PTSD
kkrisberg | March 28, 2017Before Patrick Morrison worked for the International Association of Fire Fighters, he was a firefighter himself. He’s experienced the horrifying and profoundly saddening events that first responders see every day. And like many other firefighters, he turned to alcohol to deal with the accumulating mental trauma.
Fortunately, Morrison got help and considers himself “in recovery” today. But many firefighters don’t. In fact, an August 2016 IAFF report noted that even though firefighters experience a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rate that’s similar to soldiers returning from combat, many…
oracknows | July 24, 2016I was originally going to write this post for the 4th of July, given the subject matter. However, as regular readers know, I am not unlike Dug the Dog in the movie Up, with new topics that float past me in my social media and blog reading rounds serving as the squirrel. But never let it be said, though, that I don't circle back to topics that interest med. (Wait, strike that. Sometimes, that actually does happen. After all, I have been at this nearly 12 years now. It just didn't happen this time.) This time around, I will be using documents forwarded to me by a reader as a means of revisiting…
oracknows | July 1, 2016There are so many ridiculous alternative medicine treatments being “integrated” via “integrative” medicine into medicine, no matter how ridiculous they are, that it’s not only hard to believe, but it’s hard to keep track. Homeopathy is, of course, the most ridiculous, although “energy medicine” definitely gives homeopathy a run for its money in the Department of Stupid. The depressing thing is that most physicians, even “integrative medicine” physicians, know that homeopathy is bunk (at least when they even know what homeopathy is—most think it’s just herbal medicine). However, those same…
kkrisberg | July 31, 2015Superstorm Sandy came ashore nearly three years ago, pummeling the New England and Mid-Atlantic coast and becoming one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever hit the U.S. This week, the Sandy Child and Family Health Study released two new reports finding that the health impacts of Sandy continue to linger, illustrating the deep mental footprint left by catastrophic disasters and the challenges of long-term recovery.
Led by researchers at Rutgers University and New York University, the Sandy Child and Family Health Study is based on 1,000 face-to-face interviews with adults in the nine…
cmonforton | July 3, 2013Is it unpatriotic to dread the Fourth of July? I wonder if some U.S. veterans do, in fact dread Independence Day because of the bottle rockets, shot missiles and other fireworks set off to mark the occasion.
NBC News contributor Bill Briggs wrote last year about Iraq War veteran Pete Chinnici, 26, who is "yanked backward in time to an unfriendly, unpredictable, violent land," when neighborhood kids play with firecrackers. Briggs quotes Dr. John Hart of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas:
“Fireworks hit right in the heart of these causes [PTSD triggers.] Here’s…
lborkowski | November 12, 2012It's fitting that the US dedicates a day each year to honoring veterans, but ensuring that veterans get the care and services they merit is year-round work. In recent years, we've seen the federal government increase recognition of, and resources for, the mental health conditions that many veterans suffer from. Yet, as US Representative and combat veteran Charlie Rangel points out in a USA Today column, we haven't done enough:
In the United States, suicide has become the seventh leading cause of death for men and the fifteenth for women. Every year, there are nearly a million suicide attempts…
lborkowski | December 19, 2011J. Freedom du Lac reports in the Washington Post that Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman, killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on November 14th, was the 4,474th US servicemember to be killed in Iraq. With all the US troops now gone from Iraq, Hickman's death may well be the last servicemember fatality directly attributed to this conflict. The number of Iraqi deaths is much higher and much less precise; the Iraq Body Count website puts it between 104,122 and 113,700. And as a 2009 American Public Health Association policy statement points out, the consequences are greater than death alone. Here'…
lborkowski | May 30, 2011This Memorial Day, I haven't just been thinking of those who died in combat, but also of those who've died because of combat. This morning's NPR story about 23-year-old Ivan Lopez, who struggled with PTSD after returning home and then became the 14th Pennsylvania Guardsman since 2003 to die by his own hand, is just one reminder of the brutal cost of war.
lborkowski | November 11, 2010While Veterans Day is an opportunity to thank veterans for their service, it should also be a time to consider how well we're doing at taking care of veterans who've suffered physical or mental damage as a result of their service.
Our country wasn't sufficiently prepared to handle the toll that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan would take on our servicemembers. We can be grateful that battlefield medicine has improved, and that those like Marine Cpl. Todd Nicely can survive severe injuries (requiring a quadruple amputation in his case) and get advanced prosthetic limbs and extensive…
ddobbs | February 1, 2010PTSD, pharma, adjuvants, bad movies -- these are a few of my favorite things, and readers' too.
What's Neil doing here? He wasn't on Neuron Culture; I posted his clip on my catch-all, David Dobbs's Somatic Marker, because I love him. So he comes first. From 1986. Looks as if he's having a particularly good time here.
Neuron Culture's Top Five from Jan 2010
NEJM study finds post-event morphine cuts combat PTSD rates in half
"This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials. One caveat I've not had time to check out is whether the morphine was often applied as part of an more…
ddobbs | January 29, 2010Hits of the week:
Savage Minds (with a spiffy website redesign) asks Why is there no Anthropology Journalism?
Jerry Coyne takes sharp exception to both a paper and a SciAm Mind Matters article by Paul Andrews and Andy Thomson arguing that depression might be an evolutionary adaptation. Dr. Pangloss punches back. (NB: 1. I was founding editor of Mind Matters, but no longer edit it, did not edit the Andrews/Thomson piece, and don't know any of these people. 2. While my recent Atlantic article presented an argument for how a gene associated with depression (the so-called SERT gene) might be…
ddobbs | January 14, 2010
This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials. One caveat I've not had time to check out is whether the morphine was often applied as part of an more robust medical response in general, which itself might reduce later PTSD symptoms. I hope the DOD soon follows up with another, larger study, for as Ben Carey notes, the has some substantial implications if indeed it holds up.
via nytimes.com:
In the new study, researchers at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego reviewed detailed medical records of 696 troops who had been wounded in Iraq between 2004 and 2006, determining…
ddobbs | December 18, 2009
A nice short piece on "The Prehistory of Stress" by Matt Ford at Ars Technica (newly designed site worth checking out).
I have heard people say, on multiple occasions, that they think stress is a modern, Western phenomenon. While the psychological phenomenon known as stress has only had a formal name for just over 80 years, knowing when it was first suffered by our ancestors is a daunting task. Was life really better in the past? Is stress an entirely modern phenomenon?
Using modern forensic technology and a decidedly modern understanding of biochemistry, researchers from The University of…
ddobbs | December 7, 20091. Maybe it was just the headline ... but the runaway winner was "No pity party, no macho man." Psychologist Dave Grossman on surviving killing. Actually I think it was the remarkable photo, which looks like a painting. Check it out.
2. I'm not vulnerable, just especially plastic. Risk genes, environment, and evolution, in the Atlantic. The blog post about the article that led to the book.
3. Senator Asks Pentagon To Review Antidepressants
4. Gorgeous thing of the day: Sky's-eye view of the Maldives & other islands
5. The Weird History of Vaccine Adjuvants, even though it was from Oct 1…
ddobbs | November 12, 2009
Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, has asked the Pentagon for info on how many troops in war zones have been prescribed antidepressants while they were deployed. Cardin sent a letter Tuesday to US Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressing concern about how antidepressants are being administered troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cardin wants to determine if the Defense Department is prescribing antidepressants appropriately and is concerned about any connection between the meds and suicide rates among troops. In October, for instance, 16 active-duty US soldiers killed themselves,…
ddobbs | November 5, 2009
Preston Gannaway, The Virginian-Pilot
When I did my story on the overextension of the PTSD diagnosis in vets (and elsewhere), I found Grossman's take on the psychic toll of killing (and almost being killed) among the most compelling. His "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society" is a unique and uniquely valuable contribution. Below, part of a story on a recent presentation Grossman (pictured above) gave at a recent Pentagon-sponsored conference on building resilience in warriors.
Dave Grossman puts humans into three categories: Ninety-eight percent are "…
ddobbs | October 5, 2009Never know what'll top the charts. Top post was a post I put up in January, "Pfizer takes $2.3 billion offl-label marketing fine." That post reported the news (via FiercePharma) that Pfizer had tucked away in its financial disclosure forms a $2.3 billion charge to end the federal investigation into allegations of off-label promotions of its Cox-2 painkillers, including Bextra. (Lot of money ... but it didn't quite wipe out the company's 2008 net income.) The company had set aside the money as part of a deal it was negotiating Justiice. Finalizing the deal, however, took until September. At…
ddobbs | September 15, 2009OK. Animals first, then everybody else.
(Other) Animals
Want Your Own Dinosaur? Place Your Bids
Jellyfish numbers rise My son and I saw this last year when we were at the EuroScience conference (highly recomennded) in Barcelona (ditto). The beaches had warnings of whole rafts of these. Determined to get wet in the Med, I dipped my toes.
Forget Apple, Here's the Real Snow Leopard
Everybody else
Top soldiers denounce torture.
Earlier Model of Human Brain's Energy Usage Underestimated Its Efficiency Covered heavily, but maybe you missed it.
Alison Bass, whose book "Side Effects" just…
ddobbs | September 1, 2009After a rather intense two months of long-form work, I'm so far behind on blogging I don't know where to start. Forget the last two months and move on? Probably the best move. But beforehand, I want to note a few developments along major lines of interest. I'll start with PTSD.
Amid the stagnation on combat PTSD, the summer brought news of new programs from the UK and US militaries aimed to answer the call for more effective treatment for rising rates reported in vets of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mind Hacks was one of several blogs to report and comment on a new Royal Marine program…
ddobbs | August 2, 2009
I just finished reading Erica Goode's Times story on the suicides of four soldiers who served together in a small North Carolina-based Guard unit in Iraq from 2006 to spring 2007. This is a witheringly painful story. Goode, who has done quite a bit of science writing as well as substantial reporting from Baghdad, tells it with an unusual freshness of perspective and clarity of vision.
She starts where I suppose she must:
On Dec. 9, 2007, Sergeant Blaylock, heavily intoxicated, lifted a 9-millimeter handgun to his head during an argument with his girlfriend and pulled the trigger. He was 26…