Fishing: A Welcome Escape from PTSD

Fishing can offer a quiet, relaxed, comfortable way to get out in nature (and maybe back into some of your old routines) without encountering crowds of people, Michigan's Midland Daily News reports (scroll down the sidebar).

PTSD or PTS?

Our sister site Fearless Nation PTSD Support calls PTSD a normal reaction to abnormal events. The military agrees and is pushing to have PTSD reclassified as simply PTS -- post-traumatic stress, no "disorder." In fact, more often than not, they are already dropping the D.

Time's Battleland blog looks into the issue:

Military mental-health workers constantly try to reduce the stigma associated with mental-health ills, and one way to do that is to not term the problem a disorder.


Some veterans agree, but others -- fearful the name change is simply a way of minimizing what they're going through -- don't. "It's a double-edged sword," a long-time Army psychiatrist says privately. "We're trying to reduce the stigma associated with the condition, but it's in the DSM-4 [the American Psychiatric Associati0n's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), the accepted roster of various mental conditions] as PTSD. And some veterans fear that deleting disorder will jeopardize the VA benefits they get for it."

So what do you think? Does the word Disorder matter? Does it have meaning? Does it add stigma? Is it truthful or in the way? We'd love to hear your comments.

Study: National Guard has higher frequency of PTSD

According to a new study, National Guard members who experienced combat in Iraq have a higher rate of PTSD than soldiers from other branches of the military.

"...diagnosed rates of PTSD with serious functional impairment in the Active Component was 7.7% at three months and 8.9% after a year. For the National Guard, those numbers were 6.7% and 12.4%, respectively."

Read more: PTSD frequency in National Guard soldiers

Study claims PTSD is being over-diagnosed

The Canadian Press reports: "A new study suggests post-traumatic stress disorder is being over-diagnosed in Canada and the western world — a potentially costly situation that could lead to skyrocketing disability claims."

Interesting that, even for a country with socialized medicine, the lead here takes an insurance point of view.

But like many discussions of PTSD, this ignores many facets of the problem. 1) Not only soldiers experience PTSD. 2) PTSD was severely under-diagnosed for decades.

Thoughts?

Army Gives Bad Discharges to Thousands of PTSD Vets

Here's how the Army has, for the last few years, managed to discharge vets who have PTSD and not have to treat them:

1. People with PTSD tend to drink a lot to numb the pain.
2. Soldiers who are ordered to drink less but fail are then discharged for failure to follow orders.

Read more at The Salem News.