combat trauma
ddobbs | June 15, 2009
Photo: Tyler Hicks, via Scientific American
What if you could predict which troops are most likely to get PTSD from combat exposure -- and takes steps to either bolster them mentally or keep them out of combat situations? A new study suggests we could make a start on that right now -- and cut combat PTSD rates in half by simply keeping the least mentally and physically fit soldiers away from combat zones.
The study was part of the Millenium Study, huge, prospective study in which US Department of Defense researchers have been tracking the physical and mental health of nearly 100,000 service…
ddobbs | April 20, 2009Who stands most at risk of PTSD? A new study of PTSD in US veterans of the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars suggests that you can identify the most vulnerable -- soldiers who stand 2 to 3 times the risk of their peers -- with fairly simple measures of mental and physical health.
The study, conducted by the U.S. Navy's Tyler Smith and collegues, is part of an ongoing longitudinal study of over 150,000 U.S. soldiers. The Millennium Cohort Study began collected comprehensive health data on U.S. soldiers in 2001. This study draws on that data to compare health status before deployment to Iraq…
ddobbs | March 18, 2009It didn't take long for my Scientific American story on PTSD to draw the sort of fire I expected. A doctor blogging as "egalwan" at Follow Me Here writes
[Dobbs] is critical of a culture which "seemed reflexively to view bad memories, nightmares and any other sign of distress as an indicator of PTSD." To critics like this, the overwhelming incidence of PTSD diagnoses in returning Iraqi veterans is not a reflection of the brutal meaningless horror to which many of the combatants were exposed but of a sissy culture that can no longer suck it up.
Doctor or not, he's seeing politics where my…