Every month, Ilona Meagher, author of Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops, posts a collection of “combat clips”—essentially a stack of statistics reported in the mainstream media but buried by the daily barrage of news and chatter. The stats, collected at her blog, PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within, cover a lot of ground, from suicides to face transplants, but I wanted to pull out some numbers relating to women in the military:

W orldwide, women make up about 14 percent of U.S. active-duty forces - the largest percentage in the country's history.  (Philadelphia Enquirer)

There are an estimated 6,500 homeless female veterans on any given night — about 5 percent of the total homeless veterans population. (Associated Press)

The nonprofit group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says one-third of women were sexually harassed while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Philadelphia Enquirer)

(Thanks, War and Peace)

Source: PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within

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Under the Bush administration, opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan tended to front-load their critique with a line about the administration's betrayal of returning veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That betrayal pre-dated George W. Bush by two decades. In a chilling new piece for Boston Review, Tara McKelvey reports that "The decline in resources for veterans’ mental health services started in the 1980s, as part of a nationwide effort to move psychiatric patients into outpatient treatment. The number of inpatient psychiatric beds fell from 9,000 in the late ’80s to 3,000 by 2008." By that time, according to a Rand Corporation report, close to 20 percent of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan—300,000 in all—were reporting symptoms of PTSD or acute depression.

The defunding of veterans' mental health services may have predated the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is not to say the Bush administration didn't betray veterans. McKelvey explains: "The great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that 'Jesus fixes everything.'"

The bit about Jesus fixing everything is a bit of an oversimplification. Political ideology was certainly as much of a factor and McKelvey acknowledges as much, if only in passing:

"...high-level officials at the VA shared political convictions that, along with doubts about the science of PTSD, made them less likely to push for additional psychiatric services for veterans. They believed in streamlined government and free markets, and they supported a prominent role for faith-based organizations."

For all the talk of religious obstacles to mental health treatment, the Boston Review piece is also a gift to anybody trying to understand the history PTSD diagnosis and treatment. That history, of course, is still being written. In the latest chapter, Barack Obama has proposed the largest infusion of funding for veterans in three decades. Mental health services are not ignored. "Unfortunately," writes McKelvey, " bureaucracies are slow to respond. After years of neglect during the Bush administration, veterans now have nearly one million claims pending, a record high for the agency."

About the Author: Before turning to journalism, Utne Reader senior editor Jeff Severns Guntzel spent years doing humanitarian work in pre-war Iraq. Since that time, he has reported from the Middle East and points all over the United States as a staff writer for National Catholic Reporter and as a contributing editor at the now defunct (and greatly missed) Punk Planet magazine. Electronic Iraq, a website he co-founded in 2003 to document the Iraqi experience of war, is archived in the Library of Congress and the British Library. Jeff has appeared as a guest on a number of national news programs, including NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Democracy Now!

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Source: Boston Review

Image courtesy of the Department of Defense.

Memory is not a fixed, static impression left on a person’s brain. Researchers have found that “the very act of remembering could change the memory,” Joseph LeDoux writes for the Scientist. Using that knowledge, his colleagues are working on ways that specific memories could be simply erased from people’s brains. LeDoux asks, “Could traumatic memories be dampened or erased simply by remembering?”

The research is already leading to experiments in lessening post traumatic stress disorder using drugs, as reported on Utne.com. Many have worry about the ethical implications of messing with people’s memories, but according to LeDoux, patients who suffer from reactions to memories they can’t control have said that they would rather risk losing a memory or two if it meant being able to remove the debilitating ones.”

People wouldn’t need to stop at bad memories, Greg Beato writes for Reason. Erasing the good memories from people’s brains could make life a lot more enjoyable. “Imagine falling in love for the first time, again and again and again,” Beato writes, “hearing your all-time favorite album with completely fresh ears; rediscovering the virtues of martinis.” People would no longer get bored with their jobs, their spouses, their music collections, and could continue to experience life as if for the first time.

Sources: The Scientist (subscription required), Reason

Image by Sergio Tudela, licensed under Creative Commons.

How we think about memory is about to change. Psychologist Alain Brunet, who works at McGill University and the Douglas Institute in Montreal, is conducting clinical trials in which participants take propranolol, a blood-pressure drug, after writing about a traumatic experience, reports Technology Review. This exercise seems to “weaken” the emotional strength of the memory, without disturbing any details. Six months after participating in a trial, one Canadian soldier suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) no longer qualified for the diagnosis.

Brunet’s research has to do with unlocking the secrets of how memories are stored, specifically proving the concept of memory reconsolidation. If Brunet is correct, when we recall a memory, it has to be packed away into the brain anew—and during that process the memory is malleable. If this is true, it opens up a bevy of possibilities for the treatment of PTSD, as well as other anxiety disorders and addiction.

There are some concerns that Brunet could be opening the proverbial Pandora’s box, but the psychologist isn’t fazed. “Brunet points out that he is trying to bring PTSD patients’ memories into a normal emotional range, not blunt their power altogether,” Technology Review senior editor Emily Singer writes. “He doesn’t think that using propranolol to render these memories bearable would create any unique potential for abuse as a way to dull the regrets, fears, and embarrassments of everyday life; people already use alcohol and drugs for such purposes.”

Source: Technology Review 

Every culture has a responsibility to care for its warriors. Working with soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Edward Tick believes the United States can do better. In the September-October issue of Utne Reader, Tick writes about different societies' warrior cultures and how their ideas can help returning U.S. soldiers.

For the latest episode of the UtneCast, editor in chief David Schimke sat down with Tick to talk about PTSD, warrior cultures, and easing the burdens carried by soldiers.

You can listen to the interview below, or to subscribe to the UtneCast for free through iTunes, click here.

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