Delayed trauma: PTSD decades later

Stars and Stripes reports that a major life event like retirement can cause decades-old traumas to come to the surface, creating anxiety, anger and other PTSD-related symptoms. In particular, this is starting to affect some Vietnam vets who did not get proper treatment when they returned from war.

Mental health experts say...delayed trauma isn’t unusual. Major life events such as retirement often trigger personal reassessment and forgotten memories.

But for Vietnam veterans who returned decades ago to a harsh reception and limited mental health options, that could mean a new wave of stress and serious psychological issues as their generation enters retirement age.

Many of these Vietnam veterans (who are now approaching retirement age en masse) threw themselves into their work when they returned from the war as their way of coping with their trauma. As their work lives end, the untreated trauma is now becoming an issue.

Stars and Stripes reports that the VA is not yet prepared to deal with the thousands of new requests for treatment they could receive in the next few years.

Read more:

Retirement might unleash PTSD symptoms in Vietnam veterans

PTSD linked to urinary incontinence in female veterans

A new study finds that female veterans with PTSD have a greater level of urinary incontinence than other women their ages.

This is part of a multi-year study into urinary incontinence (UI) in female veterans. The researchers wrote about the reasons for the study when it was launched in 2009: "Urogenital symptoms, including urinary incontinence and frequency, commonly affect women of reproductive age and negatively impact quality of life. Such urinary symptoms are among the top 10 problems reported to primary care providers by women."

From the abstract of this paper:

This cross-sectional study enrolled women 20 to 52 years of age registered at 2 midwestern US Veterans Affairs Medical Centers or outlying clinics within 5 years preceding study interview. Participants completed a computer-assisted telephone interview assessing urogynecologic, medical, and mental health. Multivariable analyses studied independent associations between stress and urgency UI and depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Nine hundred sixty-eight women mean aged 38.7 ± 8.7 years were included. Of these, 191 (19.7%) reported urgency/mixed UI and 183 (18.9%) stress UI. Post-traumatic stress disorder (odds ratio, 1.8; 95% confidence interval, 1.0–3.1) but not depression (odds ratio, 1.2; 95% confidence interval, 0.73–2.0) was associated with urgency/mixed UI. Stress UI was not associated with post-traumatic stress disorder or depression.

This research does not yet identify a reason for this increased rate, but the paper calls for additional research "to better understand the complex associations between UI and psychologic symptoms and the neurobiologic basis of urgency UI."

Read more:

PTSD linked to urinary incontinence in female veterans

PTSD Infographic

Earlier this year, the School of Social Work put together this great infographic: "What Is PTSD?"

Check it out:


Brought to you by: Masters in Social Work | MSW@USC

96% of 9/11 Survivors Suffer PTSD Symptoms

A survey of 3,271 evacuees of the World Trade Center found that almost all of them -- 95.6% -- had displayed at least one symptom of PTSD.

A full 15% of survivors tested positive for PTSD in the 2-3 years following 9/11.

"PTSD risk was greater among survivors who experienced serious life threat as defined by location in the towers, time of evacuation initiation, or dust cloud exposures," said the study's first author, Laura DiGrande, in a prepared release. "As one would expect, individuals who were exposed to several of the most troubling and life-threatening events during the disaster were at the greatest risk of PTSD."

The study found a few interesting statistics: lower-income survivors were more likely to develop PTSD, as were blacks and Hispanics. People whose employers were killed also seemed to develop PTSD at a greater rate.

Meanwhile, exactly what each of these survivors encountered seemed to affect their changes of developing PTSD. Some where injured, some saw "horror," others were caught in the dust cloud, some were on very high floors of the Twin Towers. Those who experienced more than one of these situations had significantly greater levels of PTSD, to the point where the authors could even come up with a mathematical formula for the risk of PTSD based on the number of factors the individuals encountered.

The study appears in the online edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology. The full paper is behind a subscription firewall, but you can read the abstract here.

PTSD linked to hardened arteries, heart disease, death

Stress kills, and post-traumatic stress disorder is no exception.

According to research presented earlier this week at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, men and women with PTSD have more calcium buildup in their arteries than people without PTSD. According to a report from CNN's Health.com, "Calcium buildup is a hallmark of atherosclerosis (also known as hardening of the arteries), which can lead to heart attacks."

The veterans who did have this calcium buildup were "48 percent more likely to die of any cause during the study and 41 percent more likely to die from heart disease compared to those without PTSD," the study found.

The study was conducted on 637 veterans, and was part of a broader 10-year study that examined 286,000 mostly male vets from conflicts dating as far back as the Korean War. It did not look at non-veterans who might also have been suffering from PTSD.

What causes this calcium buildup? That's still unclear, but the scientists behind the new study said stress could be one factor. Another factor could be not getting enough exercise or other "unhealthy behaviors."

As a conference presentation, this study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Research: PTSD Shrinks Parts of Your Brain

According to new research published in PubMed.gov, PTSD shrinks the caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus, hippocampus, thalamus, and lateral ventricle in the brain, which explains the headaches many people with PTSD suffer.

The study was conducted on male patients who were not undergoing other therapy for their headaches.

You can read the paper's abstract here.

Veterans With PTSD Suffer More Physical Ailments

"U.S. soldiers with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer more physical ailments than those with no mental health issues, and this effect is stronger in women than men, a new study shows."

Read more: Veterans With PTSD Suffer More Physical Ailments Than Their Peers

The primary, secondary and tertiary effects of PTSD

Bob Trowbridge's article "Secondary and tertiary effects of post-traumatic stress related to war" for Helium (a health & fitness site) does much to illustrate the pains and symptoms of PTSD.

Trowbridge (a spiritual counselor, not a therapist) breaks it down like this:

Primary effects:
Nightmares
Flashbacks
Hypersensitivity
High blood pressure and other physical symptoms
Paranoia
Withdrawal from society

Secondary effects:
The effect on friends and family
The potential for violence

Tertiary effects:
Difficulty rejoining society
Unemployment
Homelessness
Alcohol and drug abuse
Inability to perform in social situations

Trowbridge points out that this three-tiered breakdown of effects is completely artificial. In other words, it's not a diagnostic tool, just a way for us to look at symptom/effects in meaningful clumps that tell a story of the problems PTSDers encounter.

And hopefully, once we understand, proper treatment can begin.

Worth a read.

Cops get tips for contacts with persons suffering PTSD

Cops in Augusta, Georgia, recently got a class on how to effectively deal with people who have PTSD.

The article covering the class, and possibly the class itself, focuses too much on veterans, ignoring the fact that others (cops included) can also get PTSD. But the advice is good:

"To help veterans focus, officers are encouraged to speak slowly, maintain eye contact and clearly explain their purpose for being there. They also should ask a person what he sees and hears to determine whether he is disassociating or not."

Here's an interesting parallel the author missed, while discussing why cops need to learn how to manage situations with people with PTSD: "Officers depend on their own hyper-vigilance to survive a shift and rolling up on a jumpy, aggressive person does not bode well." Hyper-vigilance happens to be one of the symptoms of PTSD.

Ga. cops get tips for contacts with persons suffering PTSD

Criminal Behavior is Not a Symptom of PTSD

Psychology Today tells us, "Criminal Behavior is Not a Symptom of PTSD."

Massage as therapy for PTSD

Insomnia and high blood pressure are just two of the many side effects that PTSD has on your body. Can massage help? According to "touch therapist" Kimberly P. Ledger, the answer is yes, and she's writing a few blog posts for Heal My PTSD to discuss the benefits of massage for PTSDers.

Read her first article here.

Can Brain Scans Diagnose PTSD Better Than a Therapist?

PTSD causes specific changes in the brain which can be detected by an imaging technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG), according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center say that PTSD creates a distinct pattern of brain activity, something they observed in a test group of 74 veterans and 250 civilians who had all already been diagnosed with PTSD.

MEG imaging captures the brain's activity in milisecond slices, much faster than would be captured in a CT scan or an MRI.

The military is interested in this test because it could help them pinpoint veterans with PTSD without a therapist's diagnosis.