Pentagon: Treatment may prolong PTSS that "could disappear naturally"

WASHINGTON -- Less than one-quarter of the U.S. military's Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who show signs of post-traumatic stress are referred for additional mental health treatment or evaluation, a government study finds.

The report released Thursday said about 5 percent of the veterans interviewed after they returned from combat tours appeared at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. Of those, about 22 percent are referred for more health care.
...
Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, disagreed with suggestions that not all veterans who need referrals get them. In a response included in the report, the Pentagon said the clinicians are familiar with combat demands and, in some cases, a medical referral or treatment may prolong symptoms that could disappear naturally......

Combat stress symptoms may be relieved by rest and a return to normal daily life, the Defense Department said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/11/AR2006051101083.html

Well then.

...the best relief. :sarcasm:

..because it costs $$$$$

especially from this admin. I have a b-i-l who will never recover from PTSD - from VietNam! :grr:

Someone needs to report the idiot to the AMA for being full of shit. :grr: How dare he brush off PTSD as a condition that will just disappear on it's own in order to shirk responsibility to those who are suffering.

Once again, no accountability from this bunch. Why am I surprised

to deny paying for the disability

and it will go away just like it did with Vietnam vets.......not

....In fact, the American Psychiatric Association didn't officially recognize post-traumatic stress disorder until the 1980s. Treatment programs were either untested or absent altogether.

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050925/NEWS11/509250372/1001/SPORTS03

I'm trying to find when the military first recognized it officially.

it was observed as early as world war I at least

whether shell shock/PTSD victims were always given sufficent medical or financial aid for their symptoms is quite another issue

but it was certainly recognized w. or w.out the fancy name

god, everybody of a certain age knows of someone shell shocked in world war 2 -- and that was supposedly the "good" war

I just meant to note that official recognition is relatively young.

Learned Helplessness is often an unintended side effect of psychological treatment.

The notion of "First do no harm" is really tricky in psychology.

Once you tell someone they are broken, and I know this because here is your page in the DSM IV, their natural ability to develop independent coping mechanisms may be reduced. The person belief in self empowerment may suffer.

I think there is a place for a healthy debate on this topic. OP seems to disagree.

is not the same as "Learned Helplessness" nor telling them that they are broken.
Independent coping mechanisms are important but too often that is pushing down the trauma, trying not to think about it and that can actually give it more power.

Still I think your point and mine might best be blended in a study that found that the most effective treatment for PTSD was in group "therapy", not one on one counseling. I put therapy in quotes because a lot of it is the people who have been in the same situation supporting each other.

When I read that study it rang true...I knew relatives or friends of the family in the Korean war and Viet Nam who talked about having kept things inside for a very long time and finally finding a support group and getting a chance to talk about things and deal with them. They saw in retrospect how much they had screwed things up in many areas (work, family, substance use) by not dealing with it earlier.

One was a great uncle who'd been in Korea and he didn't start dealing with it until he had a computer and found a group on line. He couldn't say enough about how it changed him, healing tears.

Same with some addicts I knew or worked with. Individual counseling didn't do much but groups with others who really understood helped a lot.

For some vets adjustment might be easy but toughing it out on your own if things are tough isn't what makes you stronger.

...had no idea what PTSD really was, and they suffered from it for years. Most of those guys only did one tour.

We've got troops coming back from the Middle East that have done three or more tours...they better get help now, because it's a lot better to deal with PTSD quickly than to see the results later.

This ploy is just one more way military administrations are trying to weasel out of providing benefits to soldiers that need help.

Learned Helplessness is NOT a side effect of good therapy. Healing emotional wounds and learning coping mechanisms is the entire point of therapy. Only a truly bad therapist would be unable to put someone back together so they can function again. Dr. Winkerdinker could have made a case for monitoring therapists, but not for no therapy at all. There isn't a person on the planet who couldn't benefit from a good therapist.

however in some cases i believe they are correct

i think rehashing your trauma in so-called therapy does nothing but focus your attention and make it a bigger part of your life

what you give your attention to, becomes a bigger part of your life

sometimes shoving trauma under the rug is better than "treating" it, altho i realize that psychologists need jobs too

but i have run from all suggestions that i am ill and should pay someone because i have been a victim, all that does is victimize me again really, by making me prey for someone looking to profit off my grief

note that i say "in some cases"

there are doubtless extreme cases where the person would never sleep well again w.out some sort of medical care and medication

So it isn't sitting under the rug, tripping you up when you least expect it; or paralyzing you because it's too big to deal with. Good therapy isn't about psychologists needing jobs, it's about helping you come to terms with trauma so you can reclaim the hope and courage the trauma took away.

wounds don't heal if you keep picking at the scab

i don't find any hope or courage in sitting around chatting abt how shitty the shitty things that happened to me were

i don't find anything inspiring in a bunch of people sitting around being negative and i find support groups, for the most part, shockingly disempowering and creepy

if it works for someone else, i'm glad, but i don't understand why it would work

it is certainly counter-intuitive

the whole repression theory of human emotions has been long disproved, people who repress their anger and negativity and instead focus on the good things don't have a worse life than people who express and "treat" their negativity -- they have a better life

some things ARE better swept under the rug

what can't be helped can't be helped, talking abt it and making it the story of your life only makes it worse in my observation

as i say, in extreme cases, where you simply can't put the terror out of your mind at all, certainly help should be offered, but i think teaching people how to forget and how not to focus on the past is more positive than "working through" i.e. reliving over and over so that you never get past

people shouldn't still be breaking and down and crying abt freakin' world war 2 or vietnam, but they keep it fresh when they won't let it be in the past, because some well-intentioned idiot told them it was healthy to keep re-hashing

what is healthy is to focus on the good and beautiful things in life, not the negatives

We're talking about broken bones that won't heal right at all without proper treatment. Sometimes they have to be rebroken in order for the bones to stitch back together correctly. There isn't any shame in needing therapy or medication to work through traumas like child molestation, rape, beatings, spousal abuse, bullying parents, dangerous neighborhoods, etc. Hardly anybody gets out of this life without trauma. Some people have the family and community support, have developed personal coping skills, and can get through it. Many don't have that, and in fact the lack of family support is the reason they don't have it in the first place. Often because their parents swept everything under the rug and told them to suck it up and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

of mental health care as the GP.

And they will go homeless, land in jail or simply fall into a crack, too.

It's a national disgrace.