Kevlar for the Mind: Some PTSD treatments have spotty success
Military Times
By Bret A. Moore, Special to Military Times
December 7, 2015
Post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the most complex and troubling psychiatric issues that veterans face. Roughly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan vets are diagnosed with the disorder; veterans of the Persian Gulf and Vietnam wars face comparable rates.Kevlar for the Mind (Photo: Thinkstock/Staff)
Preferred talk therapy treatments for PTSD include cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure. Generally referred to as CPT and PE, these first-line treatments focus on the traumatic event as a way to reduce distress. They are the most studied treatments for service members, and guidelines for behavioral health clinicians in the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments recommend use of these types of treatments for PTSD.
But a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that these trauma-focused therapies may not be as effective as originally touted.
Researchers reviewed three dozen studies of veterans and active-duty troops spanning 35 years. After analyzing data from nearly 900 individuals diagnosed with PTSD who received one-on-one or group therapy, the study revealed two important results: About two-thirds of troops continued to meet criteria for a PTSD diagnosis after “successful” treatment, and one out of four dropped out of the treatment.
read more here
Showing posts with label talk therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label talk therapy. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2015
Oh Gee, "PTSD Treatments Spotty Success" Is News?
There is no cure for PTSD and there is no "one size fits all" treatment. Treatment has to include the whole veteran. Focus on their mind, body and spirit. Leave out the spirit and they cannot take their power back from PTSD. Trauma changes everyone to different degrees and the goal should always be to help them change for the better again. Talk therapy works if it is done right, otherwise, it is pretty useless.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Veterans Charity claims 68% PTSD healed in a week?
Local veteran puts on Gala for Warrior Camp
New Hampshire.com
By MEGHAN PIERCE
Union Leader Correspondent
July 20, 2014
Warrior Camp alum Jennifer Pacanowski of Allentown, Pennsylvania, reads poetry she wrote to express her challenges with PTSD at the 1st annual Warrior Camp Gala in Jaffrey Saturday. Meghan Pierce
JAFFREY — Saturday night’s Warrior Camp Gala at the Shattuck Golf Club raised about $10,000 to support the treatment of active military members and veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Warrior Camp founder Eva J. Usadi of New York City told gala attendees the intensive one-week program was created to save lives. Every day one active military member commits suicide, she said, and the suicide rate is even higher in the veteran population in which 22 veterans commit suicide a day.
Warrior Camp is held a few times a year at Touchstone Farm in Temple. But Usadi is hoping to raise funds to build a full-time facility for Warrior Camp in New York eventually.
There are three components to Warrior Camp, Usadi said: equine assisted psychotherapy, yoga and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy.
PTSD is a physical and biological reaction to trauma that cannot be properly treated through talk therapy and medication, Usadi said.
Because of their approach, Usadi said 68 percent of the participants who arrive at Warrior Camp with chronic PTSD no longer meet that diagnosis by the end of the week.
Graduates of the camp have urged Usadi to add a fourth component to the program: community.
“They train together. They live together and they go to war together in very tightly knit units and some of the people have said we have created that feeling again that nobody has had since they had been discharged,” Usadi said.
read more here
New Hampshire.com
By MEGHAN PIERCE
Union Leader Correspondent
July 20, 2014
Warrior Camp alum Jennifer Pacanowski of Allentown, Pennsylvania, reads poetry she wrote to express her challenges with PTSD at the 1st annual Warrior Camp Gala in Jaffrey Saturday. Meghan Pierce
JAFFREY — Saturday night’s Warrior Camp Gala at the Shattuck Golf Club raised about $10,000 to support the treatment of active military members and veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Warrior Camp founder Eva J. Usadi of New York City told gala attendees the intensive one-week program was created to save lives. Every day one active military member commits suicide, she said, and the suicide rate is even higher in the veteran population in which 22 veterans commit suicide a day.
Warrior Camp is held a few times a year at Touchstone Farm in Temple. But Usadi is hoping to raise funds to build a full-time facility for Warrior Camp in New York eventually.
There are three components to Warrior Camp, Usadi said: equine assisted psychotherapy, yoga and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy.
PTSD is a physical and biological reaction to trauma that cannot be properly treated through talk therapy and medication, Usadi said.
Because of their approach, Usadi said 68 percent of the participants who arrive at Warrior Camp with chronic PTSD no longer meet that diagnosis by the end of the week.
Graduates of the camp have urged Usadi to add a fourth component to the program: community.
“They train together. They live together and they go to war together in very tightly knit units and some of the people have said we have created that feeling again that nobody has had since they had been discharged,” Usadi said.
read more here
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Talk is cheap but works on PTSD
Talk is cheap but works on PTSD
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 11, 2013
Do you want to talk about it? Seems like a terrible question to ask a veteran doing everything possible to stop thinking about it. Kind of like adding garlic salt to a wound to them. This notion is proven to be a fear based on reality when they are expected to just repeat the story they want to forget over and over again yet never finding the closure they need or the end result of making peace with it. Still when it is done right, they actually do heal and on the other side of this dark valley, they come out better.
Now that you read that part, there is scientific proof that healing can and often does take place. What cannot be reversed, they are able to deal with because the worst is behind them.
This can work but only if there is closure so they can live with their memories by seeing it all from a different perspective.
A soldier in Vietnam was on a path with two of his best buddies on each side of him. His boot lace was untied. He stopped to kneel down to tie it. Seconds later a bomb exploded killing both of this buddies instantly sending shrapnel into his body. He blamed himself for their deaths. He believed had he been in between them he would have taken the blast and maybe both his buddies would have survived. What made it worse for him was that he had done a sweep of the path just before they headed out on patrol. That soldier was my husband's nephew. He was just 19 when this happened. He came close to making peace with this but never made it all the way. He committed suicide.
A National Guardsman couldn't escape the memory of a family in Iraq he killed. He had forgotten what he tried to do to prevent it from happening and every time he looked at his own kids, he saw the faces of the children in the back seat of the car he opened fire on. He survived two suicide attempts but he had the right kind of healing, saw the whole thing differently and made peace with himself.
A Marine sitting in the back of a humvee switched seats with his buddy right before the sniper's bullet broke threw the glass. As he held his buddy in his arms, the buddy looked up at him and said "It should have been you" right before he died. They said stupid things to each other all the time but this time, there was no time to apologize.
Now imagine those events having to be told and retold with no closure, no resolve, no peace provided. That is how you do talk therapy the wrong way.
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 11, 2013
Do you want to talk about it? Seems like a terrible question to ask a veteran doing everything possible to stop thinking about it. Kind of like adding garlic salt to a wound to them. This notion is proven to be a fear based on reality when they are expected to just repeat the story they want to forget over and over again yet never finding the closure they need or the end result of making peace with it. Still when it is done right, they actually do heal and on the other side of this dark valley, they come out better.
Talk Therapy Reverses Biological, Structural Brain Changes In PTSD Patients
Medical Daily
By Lecia Bushak
Dec 3, 2013
Seeing a therapist may not only improve mental health, but can also have a positive effect on underlying biological features of mental disorders, a new study suggests.
Scientists in Hungary have published a paper in Biological Psychiatry, with results that show that cognitive behavioral therapy — also known as talk therapy — can reduce psychological symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as the underlying biological changes the disorder causes.
The study, led by the National Institute of Psychiatry and Addictions as well as the University of Szeged in Hungary, analyzed 39 PTSD patients and included a group of 31 people who had experienced trauma but did not develop PTSD. The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to measure certain brain regions and took blood samples to find changes in expression of FKBP5, a gene that plays a role in PTSD and stress hormones. The PTSD patients then received 12 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy, while the other 31 did not receive any therapy. After 12 weeks of therapy, the researchers once again measured brain regions and FKBP5. They found that PTSD patients had lower FKBP5 gene expression, as well as smaller hippocampal and medial orbitofrontal cortex volumes, before talk therapy, which was linked to an improvement in PTSD symptoms.
“The results show that structural changes in the brain, such as the shrinkage of the hippocampus, are reversible in trauma victims,” Dr. Szabolcs Kéri said in a press release. “Talk therapy may help normalize these alterations and improve symptoms. Furthermore, the regeneration of hippocampus correlated with the expression of a gene that balances the activity of the stress hormone cortisol at the level of cells.”
read more here
Now that you read that part, there is scientific proof that healing can and often does take place. What cannot be reversed, they are able to deal with because the worst is behind them.
This can work but only if there is closure so they can live with their memories by seeing it all from a different perspective.
A soldier in Vietnam was on a path with two of his best buddies on each side of him. His boot lace was untied. He stopped to kneel down to tie it. Seconds later a bomb exploded killing both of this buddies instantly sending shrapnel into his body. He blamed himself for their deaths. He believed had he been in between them he would have taken the blast and maybe both his buddies would have survived. What made it worse for him was that he had done a sweep of the path just before they headed out on patrol. That soldier was my husband's nephew. He was just 19 when this happened. He came close to making peace with this but never made it all the way. He committed suicide.
A National Guardsman couldn't escape the memory of a family in Iraq he killed. He had forgotten what he tried to do to prevent it from happening and every time he looked at his own kids, he saw the faces of the children in the back seat of the car he opened fire on. He survived two suicide attempts but he had the right kind of healing, saw the whole thing differently and made peace with himself.
A Marine sitting in the back of a humvee switched seats with his buddy right before the sniper's bullet broke threw the glass. As he held his buddy in his arms, the buddy looked up at him and said "It should have been you" right before he died. They said stupid things to each other all the time but this time, there was no time to apologize.
Now imagine those events having to be told and retold with no closure, no resolve, no peace provided. That is how you do talk therapy the wrong way.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Talk therapy is the most successful treatment for PTSD
Considering Point Man International Ministries has been doing that since 1984 with great results, maybe it is time to stop spending billions a year and start doing what costs very little to do.
Talk therapy is the most successful treatment for PTSD
Walter Reed Psychiatry Department Chief Cites Talk Therapy as Most Successful Treatment for PTSD in Testimony to House Armed Services Subcommittee
Released: 4/24/2013 9:00 AM EDT
Source Newsroom: American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA)
Newswise — NEW YORK, NY (April 24, 2013) – Cmdr. Russell B. Carr, M.D., acting chief of the psychiatry department at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, stated that almost everyone seen at Walter Reed and in clinics throughout the Department of Defense is suicidal. He also estimates that the best PTSD treatments in use today do not work for 30 to 40 percent of patients. Cmdr. Carr runs the adult outpatient mental health clinic at Walter Reed and his statements were part of his testimony given during the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Military Personnel hearing on mental health research on April 10.
Cmdr. Carr stated that although some treatments, such as medication, manage symptoms, it is talk therapy that is most successful in improving PTSD. Cmdr. Carr recommended that talk therapies specifically tailored to combat-related PTSD be developed.
It is the therapeutic relationship between clinician and patient that is the hallmark of talk therapy. This relationship allows the person coming for treatment to feel safe and understood – even while relating experiences that may be too horrific to verbalize anywhere else. Talking helps those in treatment make sense of their experiences and eventually live with them.
read more here
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Too many prescriptions, too little talk for PTSD
Too many prescriptions, too little talk
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Sep 3, 2010 12:10:33 EDT
Army Warrant Officer 1 Judson Mount was taking several medications simultaneously while recovering from severe shrapnel wounds at the Warrior Transition Unit in San Antonio.
The painkiller Tramadol and the antidepressant Zoloft were a high-risk combination, medical experts say, and it required close supervision.
But Mount was dead of an accidental drug overdose in the WTU barracks for two days before anyone found the married father of two.
The former enlisted tank commander who deployed to Iraq twice was found, forgotten and alone, on April 7, 2009, in his room next to several jars of pills. The cause of death was an accidental overdose of Tramadol. The "contributory effects" of the antidepressant "could not be excluded," according to the military autopsy report.
Whatever killed her son, Joyce Mount, a 63-year-old retired bank worker in Tennessee, does not blame the Army.
"It was a person — a pharmacist or a doctor or something - not the Army," said Mount, whose father was a retired Air Force senior master sergeant. "The Army's been good to me. They've been good to all of us. They were here at the funeral. But I feel like somewhere in the system, somebody has failed or messed up."
go here for more
Too many prescriptions, too little talk
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Sep 3, 2010 12:10:33 EDT
Army Warrant Officer 1 Judson Mount was taking several medications simultaneously while recovering from severe shrapnel wounds at the Warrior Transition Unit in San Antonio.
The painkiller Tramadol and the antidepressant Zoloft were a high-risk combination, medical experts say, and it required close supervision.
But Mount was dead of an accidental drug overdose in the WTU barracks for two days before anyone found the married father of two.
The former enlisted tank commander who deployed to Iraq twice was found, forgotten and alone, on April 7, 2009, in his room next to several jars of pills. The cause of death was an accidental overdose of Tramadol. The "contributory effects" of the antidepressant "could not be excluded," according to the military autopsy report.
Whatever killed her son, Joyce Mount, a 63-year-old retired bank worker in Tennessee, does not blame the Army.
"It was a person — a pharmacist or a doctor or something - not the Army," said Mount, whose father was a retired Air Force senior master sergeant. "The Army's been good to me. They've been good to all of us. They were here at the funeral. But I feel like somewhere in the system, somebody has failed or messed up."
go here for more
Too many prescriptions, too little talk
Friday, June 6, 2008
Talking Out Trauma: Not Always a Help. Ok, if you say so
This whole article should have begun with this,,,,
Instead of this
All they need to do is ask the police and firefighters if it works or not. After reading this article, this entire study must have been a huge waste of time. Go there and read it for yourself.
Seery agrees that his study shouldn't discourage anyone from seeking counseling after a trauma, if they believe they will benefit from it. Instead, he stresses that what the new findings do reinforce is that no one should be pressured into therapy against their will either. "The implication of our work is that people handle bad situations differently and we need to accept that reality," Seery says, adding, "There's no single solution that fits everyone."
Instead of this
Talking Out Trauma: Not Always a HelpThursday, Jun. 05, 2008 By KATHLEEN KINGSBURY
Talk it out. That's the first advice most victims are given in the wake of trauma. Conventional wisdom would suggest that burying one's emotions after a violent incident — such as a school shooting or terrorist bombing — will only lead to deeper anxiety later on. Yet, while mental health practitioners widely subscribe to this truism, it has rarely been tested outside a laboratory setting — past studies have found a lack of convincing evidence to support the use of psychological debriefing to mitigate trauma — and some experts think the theory doesn't hold up in every situation.
go here for more
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812204,00.html
All they need to do is ask the police and firefighters if it works or not. After reading this article, this entire study must have been a huge waste of time. Go there and read it for yourself.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
VETERANS CAN HEAL FROM PTSD BY TALKING ABOUT EXPERIENCES
VETERANS CAN HEAL FROM PTSD BY TALKING ABOUT EXPERIENCES
By R. JONATHAN TULEYA, Staff WRITER
CALN — Being the strong, silent type makes a war veteran more likely to suffer the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, psychologist Susan Rogers of the Coatesville VA Medical Center told a group of former prisoners of war Friday.
Rogers’ speech was part of the hospital’s annual Ex-POW Recognition Program. Among the former prisoners of war in the audience, nearly all served in World War II and the Korean War.
“Take the time to tell the stories” of your war experiences, Rogers said. “Be the teacher.”
Beyond helping preserve history, the psychologist said she has found that among those veterans with PTSD who speak about their time in combat, more than three-quarters experience a remission of their symptoms, which can include sleeplessness, phobias, chronic pain and cardiovascular disease.
Meanwhile, different medications have been used with various degrees of success, but she said no one has developed a pill that is a magic bullet.
Rogers has treated veterans with PTSD from every American military action from the ongoing Iraq and Afghan wars back to World War I.
She remembered the lone World
War I vet she treated who told her, “I have a little trouble remembering yesterday, but I remember being gassed in the trenches.”
Doctors do not completely understand why some soldiers suffer from PTSD and others do not. It is likely a mix of biological and cultural influences, Rogers said, but a person’s experience in the combat may be the greatest factor.
She said 15 percent to 30 percent of veterans who participated in front lines of military missions are diagnosed with the disorder.
click post title for the rest
This is supported by every Chaplain in America. It is also supported in every police and fire department across the nation BECAUSE THEY GET TO TALK TO SOMEONE EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY GO THROUGH A TRAUMATIC EVENT~
By R. JONATHAN TULEYA, Staff WRITER
CALN — Being the strong, silent type makes a war veteran more likely to suffer the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, psychologist Susan Rogers of the Coatesville VA Medical Center told a group of former prisoners of war Friday.
Rogers’ speech was part of the hospital’s annual Ex-POW Recognition Program. Among the former prisoners of war in the audience, nearly all served in World War II and the Korean War.
“Take the time to tell the stories” of your war experiences, Rogers said. “Be the teacher.”
Beyond helping preserve history, the psychologist said she has found that among those veterans with PTSD who speak about their time in combat, more than three-quarters experience a remission of their symptoms, which can include sleeplessness, phobias, chronic pain and cardiovascular disease.
Meanwhile, different medications have been used with various degrees of success, but she said no one has developed a pill that is a magic bullet.
Rogers has treated veterans with PTSD from every American military action from the ongoing Iraq and Afghan wars back to World War I.
She remembered the lone World
War I vet she treated who told her, “I have a little trouble remembering yesterday, but I remember being gassed in the trenches.”
Doctors do not completely understand why some soldiers suffer from PTSD and others do not. It is likely a mix of biological and cultural influences, Rogers said, but a person’s experience in the combat may be the greatest factor.
She said 15 percent to 30 percent of veterans who participated in front lines of military missions are diagnosed with the disorder.
click post title for the rest
This is supported by every Chaplain in America. It is also supported in every police and fire department across the nation BECAUSE THEY GET TO TALK TO SOMEONE EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY GO THROUGH A TRAUMATIC EVENT~
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