Driver's ed to cope with PTSD

This is an excellent article about the challenges people with PTSD face while driving, and what one VA hospital is doing to help:

Palo Alto's VA Hospital offers driver's ed to cope with PTSD

PTSD in Firefighters, First Responders & Other Rescuers

Two recent news stories highlight the oft-forgotten sufferers of PTSD: First responders, firefighters and other rescue workers.

First up, an NPR article about how the constant threat of working as a first responder or other rescue worker can build up until PTSD symptoms develop.

"Little by little, it just started to build, and then one day, the slideshow that was all these events started running in my head and I couldn't control it," Michael Ferrara told NPR. It all came to a head for him when a friend of his was killed while on duty.

According to NPR (itself covering a story from Outside magazine), PTSD often goes undiagnosed in these occupations because the men who fill these jobs do not like to admit when they are in emotional pain.

But better understanding of PTSD allows both managers and rescue workers to not only deal with their symptoms better, but to recognize them when they first show up.

An Ontario-based newspaper called Cottage Country Now also discusses how volunteer firefighters can be ill-equipped to deal with the trauma of their jobs. Part of this comes from constantly working with survivors -- or seeing those who did not survive. "You're seeing people on the worse day of their life; their house burnt down, they had a heart attack, something bad happened," researcher Brad Campbell told the paper. Campbell's study is one of the first major studies of PTSD in firefighters.

PTSD Brains Hyperactive Even When 'Relaxed'

A new study reveals something that shouldn't come as much of a surprise: the brains of people with PTSD are hyperactive even when they are "relaxed."

Using a technique called magnetoencephalography or MEG, researchers found that people with PTSD have heightened activity in the right-hand hemisphere of their brains. According to a report from HealthDay, "Compared with the healthy 'controls,' the PTSD patients showed 'hyperactive' communication between the temporal cortex -- the part of the brain thought to be responsible for reliving past experiences -- and two other areas on the right side of the brain."

This hyperactivity was present even though the patients were in a relaxed state for the MEG scan.

The study was published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. The paper is available free online for a limited time.