NEJM study finds post-event morphine cuts combat PTSD rates in half
Category: PTSD
This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:02 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Neuron Culture
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
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I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) Right now I'm writing my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which explores the hypothesis that the genetic roots some of our worst problems and traits — depresison, hyperaggression, violence, antisocial behavior — can also give rise to resilience, cooperation, empathy, and contentment. The book expands on my December 2009 Atlantic article exploring these ideas.
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.
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Matters military:
Senator Asks Pentagon To Review Antidepressants
Category: Brains and minds
This is a good example of how reflexive diagnoses, as PTSD has become for any combat veteran (and sometimes even prospective combat veterans -- i.e., troops preparing to deploy), can do harm. They can lead you to ignore other possible causes of the symptoms on display.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:36 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On the reading table lately
Category: Brains and minds
Ricks -- who earlier wrote Fiasco , a devastating indictment of the run-up to the war, makes three things quite clear: The surge was not about more soldiers, but soldiers doing different things -- protecting the populace rather than hunting the enemy. ... First-rate history of science here, and a fascinating look at Harry Harlow, a monkey researcher whose powerful but sometimes disturbing experiments in the middle decades of last century helped replace a cold behavioralist view of infancy and childhood with the theories of attachment and bonding that still rule today.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:00 AM • 0 Comments •
PTSD: Two new programs; two big ignored questions
Category: Medicine
We can throw all the money we want at PTSD and continue to hire lots of therapists at the VA. But we won't get anywhere until we start asking why the PTSD problem takes such a unique course here in the U.S.
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:24 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Veterans' suicides, PTSD, and old thinking: Or why we need a "surge" at the VA
Category: PTSD
Our current approach to post-combat distress is failing just as completely as the Rumsfled approach did. But in the halls that count, there's no sign a change in thinking.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:35 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When fighting insurgents, eat with the locals
Category: Matters military
"There's a reason that counterinsurgency mantras include Get Off The FOB and Don't Commute To The Fight. The greater the distance -- not just physically, but also culturally -- from a populace, the fewer opportunities U.S. troops have to demonstrate to that populace that U.S. actions are in their interest."
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:49 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Round-up: Dinos on display, soldiers at play, stereotypes at work, pharma ghosts, Iraqi snakes
Category: Brains and minds
Much much much ado on the web this week, on the too-many fronts I try to visit. From my list of notables:
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What if you could predict PTSD in combat troops? Oh, who cares...
Category: Healthcare policy
At a time when we are much concerned with reducing PTSD in combat troops, it's valuable to learn that we could apparentlly cut the PTSD rate by more than 50% simply by keeping the least healthy 15% -- as measured by fairly simple health questionnaires we already have in any and -- out of combat zones. So why is this study going almost completely ignored?
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Real immersion versus digital -- plus fishing, Twitter, digital overload, and PTSD
Category: Brains and minds
I often find it awkward to switch between blogging or twittering and engaging deeply immersive physical activities. This hiatus, for instance, started when I went fishing last Tuesday on Lake Champlain for salmon.
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
POWs who weren't, cont'd
Category: Matters military
A concern with bogus POWs suggests I have a problem with -- well, bogus POWs. Should it not bother us when people masquerading as POWs are collecting benefits and kudos and sympathies they didn't earn — and which others earned through rather excruciating means?
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:32 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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