PTSD Veterans Twice As Likely to Be Dissatisfied About Sex Life

Veterans With PTSD More Likely To Report
Dissatisfaction With Sex Life, Women Often Have Less Sex
Medical Daily
By Ed Cara
Jun 7, 2016

“In both genders, a diagnosis of PTSD was associated with decreased sexual satisfaction, independent of medications used to treat PTSD, such as opioids and SSRIs,” they concluded.

Veterans who return home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may also struggle with their sex lives, suggests a recent study published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress.

The researchers examined data taken from a long-running cohort study of warzone veterans called the Veterans After-Discharge Longitudinal Registry, or VALOR. They then compared 987 veterans with PTSD to 594 veterans without the condition. Those with the disorder were nearly twice as likely to feel dissatisfied about their sex lives as well as more likely to report sexual dysfunction than those without. And while men in both groups were about equally likely to report being sexually active, women with PTSD were less likely to report having sex in the past three months than their counterparts.
read more here

Combat PTSD Brings Sexual Disfunction Triple Risk

Young vets: Trouble in the bedroom
PTSD, meds make post-9/11 veterans prone to sex, intimacy problems
UT San Diego
By Jeanette Steele
OCT. 11, 2014

Among people with combat stress — officially known as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD — the risk of sexual dysfunction is threefold.

Donald Urbany should have had it great.

After surviving a car bomb in Iraq, the soldier met a beautiful woman and married her. His wife, Jennifer, didn’t mind his visible war wounds — such as a damaged right eye and scars spidering down his cheek.

But life wasn’t great in the bedroom. Jennifer Urbany could barely get her husband to touch her. The problem got worse after he received a medical retirement in 2007 for his wounds, which included traumatic brain injury.

“She could have been naked and walking across the street, and I’d just be playing video games,” Donald Urbany said.

The combination of physical wounds, emotional trauma and a sometimes full battery of medications is taking a toll on the sex lives of America’s youngest generation of military veterans.

The topic is blush-inducing, to be sure. But some post-9/11 veterans received frank talk on the subject at a conference for combat veterans in Coronado last week.
read more here

Viagra for PTSD veterans leave women alone

Viagra for vets costs surge on war disorders
Washington Post
By Kathleen Miller
Published: January 13

The Department of Veterans Affairs has almost tripled spending on erectile-dysfunction drugs in the past six years as war-related psychological disorders contribute to sexual difficulties.

The VA spent $71.7 million on drugs including Pfizer’s Viagra and Bayer’s Levitra in the year ended Sept. 30, up from about $27.1 million in fiscal 2006, records show.

The surge in drug spending reflects the number of troops returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, said Jason Hansman, senior program manager for health and mental-health programs at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a New York-based nonprofit group. Both conditions can limit sexual functioning, he said.

"More than 250,000 of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans sought care for potential PTSD from October 2001 through June 2012 at VA facilities, according to a departmental report posted online."

The VA needs to do more to ensure female veterans receive equal treatment for sexual dysfunction, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said.

“Many of the issues around female sexual dysfunction are largely unrecognized, and it’s difficult to get assistance,’’ Pingree said.
read more here

The private scars of war

TOM WALLACE, Star Tribune

Maj. Eduardo Suarez, who has been married for 18 years to his wife, Jennifer, has done two tours in Iraq with the Minnesota Guard.

The private scars of war
Injured troops return home to deal not only with physical and mental wounds but also with problems in the bedroom.

By GAIL ROSENBLUM, Star Tribune

Last update: August 22, 2008 - 11:32 PM

Mike Mills didn't look in a mirror for two months after a land mine blew him out of his truck near Kirkuk, Iraq, in June 2005, cracking his clavicle, shattering his hip "like a jigsaw puzzle" and burning off half of his face. When he did, only one word came to him: "Freak."

Recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Mills worried about his two kids in Freeport, Minn. He worried about making a living. Mostly, he worried about Suhanna -- Suki -- his wife of nearly 20 years, who would surely leave him.

"How can I expect her to stay with me anymore?" said Mills, 43, a member of the Minnesota Army National Guard for 18 years. "She's not going to want to be intimate with a freak. Elephant Man. That's the way I saw myself."

Suki, 43, didn't leave.

"I'm too old to train in another one," she joked.
click post title for more

I think that is being said in almost every house with a veteran in it. When my daughter was getting ready to go away to college a few years ago, she thought my husband and I would get a divorce. I told her after all these years, I'm too old to train a new one. When they come home wounded, marriages are hard. Marriages are hard as it is but when they are dealing with either wounds of the body or the mind, it takes looking deep inside at what really matters to us. Some of us can't stay. We're just not built with that kind of sacrifice inside of us. Others, well, leaving would be the hardest thing to do. Click above to read the rest of this and know what a lot of us go through. Doesn't matter that we come from different wars, in the end, the results are the same.

PTSD and body wounds, wound sexual intimacy

Is sex over? Badly hurt vets and sexual intimacy
By KIMBERLY HEFLING – 3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — When B.J. Jackson lost both his legs to an Iraq war injury, his doctors talked about a lot of things, but they didn't mention how it might affect his sex life.

Jackson's less-bashful wife brought it up. But even then the couple didn't get the answers they sought.

Jackson and his wife, Abby, say it's time to get the issue out in the open in both military medical settings and at home. And they got a lot of agreement at a conference Wednesday, billed as the first of its kind, that focused on wounded troops and intimacy with their partners — in the bedroom and outside it.

This is no minor matter.

About 3,000 of the troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered major physical impairment, said former Sen. Bob Dole, who served last year on a presidential commission that examined the treatment of wounded war veterans. Dole, who lost full use of his right arm to a combat injury during World War II, was among the speakers at the conference.

Vets who have lost a quality-of-life function, such as sexual ability, should be given quality-of-life compensation in addition to other payment, he said, because the magnitude of their disabilities will fully sink in as they age.

It's serious at any age, suggested Mitchell S. Tepper, assistant project director at the Center of Excellence for Sexual Health at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, which organized the conference.

Tepper said badly injured patients are extremely interested in the subject, even if they're shy about asking. He said studies of the general population of people with spinal cord injuries find that some rank the desire to have sex above the ability to walk again.

Healthy intimate relationships add meaning to life and can aid in recovery from other injuries, he said. And the loss of a relationship can be detrimental, even a factor in suicide.

As for injured troops, keeping feelings bottled up can be a problem for any couple, said Jackson, who is 26.

"My feeling is the sooner it's discussed and the more it's discussed, the more chance of having less arguments, less confusion, less frustration," he said in an interview. "The more you communicate among yourselves the better off you'll be, instead of well, 'I'm mad, so I'm just going to roll over.'"

The Jacksons' appearance Wednesday underscored the painful aftermath of war and stood as a stark reminder this Memorial Day of the sacrifices borne by many soldiers, veterans and their families. More than 30,000 troops have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than half of them 24 and under at the time.

Said Dole: "Most of us go through this transition from able-bodied to disabled, and it's tough. And I worry about these young men and women ... who are 17, 18, 19, because I don't think it's really going to hit them until they're 20, 25, 30 years of age."

For the injured, questions of self-worth and a fear of rejection because of physical or other changes they've undergone can form barriers in their relationships.

Tepper said doctors often aren't bringing up sex, but patients aren't always asking about it either.

"There's this gap where the doctors know that it's an issue, but don't feel they're prepared or if it's appropriate to ask about it," Tepper said. "Patients, it's on their mind but they're not talking about it. They're afraid."

Experts say issues of sexual intimacy don't affect just the relationships of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with physical wounds, but also those who come home with mental health problems.

A recent Rand Corp. study estimated that about 300,000 of the 1.6 million troops who have served in the recent wars have symptoms of major depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. About one in five said they might have experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed.

Psychological and neurological disorders can interfere with behaviors necessary for successful intimacy, such as experiencing and expressing emotion and understanding someone else's needs, the study noted. And anger and aggression, including domestic violence, have been associated with mental disorders.
click post title for more

YEP!