Trying to catch up on some blog posting from a while back, here is a link to an excellent article from Salon magazine on PTSD, and why talk therapy doesn't really help it much -- and can actually make symptoms worse, at least initially. The article, called "My Heart is Back," by Lynn Harris, also includes one of the few great explanations in print of how PTSD happens in the body, and takes a look at some treatments that do offer hope, with quotes from therapists who use them, including ones who were frustrated by what they couldn't offer their patients a few years back. Quite an excellent, overall article about PTSD and how to overcome it - and worth keeping on hand to share with friends and foes alike who may not understand, or believe, in what PTSD or combat trauma really is. (And the article, since it came out in 2004, talks about not just combat-triggered PTSD, but PTSD as a reaction to violent events over which we have no control.)
The gist of the article: "Talk therapy only increases the suffering for some trauma victims -- but alternative treatments offer new hope." (The book highlighted here on the left, Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal, by Belleruth Naparstek -- is written by one of the therapists quoted in the article.)
Some quotable quotes from the article, including these great ones, that sums it up: "PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal events" -- and "what we do know is that susceptibility to PTSD has nothing to do with, say, cowardice, or weakness of character."
"[A]pproximately 5 million Americans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder." "In fact, more people may have PTSD today than anyone ever realized. But because of recent advances in biochemistry, brain imagery and epidemiology, researchers are finding out that all manner of conditions -- some psychiatric, but some also physiological, such as chronic pain -- can be traced to PTSD."
Here's what some of the experts quoted in the article say:
- "...People with PTSD aren't crazy, and they get better," says Belleruth Naparstek. Today, in fact, their prognosis is the best it has ever been. For many years, "we didn't know how to help trauma survivors in any consistent way," says Naparstek. As she herself discovered while treating Frannie, "Talking about it -- the stock in trade of mental health professionals, pastors, good friends and spouses -- is not necessarily all that helpful, and can sometimes make symptoms worse."
- "PSTD is a normal reaction to abnormal events," says Beverly Donovan, a clinical psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Brecksville, Ohio, who runs an intensive treatment program for combat vets with PTSD.
- "When exposed to trauma, some people will have trouble letting go of the experience, but not because they want to dwell on it," says Steven Gold, Ph.D., director of the Trauma Resolution and Integration Program at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and president of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation. "There are various techniques for helping people move beyond it, which may have as much to do with the body's reaction to the experience as with the mind's. A few years ago some of these therapies would have been considered 'alternative, but now the major specialists in treating trauma would consider them more mainstream."
And the patient who they featured in the article, who'd suffered numerous horrific traumas, back to back? She's doing well. "My heart is back" -- "I'm connected to myself now." Great news, and what we would wish for all trauma survivors with PTSD. Be sure to read, and save, the article for future reference.
