PTSD may cause genetic changes

Repeat, may. The sample size is quite small. But methylization of genes to shut them off? Makes sense. That then said, does that cause short-term effects, or is it caused by them? Ditto on long-term.

So, even if genetic changes are caused, we still don't know where they fit.

Ecstasy may help overcome the agony

The agony of PTSD, that is. More evidence is coming in that MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy, may indeed be psychologically therapeutic. And, its effects may have long-term duration.

The shortcomings of cognitive behavioral therapy

A chapter in Jonah Lehrer's book, "How We Decide," along with a famous quote by David Hume, brought the title of this post to stark light.

Don't get me wrong. CBT is good to very good for mild, moderate and medium depressions. It's the bee's knees for panic attacks. In combination with densensitization therapy, it's very good for a lot of phobias.

But other neuroses, it might not help so much.

Lehrer talks about psychopathy in the latter portion of his book, and how psychopaths can read the emotions of others so well, but have no emotional connectivity to their own minds, so can rationalize, in a confabulating fashion, any decisions they may choose to take.

Autistic people, on the other hand, are just the reverse. They have an emotional life of their own, but simply cannot read other people's emotions.

Combine this with Hume's famous, and somewhat deliberately contrarian, observation that "reason is the slave of the passions," and you see CBT's shortcomings.

CBT says we can think our way through emotions.

Well, psychopaths can't. To the degree we can talk about a lesser version of them, and call that group "neuropaths" by analogy, they can't think their way through emotions very well. And, in a sense, autistic people can't think their way into emotions, if you will.

So, on counseling for emotional-based mental health issues where the emotions aren't irrational, or transcend the rational/irrational in some sense, being deeply rooted in the limbic brain (think PTSD), CBT really just can't cut the mustard.

Unfortunately, some CBT, or RBT (forgetting the "E") aficionados think it's almost a cure-all, or at the least, that it can do more than it can.

Take child sexual abuse and child PTSD seriously

Let’s stop blaming priests, or dirty old men on park benches, and instead look inside the four walls of home, or relatives’ homes, a lot more. And, let’s recognize that this causes “PTSD on the home front” (now that, due to the Iraq War, we’re sadly aware of PTSD). That, and more, is in my annual April column.

Let's definitely take it seriously, unlike Joe Paterno. Let's remember the likes of Laveranues Coles.

Is Big Pharma dumping drugs on Iraq vets?

Yes, it’s the Washington Times,, but it’s still a real story. The Veterans Administration, throwing $30 incentive fees at veterans that are probably still waiting to get disability ratings, is testing about everything in the pharmacological kitchen sink as a possible PTSD treatment.

Distinguished ethicist Arthur Caplan gives the VA an “F” grade for this:

“When you’re taking advantage of a very vulnerable population, people who have served the country, and the agency that's responsible for their welfare isn’t putting their welfare first, that's a pretty serious breach of ethics.”

Given the combo of Chantix’s black-box warnings, including about it possibly increasing suicidal ideation, and some of the possible symptoms of PTSD, including possible suicidal ideation, it should have been a no-brainer to not use it.

A total of 21 vets out of 143 in the Chantix program reported some side effects.

And who makes Chantix? Pfizer.

That said, both the WaTimes and ABC fall short on their reporting. What all else is being used besides Chantix? Let’s start asking the VA more questions.

Questions such as:
1. What other drugs are being used in PTSD studies?
2. Had they been studied before for possible help in combating PTSD?
3. WHY was each of these particular drugs chosen, especially if not previously PTSD-tested?
4. What Big Pharma gifts have each of the particular doctors involved with the tests received?
5. What papers have they written on PTSD, and have they recommended particular drugs in those papers?

And, albeit while reserving the right to change his mind, Kevin Drum kind of gives the story short shrift.

Does McCain have PTSD?

No, the term wasn’t invented until seven years after his return from Hanoi but it sure does fit.

Of course, McCain’s medical records release Friday won’t include psychiatric records.

Yes, he may have benefited from confinement, but you can benefit and be hurt as well.

The Salon story does a well-balanced job on the issue.

I think it’s safe to say that even if McCain would not have been diagnosed with full-blows PTSD, he would have been diagnosed with some sort of mental condition.

And, if you know anything about PTSD, not to justify McCain’s stance, it would explain WHY he’s so inflexible on this.

With this all in mind, it puts every McCain vote on veterans’ healthcare of the recent past, and any pending votes of the future, in a harsher spotlight.

Waterboarding OK because it doesn’t cause ‘prolonged mental harm’ — I guess PTSD doesn’t count

Like Pol Pot instead of Torquemada

In his alternative reality unverse, Stephen Bradbury, the Department of Justice official serving as titleless head of the Office of Legal Counsel, says that issue, that waterboarding doesn’t cause “prolonged mental harm,” is part of why it’s legal.:

Under the mental side, Congress was very careful in the torture statute to have a very precise definition of severe mental pain or suffering. It requires predicate conditions be met and then, moreover, as we said in our opinion in December 2004, reading many cases, court cases, under the Torture Victims Protection Act, it requires an intent to cause prolonged mental harm. Now that's a mental disorder that is extended or continuing over time and if you've got a body of experience with a particular procedure that's been carefully monitored that indicates that you would not expect that there would be prolonged mental harm from a procedure, you can conclude that it's not torture under the precise terms of that statute.

I don’t know the universe Mr. Bradbury inhabits, but from what I’ve seen, waterboard can, if not always, cause PTSD.

And, that’s not “prolonged mental harm”? Just what IS prolonged mental harm, pray tell?

Oh, and just because waterboarding CIA-style isn’t like that of the Spanish Inquisition doesn’t mean that we’re not following other torturous regimes. Instead, it’s Khmer Rouge style.

Great. We’re like Pol Pot instead of Torquemada.

PTSD issues suck

Mood: Mix of shitty, rundown, tired, anxious and other emotions and body sensations.

After a whole week or more with no problems, the sleep issue returned last night. (Don't know if part of it was a muggy evening that didn't want to cool down a lot.)

Anyway, I woke up an hour or a little more early, as I have been doing in the past. It was compounded by being in a bad dream about having a bunch, a bunch of stuff to do at work, which I don't actually have.

Tried going back to sleep. I reached some state near sleep after half an hour, at which point the a-hole in my apartment complex who turned on a ShopVac at 8 a.m. Saturday, followed by wheeling a 2-ton car jack on the sidewalk, rolled the car jack out at just after 7 on a Monday morning. So, i tried again to get some last bits of sleep, but it didn't happen before the alarm, and the one snooze time I allow for an extra nine minutes.

Got up, got ready, etc. and wound up having enough anxiety problems that I had a mild throw-up before I left some, with a queasy stomach most the rest of the day.

I hate where the hell a lot of my life's aspects are at right now. Maybe I need to do another "acceptance" list.

How Mental Health Mental Retardation and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice have failed, and crushed a man: the local story

My news story and column on a local mentally ill person's horrors in the criminal justice and mental health systems.

News story: The nightmare: Mental illness George's ultimate jailer; county staff, funds 'jailed' too

For many years, Aaron George has all too often been trapped by prisons of his own mind.

Unfortunately, when George is mentally incarcerated due to the effects of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, plus post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorder - and, for the last year, a brain cyst - he often winds up also being physically confined in a jail cell.

His current residence, since Thanksgiving Day, is the Grimes County Jail.

Sheriff Donald Sowell has the unpleasant, and often frustrating, duty of being his jailer.

He, too, is incarcerated, in a sense. He is "locked up" by a small county's small jail budget, which includes not only a relative lack of manpower but no special facilities and no special training to give full care to people like George, who is the worst but not the only casualty of the state's, and nation's, mental health system to end up in his custody.

Read here for the rest of the news story:

And the column: The state of Texas' mental health care: It's criminal

Aaron George sits in the Grimes County Jail, deteriorating every day, becoming less and less functional, less and less himself, less and less "human" as a human being, all while leaving the sheriff and jail staff frustrated and helpless.

Sheriff Donald Sowell, through no fault of his own, is in an unenviable position. District Attorney Tuck McLain is left to potentially prosecute a case he'd rather not, even as the wheels of the judicial system grind so slowly George's case has not even gone before the grand jury yet for possible indictment.

It's criminal.

Whether Aaron George is a criminal now, or was in 1992, it's criminal that a bipolar schizophrenic sits in a county jail cell rather than a state mental hospital.

It's criminal that he sits there without proper medication, literally beating himself against the walls because voices and compulsions tell him to do so.

It's criminal that Donald Sowell, a small-county sheriff has to deal with cases like George's because jails like his become dumping grounds for mentally ill people who may commit crimes because of inadequate treatment.

It's criminal that the state mental health system leaves them stuck there, sometimes for a year or more.

It's criminal that mental illness, besides any actual crimes committed by a mentally ill person, still has a quasi-criminal taint to it, whether in Grimes County or anywhere else in the state.

It's criminal that many people may still think mental illness issues can just be swept under the rug.

It's criminal that state officials believe this enough that the prison system faces another serious lawsuit, this one from advocates for mentally ill inmates.

It's criminal that the Mental Health Mental Retardation budget gets slashed year after year.

It's criminal that MHMR doesn't have more state hospitals and beds, along with halfway houses or group homes.

It's criminal that more and more of the functions of Child Protective Services get privatized to untrained people by Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Legislature.

Read here for the rest of the column.

For an excellent blog with more on Texas criminal justice issues, including mental health and due process, read Read Grits For Breakfast.

For information and links on the new lawsuit against the state of Texas, alleging that criminally confined mental health patients are being deprived of Constitutional due process due to their cases taking WAY too long to process, read Read this post of his.

Childhood abuses: Survivors vs. victims

I am not a victim (any more) of the various “slings and arrows of an outrageous childhood,” to riff on Shakespeare — I am a survivor. None of my previous personal posts have been meant to convey that I am a victim, let alone a “martyr.”

That includes my mentioning of my diagnosis several years ago with post-traumatic stress disorder. Rather, that was meant to explain a little more about “where I come from”; in other words, it’s a request for understanding, as have been the other more personal posts I have made here. With PTSD, it’s the same request as adult veterans of combat, especially hairy combat that can trigger PTSD for them; I just say I fought in a different war.

That said, it’s my impression that a lot of people are afraid to talk about, face, think about or feel about child abuse in its various forms, sexual abuse above all. Perhaps they’re afraid of seeing or hearing about its ugliness, especially if they know the adult survivor personally.

If I wanted to talk about ugliness with more personal detail, I could, but this is not the place to do into detail, for self-protection; nor do I have a desire to “get in anybody’s face.” Between professionals, group support and close friends who have listened without “flinching,” I have the avenues I need to talk, and talk through, issues in detail.

That then said, to people who may not be so comfortable with this type of talk, about physical, emotional and especially sexual abuse — I encourage you to open the door a little bit more. I’m not asking anybody to go out and buy some trauma recovery books or anything like that; I’m just hoping a few more people can face more of the more tragic realities of life without “flinching.”

And that’s not necessarily for my sake, especially for more casual readers here. You may never know when such openness comes in handy elsewhere in your life, though.

Finally, the question of why some, not others. Why do some people react more strongly and bear more scars from abuse?

Part of it is a genetic influence on temperament. In my case, it seems clear that a high anxiety thermostat runs through my dad’s side of the family, back further into Snyder males.

Of course, so does alcoholism, which raises other questions.

The other main factors as to why some are hurt worse by child abuse appear to be primarily based on the abuse itself. How severe was it, how chronic/ongoing was it, and how early did it start are the biggies.

Let’s just say that PTSD isn’t likely to develop from a one-time, relatively mild incident later in childhood.

With that, while I continue more personal posts for a while, I’ll be headed back to more political posting down the road. For obvious reasons, not much of it will be about where I am at now.

PTSD: What it is, and is not

A sane reaction to an insane world

Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a mental illness. Instead, it is a psychological injury, as this website explains well.

And, its symptoms are not the same as those of mental illness. For example, hypervigilance is not the same as paranoia; the paranoia of schizophrenia stems from organic brain problems, whereas hypervigilance is in reaction to one or more specific external events — or, as I said in a previous poetic post, a sane reaction to an insane world. A complete list of contrasts to mental illness-type symptoms is on the website.

The website I linked above, and others, do a good job of explaining a potential new psychological diagnosis which may make it into to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Complex PTSD. This diagnosis would separate single-event trauma PTSD from the greater complexity of a chronic, ongoing series of related events, one from which the victim often has trouble escaping. This Medscape article has more.