Tag: PTSD

From Massive: Increasing evidence suggests that psychedelics may revolutionize mental health care. In order for this "psychedelic renaissance" to last, scientists and citizens will need...

From Yahoo! Finance: The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has passed a major hurdle on the path to getting MDMA approved for medical use....

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Writing Therapy both reduce PTSD symptoms in children who experienced a single traumatic event.

From The Daily Beast: A newly released Government Accountability Office report found that 62 percent of military servicemembers who were discharged for misconduct between 2011...

Veterans diagnosed with PTSD and taking SSRIs, novel antidepressants, or atypical antipsychotics are more likely to develop dementia.

From Healio: A recent review indicated that virtual reality-based treatment may be effective for a variety of mental health concerns including phobias, social anxiety, PTSD,...

From Scientific American: Last year, a study at the University of Colorado Boulder found that injecting mice with beneficial bacteria helped increase their resilience and decrease...

From VolteFace Magazine: MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can play a major role in helping people heal from the effects of trauma. "The results really are incredible and I’ve had...

I’ve seen people put more research into how to cook a turkey at Christmas time than previous psychiatrists did for my health. From the DSM to the prescription pad, if it wasn’t there, it didn’t exist. It’s a very cut-and-dry, mix-and-match method to modern medicine that has harmed millions of people, and it nearly killed me.

Last week, the FDA gave permission for ecstasy to move into Phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of PTSD. “If they can keep...

Abbie Hausermann, MSW, LICSW, discusses why ecotherapy works for former service members. “The aim of these ecotherapy programs and services is to connect veterans...

Researchers found that Transcendental Meditation could significantly decrease anxiety and depression, among others symptoms.

Last week, U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the Veterans Overmedication Prevention Act in the House of Representatives to prevent the overmedication of veterans and combat suicide...

For STAT, Magali Haas reports on a research summit organized to improve the treatments available for PTSD. “If the goals are ambitious, the obstacles...

University of California Berkely's Greater Good Science Center reports a study that finds "adding mindfulness to traditional therapy could be beneficial for soldiers with PTSD." Article...

When I looked through my mountains of medical records, I saw that the providers who listed my race as black applied diagnoses like major depressive disorder and PTSD. The providers who saw me as white preferred diagnoses of panic disorder and borderline personality disorder. Of course, my experiences are just anecdotal. But if racial bias due to subjective experiences of practitioners can play such a large role in mental health diagnostics, how is this even considered a scientific discipline?

Here I was, 15 years old and already in a long-term treatment facility. I was, on paper: crazy! This entire time, all the adults in my life had been speaking for me. I never felt like I was any of the things they said, but I went along with it. What else could I have done? Every time I rebelled, it only confirmed to my mother what she thought of me.

For The New Yorker, David Kushner writes about post-traumatic growth, the sense of deepened meaning that many trauma survivors experience. “The existence of post-traumatic...

"During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military plied its servicemen with speed, steroids, and painkillers to help them handle extended combat,” Lukasz Kamienski writes...

“In a small but growing number of cases across the nation, lawyers are blaming the U.S. military's heavy use of psychotropic drugs for their...

In his NY Times article “A Drug to Cure Fear,” Richard Friedman noted: “It has been an article of faith in neuroscience and psychiatry that, once formed, emotional memories are permanent.” This has not been a principle of these disciplines, including clinical psychology, for many years. Consolidation-reconsolidation-extinction models have been around for some time now, applied in particular to persons suffering from traumatic memories; e.g., Holocaust survivors, war and genocide survivors, etc.

“Service members suffering from PTSD often feel like they’re wearing a mask,” Samantha Allen writes in Invisible Wounds. Melissa Walker, an art therapist, asks them to make one. “The results are stirring. One mask, striped in red and black with hollow chrome-colored eyes, is wrapped in razor wire with a lock where its mouth should be.”

Speaking to Medscape about PTSD, Jeffrey Lieberman likens our current treatments with SSRIs, tricyclics and therapy to "treating tuberculous by putting people in sanitariums or polio with iron lungs, or Alzheimer's disease with these cholinomimetic drugs.” "They are symptom-improving, but they're not disease-modifying,” he adds. “They're just not sufficient…”

We are profoundly social beings living not as isolated individuals but as integral members of interdependent social systems—our nuclear family system, and the broader social systems of extended family, peers, our community and the broader society. Therefore, psychosis and other forms of human distress often deemed “mental illness” are best seen not so much as something intrinsically “wrong” or “diseased” within the particular individual who is most exhibiting that distress, but rather as systemic problems that are merely being channeled through this individual.

“Therapists and other people who help victims of trauma can become traumatized themselves.” Aaron Reuben writes in The Atlantic. “Hearing stories of suffering, in other words, can generate more suffering.”