June is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Month. In this video, Dr. Miguel Roberts, Director of Trauma Services at the Washington, DC, VA Medical Center discusses PTSD signs, symptoms and effective treatments.
To learn more about the symptoms of PTSD, what treatments work best and how you can help raise PTSD awareness please visit: www.PTSD.va.gov.
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Just curious, based off of what your video clip says (right at the end) “recovery is possible”… what do you consider recovery? The fact is, that the mind does not forget what it experiences, the memories stay. So, when you say, “recovery is possible” do you mean that learning healthy coping mechanisms is possible? Or, are you insinuating that we will somehow forget the trauma we have experienced? Just wondering.
While you’re at it, take a few minutes to take a look at our project http://www.facebook.com/Heroes4ourHeroes and see what we are working on. We’re not a “legally recognized” non-profit yet, but we are on our way. For now, no money is involved and it will continue to be “dollar-free” until the point that non-profit status is established and monetary assets are necessary to operate.
I knew a world war II/Korean War vet when I was just a teenager. His name was John Reaser and he worked as a furniture re-upholstery craftsman. They used support benches to place the furniture on while doing the re-upholstery. Whenever there was a severe thunderstorm with thunder and lightning, he would start screaming and get underneath the piece of furniture that he was working on. I will never forget him because at the time Vietnam was getting going and he stayed behind me until I joined rather than being drafted. I probably owe him my life. At the time it was just called “shell shock”.
in north port ny va hospital many years ago. we had a doctor. dr spango.. i never liked him. tall guy. white as a ghost. piercing cold looking blue eyes. turns out he was killing veterans.at the hospital.one night i was driving for a car service. got a call to pick up doctors quarters in building so and so, thats what i did. turns out to be dr spango. nervice.as hell. i said to him. hi doc you going on vacation. he said yes. im in a hurry lets go. i drove him to jfk air port. i helped this creep ascape!. they finley caught up with him. and justus was served..why am i talking about this now? i dont know. its been bothering me for years. if i knew he was killing veterans at the hospital. when he got in my car. he would have never made it to the air port! and i would have been in jail for the rest of my life! so. you can understand why im alittle gun shy with doctors. don’t get me wrong. that was then. and this is now. i love my va doctors now. you can look in there eyes and tell they realy care about us.and thats the truth. this bum ran to another country. but the usa tracked him down. i hope he is rotting in some cell.
I have had PTSD since 1952 (Korea). At least now they have a name. That is how far
I’ll go.
This is a LIE! VA shoud hire veterans or at least people who know what they are talking about from experience not just “clinical” studies. Wow….just Wow….
all they have is meds. and i rather stay the way i am. after 40 years. im used to the nightmares. im used to hitting the ground when lightning strikes to close.. like an old ww2 marine once to me. it is never going away.. if this guy is so smart. tell us what causes clinical depression…. he cant.. because till this day they dont know. if this guy was a combat vet i might believe him.. why am i starting to loose faith? i wish i knew.with all this stuff going on. im realy starting to get depressed.im not going to lie. my trust has been shakin. i just don;t know what to think or belieave anymore.
Thomas, one of the best things for my husband when he talked to me was finding ways to move beyond the misery and the pain he experienced. We did this by doing the things that made him feel good about his being! We practiced this and enjoyed the fruits of our labor…he said it was because I had no set way to life but to be artistic in what I did. It helped him find rhyme and reason to get involved in his own recovery more so. Sometimes the pills helped but not the Prozac. We worked on puzzles, playing cards, and even fishing to compete for the biggest catch. The children brought him laughter when I was the ruler of controls. Somehow it was great for once, but in the end, he did become more tuned into his emotions which he finally came home to live within our memories! Love does not die, nor does the will to survive! It just knows when to release the rope that binds!
your a sweet heart thank you for your kind words. but when i see a guy like this come out of no where and say he has a cure for ptsd. give me a break. we might be messed up but we are not stupid. who is this guy? lets hear his back round. over 40 years. i have learned to live with this. a normal life? as far as im concerned im living one. its all i know since im 19 years old. im fine mam. i dont know any other life… you love your husband and family. what a good decent person you are. since ww1 this was called shell shock. all these years go by. now this guy shows up with a cure. sorry . but i just dont trust him.. he;s to young for me. and not a combat vet. he cant relate to us.they mix up our claims with other condisions you were denied. and never appeald. im kind of giving up mam. if your husband is a viet nam vet like me. tell him i said welcome home. he will know what i mean. good luck and god bless you and your family. tomas gomez.
I agree with you guys. I have had anxiety and depression as long as I can remember and Vietnam didn’t do anything to help it. I take 3 prazosin each night for nightmares plus a sleeping pill and another for restless legs. I fall out of bed, crash into walls and furniture always trying to run. I have gashes, black eyes, scrapes and bruises about all the time. My wife has me sleep alone for her own safety. I can’t say if the medication helps or not. It seems that if I am going to have a bad night then I have one. I recently had open heart surgery in Charleston and the night before surgery me, my wife, and son were in a hotel room across the street from the hospital. I guess from the anxiety over the surgery I really went wild. Punched and kicked my son. My wife and son were trying to wake me. They finally did before I hurt them or myself.
I think this article from WebMD contradicts the above story in as much as one may go through “recovery” but, that does not mean that they are cured:
http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/tc/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-recovery
Also maybe he should read all the news about long wait times for appointments, not being on any appointment lists whatsoever, not being on any list (real or phony) for first time medical/mental care, etc. Maybe he should post a retraction.
Recover from trauma that is stuck in the sub-conscious for life. That’s like trying to learn how to NOT ride a bike. Ideas, emotions, and behaviors are stored in the sub-conscious in order for us HUMAN BEINGS to survive. Abnormal external stressors are also stored for life because the by nature are ABNORMAL Doctor and held there for life. I have been in one on one sessions for 12 years and still have sickening reoccurring dreams, disassociate in public, can’t relate to common every day life due to reminders of the STORED trauma. Recover from what? Nice try you are doing this so that the claims do not have to be honored. What kind of trauma that is external and ABNORMAL have you been repeatedly exposed to Doc ?
Norman is right, this is a lie. Known factor, 1st husband a vietnam veteran was being treated for PTSD at the Canton Clinic in Ohio for over 7 years and still had massive problems. Due to the incompetence of the VA I took him to a private psychologist. This didn’t help because my husband was too far gone…All he wanted to do is abuse the entire family, including me.
I finally gave up and ran from him to stay alive. He died in the VA hospital from cancer which I am sure he got in Vietnam from agent orange. I am married again to another combat vietnam veteran, he too has PTSD and TBI. The VA is not helping him in anyway. The doctors are misfits and really don’t care about the veterans, but the VA doctors sure give him enough medication (pills) that are worthless to the patient.
I agree with the first two comments. I suffer daily (and usally most nights) with the symptoms of PTSD. The docs do everything possible–medically wise, but nothing shuts out the memories/flashbacks, hallucinations or anger.
I appreciate what the VAMC does, but disagree with the speaker—-PTSD is NOT CURABLE! It stays with me all the time. Holding a job is impossible. .Doing most anything that requires short term memory is out of the question. I wish I could agree, but my experience tells a different story,
Hello Dave and Friends, Comrades,
One of the worst things is trying to justify who will manage and who will not, suffering with from PTSD. When my husband joined the war efforts in Vietnam, he did so out of support to his fellow man and his country. LIttle did he know that through it all, it would leave him scarred and most times trying to run away from the experiences that stayed until his death. For this family PTSD rippled through the life of our living unconditionally. I was just a young woman seeking help when there was none. I continued to learn to deal with the set-backs that occurred every three months. When we think we were moving forward we took a leap back…it was learning to prepare for the same types of outburst when drinking did not slow the impulses down. After 19 years of marriage, I had learned that something’s will never change but what did move to change was the manner in which”I” let go and let God step in to reconstruct our new family life after employability; suicide came after my husband read the McNamara story. Our last Sunday visit proved beyond a doubt that something was a miss. By Monday he cancelled his doctor’s visit, left the house to take care of something, and committed suicide. I sometimes asked if he would go to counseling for PTSD a she worked for the Veterans Administration outpatient clinic. He was being treated for depression but not with me there to speak about his covering up with the pills he took, and drinking on the side. What does a wife feel after all said and done…I saw the death of my family, the fight to provide, the acts of unkindness, and the lack of support in all forms of community and the state. I live today on no widow’s pension, no state help, and a friend who took me in after so much Oster sizing of my own life to what was employed by his. PTSD happens from continually being subjected to toxic people, their thinking, and feeling there is no freedom for liberty to become!
I am sorry that happen to you, and many other women including my wife.
The VA dosent treat they just throw drugs at you and say next they don’t want to hear why you have PTSD or what causes flashbacks they don’t care they just give me more drugs that made me more depressed so I flushed all my PTSD meds… im no closer to being done with it but I’m not drugged up and I’m happier than when I was on the meds that made me want to commit suicide
This is a lie. Probably not intentional but false none-the-less and I know because I was forced into civilian care when VA treatment failed and the VA was constrained from using effective treatments ONLY available via civilian sources. I hate it when these false and misleading marketing announcements are made and even more so when the source is tax dollar sponsored.
I’m with you, Norman. My VA health records are full of bizarre lies.
I’m with everyone responding to this terrible lie by this quack doctor! Any veteran that has been in a war zone (combat or non-combat) suffers from this PTSD disorder, and the sole purpose of article like the above, is another example of the VA lying position to deny earned benefits to our men and women who put our lives on the line for this country…shame on the VA
Are you retarded? Everyone suffers from PTSD? Grow up, and stop trying to screw the rest of us deserving vets.