In one of the most unusual articles we've come across recently, this time in the Cincinatti Enquirer, apparently recent medical research is providing some advances into the fairly unexplored territory of why some people get PTSD and others exposed to the same triggers or circumstances do not.
Lawson Wilson, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Cincinnatti, cites research done at Massachusetts General Hospital which has isolate a specific area of the brain, the anterior cingulate, which can become unable to manage the stresses the brain has experienced.
In perhaps the shortest article on record, Wilson states, "Of all the U.S. soldiers and all the Iraqi citizens exposed to combat and terror, roughly one in 10 will end up with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The amazing good news is that the other nine of 10 war survivors will not develop PTSD."
Wilson goes on to say that for the other 10 percent "who are not so lucky or not so resilient, PTSD is like having wild horses locked in the barn. For long stretches, sometimes years, life might go on without trouble. The horses are quiet. The natural coping instincts work well enough. Then, for mysterious reasons, the demands of life wear down the coping instincts, and anxiety breaks through in the form of nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks. They can be as overwhelming as the original trauma, and they don't go away."
Treatment helps, Wilson promises, but isn't specific as to what treatments help. He does, however, mention the work of Scott Rauch, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who he asays "has identified a set of brain circuits that are out of whack in PTSD."
It will be interesting to keep our eyes open for more research on this topic and perhaps alerts as to what Rauch is finding at Mass. General as that develops.
