Sleep and and sleep deprivation are big topics in the "Veterans with PTSD" world. In combat, servicemembers "function" despite being chronically sleep-deprived. When they return home, veterans find that nightmares, sleep avoidance, and typically poor sleep set up difficult recovery from combat trauma.
No less an authority than Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., has weighted in on the perils of poor sleep for veterans. (Shay is the author of Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and of Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.) In personal correspondence with this author, he wrote:
I have become something of a nut-case on the subject of sleep in every aspect of psychological injury: sleep loss as a cause of psychological injury to others when people, especially leaders, lose emotional and ethical self-control; sleep loss as a critical intervening variable between horrible experience today and persisting psychological injury weeks/months/years later; sleep loss as a critical intervening variable in the complications of psychological injury that wreck the lives of veterans and their families; restoration of sleep as crucial to recovery even years later. So consider yourself warned, that I will try to interest you in that subject...
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Of particular interest to combat veterans and their families, the LA Times has a live web chat planned on "Sleep Issues and PTSD" tomorrow, Tuesday, at 12 noon PST. Click here for the link.
According to a related article coming out in Tuesday's LA Times,
Sleep and wakefulness issues are the most common health problems described by recently returned soldiers, researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center found in a study published last year.
A Times reporter and videographer stayed up all night with the former Marine and his fiancee to witness his struggles. (The print story will appear in Tuesday's newspaper. A video of the vigil, plus interviews with Hood and other veterans, accompany the story on the Web.)
Join us for a live Web chat at noon Tuesday to discuss the influence of war on sleep and how physicians try to treat the problems. We will be doing a question-and-answer session with Dr. Thomas C. Neylan, director of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) Program at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Steve Woodward, director of the Sleep Research Laboratory at the VA's National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Palo Alto.
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NPR recently had a program devoted to the topic of sleep (and insomnia): "Can't Sleep? Neither Can 60 Million Other Americans." Not specific to PTSD issues, it's nonetheless a very good overview of the subject. For that link, click here.
Editor's Note: For other blog entries and resources devoted to sleep and PTSD, click here.
This is an important topic, and I hope you'll keep reporting on it.
I'm still waiting for one of those Star Trek gizmos that the doctor used to put on a person's forehead to induce sleep and shut down brainwaves.
Posted by: RJO | August 05, 2008 at 10:05 PM