Secondary PTSD Overdiagnosed

$50 million dollar waste for what the Army should already know

Consider this. The Army already knows about repeat deployments and the increased risk of PTSD plus PTSD increases the risk of suicide. They did it anyway. Then add in that PTSD has been studied to death since the 70's. Do you really think for a second they will find something new? Do you really think this money will end up being more wasted money finding the same answers? I do. Most of these well funded studies usually find what has already been discovered 30 years ago. Since humans don't change, they would be a lot better off if they just looked at all the data already there to find out why we are where we are. The rate they're going, you can't get there from here!

Army to fund universities’ suicide study

The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jul 16, 2009 16:25:04 EDT

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The University of Michigan and three other universities are launching a $50 million Army-funded study to find out why soldiers kill themselves or become mentally ill.

Columbia University, Harvard University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., also are part of the consortium conducting the five-year study.

The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research says in announcing the study Thursday that it’s the largest to date of suicide and mental health in the military.

Study co-leader Steven Heeringa at Michigan says the goal is to find out risk and protection factors for suicide and mental illness. He says the school will survey 90,000 active Army personnel.
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/07/ap_army_suicide_study_071609/

PTSD study shows little chiropractic relief for PTSD veterans

Chiropractic in Military Medicine


June 19, 2009 — Chiropractic services are offered at several United States military bases and veterans healthcare locations; however some healthcare providers are not aware that chiropractic services are available or when to refer patients for chiropractic care.

An article in the June 2009 issue of the journal Military Medicine addresses these issues in an effort to increase awareness and improve interdisciplinary collaboration. The article titled “Chiropractic in US military and veterans’ health care” by Drs. Bart Green, Claire Johnson, and Anthony Lisi provides a brief overview of chiropractic services and helps to inform readers and healthcare providers who may be unfamiliar with how chiropractic services are utilized within the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare environments.

This study found that patients with post-traumatic stress disorder had significantly lower levels of improvement than those without post-traumatic stress disorder on self-reported outcome measures of neck and low back disability.
go here for more
Chiropractic in Military Medicine

PTSD? Why wait until it's too late?

PTSD? Why wait until it's too late?

by Chaplain Kathie

While it is never too late to seek help for PTSD, the damage being done to you and your life goes on until you do. Much like an infection stops getting worse with proper treatment, so does PTSD.

We have the Vietnam veterans as living proof PTSD is not the end of your ability to live a life worth living, achieving goals, having a successful family life, career and yes, even be happy. Consider the fact that these men and women did not receive treatment or therapy until 10, 20 or even 30 years after they came home. Some still have not sought treatment, and sadly so.

As the years ticked away between combat and therapy, the damage was being compounded by living their lives. PTSD got worse with more stress and their lives got worse because of PTSD. Marriages fell apart. Jobs were lost. Overall health was worsened. Back then, there were plenty of excuses to not receive help. The biggest one was that there wasn't any help available until the Vietnam veterans fought for it.

Now there is the excuse of an overwhelmed VA but that is being addressed. There are other ways of getting help from groups all over the nation offering to help veterans and support groups in many areas of the country but above all, support groups online. There are groups for the spouses as well.

This is just part of what is going on for PTSD

CTU-Online, the Clinician's Trauma Update, is an electronic newsletter produced by the VA National Center for PTSD. CTU-Online provides summaries of clinically relevant publications in the trauma field withlinks to published abstracts or full text articles when available.

For COMPLETE summaries, see this CTU-Online in html format on ourwebsite:

VA National Center for PTSD

Telehealth Promises and pitfalls in telehealth care for PTSD: Three recent papers illustrate the ways in which telehealth can be used to improve the care of people with PTSD. Methods such as video and computer-assisted delivery are being applied to clinical assessment and treatment. For theVA, increased use of these strategies promises evidence-based assessment and treatment for Veterans for whom distance from specialists remains abarrier to care. These new studies provide preliminary support forteleheath as a viable approach to care and offer information about limitations that need to be addressed in order to promote more widespread use of telehealth in clinical care.

Abstract
Telehealth, or health care via video conferencing, constitutes a clinical option that makes it possible to treat patients remotely. A growing number of studies have demonstrated that telehealth is a feasible and effective method for diagnostic interviews and psychiatric consultations. However, few studies have assessed the effectiveness of psychotherapy given by videoconference. This study examines the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) administered by video conference for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Forty-eight participants with PTSD were recruited for the study: 16 in the video conferencing condition and 32 in a control face-to-face condition. Each participant received CBT for 16 to 25 weeks and completed various questionnaires before and after treatment. The results show a significant decline in the frequency and severity of posttraumatic symptoms after treatment in both conditions. A clinical improvement in overall functioning was also observed. No significant difference was observed in the effectiveness of the two therapeutic conditions. The examination of effect sizes supports these results. A number of clinical implications and certain avenues for future research are discussed.

To find the help you need all you have to do is Google it! Is it that hard? So why are you still hear reading this when you could be starting to heal?

Brain Shock. Is it PTSD, TBI or both?

Brain shock: The new Gulf War syndrome
22 April 2009 by Michael Bond

ONE look at the effects of a bomb blast suggests that you'd have to be extremely lucky to emerge from one unscathed. If you were not burned by the explosion or blasted by shrapnel, the chances are you'd be hit by the shock wave. Travelling at several hundred metres per second, this causes massive fluctuations in air pressure which can knock you unconscious, rupture air-filled organs such as eardrums, lungs and bowels, and stretch and distort other major organs.

Soldiers serving with coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq know only too well how devastating bombs can be. The effect of shrapnel on bodies - amputated limbs, broken bones, lacerated and burned flesh - is plain enough. Less obvious and harder to understand are the long-term effects of the shock wave on the brain.

Weeks, months, or sometimes years after being concussed in an explosion, thousands of soldiers are reporting a mysterious clutch of problems. Dubbed post-concussion syndrome (PCS), symptoms include memory loss, dizziness, headaches, unexplained pains, nausea, disturbance of sleep, inability to concentrate and emotional problems.

The US military and veterans' groups see PCS as a growing problem, and the US government is pouring millions of dollars into investigating it. Some doctors, however, particularly in the UK, believe that for many patients the symptoms ascribed to PCS are not caused by concussion at all, but by the shock and stress of wartime events. It may even be getting mixed up with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an acknowledged psychological reaction to disturbing events. "Some people are saying it's a hideous mistake and that we're talking up a problem," says Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist and director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research at King's College London.

Simple concussion from a blow to the head is not a new problem, of course. Common causes are falls, car accidents or sports such as rugby and football. It can lead to a brief loss of consciousness, amnesia or confusion. Although longer-lasting symptoms are occasionally reported, sufferers usually recover within days or weeks.

Battlefield explosions are nothing new either. For soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the biggest threats they face is from roadside bombs, often improvised from cast-off artillery shells or other weapons. While more soldiers than ever are surviving such blasts, thanks to better body and vehicle armour, they are often left with concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) as it is usually termed in this context.

The other two papers are perhaps more significant as they involve large epidemiological studies in soldiers, rather than civilians, and looked at symptoms over the long term. Both research teams concluded that persistent cognitive problems after an mTBI were in most cases due to psychological causes such as depression and PTSD.

In the first study, researchers questioned more than 2500 US infantry soldiers three to four months after they returned from a year-long tour of duty in Iraq, asking them about their combat experience, any injuries they had suffered and any persistent symptoms. Around 15 per cent of them had suffered an mTBI, and these soldiers had significantly more mental and physical problems than those with other injuries (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 358, p 453). Charles Hoge at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, who led the study, thinks the primary cause of their ill health was probably not concussion but "exposure to a very intense traumatic event that significantly increases the risk of PTSD".

Hoge reasons that PTSD is a more likely cause than mTBI, having many common symptoms. In addition, the psychological symptoms of PTSD persist, while the effects of concussion usually disappear quickly. "When a soldier gets concussed as a result of a blast on the battlefield, that is clearly a close call," says Hoge. "Such traumatic events can set up a cascade of neurochemical events that happen with PTSD, and that can lead to a host of symptoms."
go here for more
Brain shock: The new Gulf War syndrome

Study may show how PTSD changes the brain

Study may show how PTSD changes the brain
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 24, 2009 16:00:35 EDT

A new study shows that brain circuitry may actually change for people diagnosed with post traumatic stress symptoms, according to researchers from Duke University and the Durham, N.C., Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Beyond the symptoms most-associated with PTSD — nightmares, flashbacks and hyper-awareness — combat troops also often suffer from an inability to think clearly or remember things well, which makes performing basic daily tasks difficult. While these same symptoms have been connected to traumatic brain injuries as a result of amnesia and short-term memory loss, some researchers began to wonder if service members’ brains had reorganized themselves to respond immediately to potentially dangerous information. According to the study, printed in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging journal, all of a person’s attention goes to an immediate, life-or-death situation, rather than letting other information filter in.

click link for more

PTSD and TBI getting $300 million worth of study

Pentagon spends $300M to study troops' stress, trauma
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
The Pentagon is spending an unprecedented $300 million this summer on research for post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, offering hope not only for troops but hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The money — the most spent in one year on military medical research since a $210 million breast cancer study in 1993 — will fund 171 research projects on two of the most prevalent injuries of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Gregory O'Shanick, national medical director for the Brain Injury Association of America, says the funding initiative is "without a doubt … an all-time high" for spending by the government on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). He says civilian victims will benefit directly from the military studies.

By contrast, the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest government sponsor of medical research with an annual budget of $28 billion, spends about $80 million per year on TBI research, according to the NIH.

The Pentagon also will target new ways of delivering therapy to PTSD victims living in remote areas of the USA and reducing the stigma that can keep victims from seeking help, she says.

The military funding will go toward evaluating up to 20 different medications for TBI, she says, and studying ways of regenerating damaged brain cells.

Half of the $300 million in Pentagon funds have been distributed, and all will be paid out by Sept. 30, Kaime says.

Congress has provided an additional $273.8 million this year to study battlefield injuries, some of which will also go toward researching PTSD and TBI.

A study released in April by the RAND Corp. think tank estimates 300,000 current or former combat troops have PTSD or depression, and up to 320,000 may have suffered a brain injury.

"We're in the midst of an exciting era for those who have been damaged," says Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force.

NYC Columbia University PTSD study wants you

Columbia University in NYC now recruiting PTSD patients for study of serotonin & stress system interactions

ImmuneSupport.com

11-26-2007
This study, to be conducted at Columbia's Neuroscience Clinic for Mood and Personality Disorders in New York City, will involve brain imaging/analysis, and compensation will include up to 6 months of outpatient treatment.

STUDY TITLE:
PTSD: Serotonin & Stress System Interactions
Please refer to this study by Identifier # 4344
Principal Investigator: Gregory Sullivan


For More Information Contact:
Brendan Carroll; bc2234@columbia.edu
phone 212 543-5902


PURPOSE & DETAILS
This is a brain imaging research study of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with and without depression.

Eligible participants receive two brain positron emission tomography (PET) scans on one day which assess the amounts of two proteins of the brain’s serotonin system in various brain regions.

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan is also obtained, and there are interviews and rating scales that are part of the study.

Participants also receive a test of the stress system known as the low dose dexamethasone test.
Up to 6 months of outpatient treatment is offered to participants in the study at no cost.

Also, participants may be compensated $350 for time and inconvenience. For info call 212 543-5902
go here for the rest
http://www.immunesupport.com/library/showarticle.cfm/ID/8533