Free Republic

"Soldiers haunted by scenes of war and victims scarred by violence may wish they could wipe the memories from their minds. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University say that may someday be possible. A commercial drug remains far off — and its use would be subject to many ethical and practical questions. But scientists have laid a foundation with their discovery that proteins can be removed from the brain's fear center to erase memories forever."

When my wife was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy in 2005, the word “epilepsy” was all she heard. “My ears began to buzz and I felt as if I was going to black out,” she says. “It was as if someone had just told me that I was possessed by demons.” Since that diagnosis, Sharon describes her daily struggles as plunging into a medieval world of demonic possession, of medical professionals who did not believe in the diagnosis, and into an arena of social stigmas that she never knew existed. Medical experts (www.epilepsyfoundation.org) agree epilepsy affects between one and two...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A defense lawyer says a student accused of cutting a Muslim taxi driver's neck in New York City has post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic alcoholism. A Manhattan judge said Monday he'll decide at arraignment whether to grant bail for Michael Enright, of Brewster, N.Y.

"Iraq Veteran Stripped of Right To Bear Arms," 5 News Ft Smith-Fayetteville tells us.Why?"A year ago the Irelan's began receiving a small stipend from Veterans Affairs because Lana had to take over the family's finances...The V.A. declared Wayne Irelan incompetent and now his right to own a gun is gone."Why would they do that, and what are the repercussions? "Irelan has post traumatic stress disorder from the Iraq war, but his wife says he has never been violent...The couple didn't know Wayne's gun rights had been terminated until they went to get a gun out of pawn. Days later Wayne...

[caption id="attachment_9110" align="alignright" width="240" caption="It's Nobody's Fault"][/caption] A brief survey of stories about murders around the country shows how frequently family members, victims, the police, and others involved gravitate toward the notion that the murderer was crazy or as some call it, “mentally” ill. It isn’t always stated that way, but sympathy for the murderer is sometimes given more coverage than for the murder victim. Suggestions that the perpetrator “must have snapped” is simply a way to excuse murder. In fact, a reality television with the name “Snapped” has been created to explore stories of women who murdered their husbands....

Monday August 30, 2010 Later Abortions Linked to Psychological Problems: Study Springfield, IL, August 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study of women who had abortions has found that women undergoing later abortions face increased psychological risks, are more likely to be ambivalent about having an abortion and are more likely to need counseling and support.   The results came from an online survey of 374 women who answered a detailed questionnaire about the circumstances leading to their abortions, their previous mental health history, or physical or sexual abuse and emotional state following abortion. The small study is the first...

Study: 52% of Women Experience PTSD After Abortions Washington, DC -- A new study finds the later a woman has an abortion the more likely it is that she faces mental health risks and is under pressure from a partner or others to have an abortion she may not otherwise want. Women getting later abortions also are more likely to be ambivalent about having an abortion. http://LifeNews.com/nat6665.html

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) -- Gina was a playful 2-year-old German shepherd when she went to Iraq as a highly trained bomb-sniffing dog with the military, conducting door-to-door searches and witnessing all sorts of noisy explosions. She returned home to Colorado cowering and fearful. When her handlers tried to take her into a building, she would stiffen her legs and resist. Once inside, she would tuck her tail beneath her body and slink along the floor.

From awarding medals to offering expanded stress-related training and counseling, the U.S. Marine Corps is seeking to rid its distinction as the military branch with the highest suicide rate. Whereas the U.S. Army is averaging 21.7 suicides per 100,000 soldiers, the Marines are at 24. In 2009, the Corps lost more troops to suicide than combat in Afghanistan. As recently as 2006, the Marine Corps suicide rate was only 12.9. To encourage Marines to actively help others struggling with suicidal tendencies, the service awarded Lance Corporal Jonathan Burson the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for coming to the aid...

TAMPA — Ronald Bullock made MacDill Air Force Base his home even though he was no longer in the military. Decades had passed since a grenade blew up on him in Vietnam, rendering him disabled, his brother said. But as a veteran with a military ID, he could stay at the base's campground for six months at a time. Bullock, 61, didn't have a family or a job. He told his uncle he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. "He took a mess of pills to keep him going, to keep him cool," said his uncle, Phil Sullivan, 80, of Tampa....

Some Georgians could soon be carrying a unique driver’s license – one that says they have post-traumatic stress disorder. Lawmakers recently passed legislation that would allow current and former military to request the PTSD designation on their driver’s licenses. The legislation, which has to be signed by the governor to become law, would likely make Georgia the first state with a driver’s license that denotes a specific health problem, other than poor eyesight.Some veterans and law enforcement officials say they can’t image that many servicemen and servicewomen will want their PTSD diagnosis put on display when they present their driver’s...

Big loss for CNN: Foreign correspondent Michael Ware, famous for his coverage of the Iraq war, has left the network. All Things CNN, an independent blog covering the network, writes that Ware has been on leave working on a book and struggling with PTSD from his years of war reporting. He needed more time off, but his request was denied, and now he's not coming back, the blog reports. A CNN spokesperson confirmed to The Huffington Post that Ware has been on leave but declined to comment further than that. Ware discussed his PTSD in a disturbing December 2008 Men's...

A potentially deadly drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been linked to the deaths of soldiers returning from war. Yet the FDA continues to approve it. Sgt. Eric Layne's death was not pretty. A few months after being prescribed a drug cocktail with the antidepressant Paxil, the mood stabilizer Klonopin and AstraZeneca's controversial antipsychotic drug Seroquel, the Iraq war veteran was "suffering from incontinence, severe depression [and] continuous headaches," according to his widow, Janette Layne, at FDA hearings for new Seroquel approvals last year. Soon he had tremors. " ... [H]is breathing was labored [and] he had developed sleep...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- A Connecticut police officer who shot and killed a chimpanzee last year after it mauled a woman has been denied a claim for workers' compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder because state law only applies to police shootings of people.

People are afraid to lose money and an unusual study released on Monday explains why -- the brain's fear center controls the response to a gamble. U.S. | Science | Health | Lifestyle The study of two women with brain lesions that made them unafraid to lose on a gamble showed the amygdala, the brain's fear center, activates at the very thought of losing money. [...]

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md., Jan. 28, 2010 – As a critical care nurse, Air Force Lt. Col. Mary Carlisle’s focus always has been on helping others. It wasn’t until a harrowing deployment to Iraq that the tables turned, and she became the one in need of aid. Air Force Lt. Col. Mary Carlisle, a critical care nurse, speaks with a colleague at the 2010 Military Health System Conference at the National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Md., Jan. 26, 2010. Carlisle spoke at the conference of her battle with post-traumatic stress disorder and her eventual healing. DoD photo by Elaine...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11, 2010 – When Staff Sgt. Megan Krause returned home from a deployment in Iraq in 2006, she thought the scariest moments of her life were over. Jill Herzog, of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, comforts Army Staff Sgt. Megan Krause after her speech about her battle with post-traumatic stress disorder. Krause spoke during the 2010 Suicide Prevention Conference sponsored by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., Jan. 11, 2010. DoD photo by Elaine Wilson  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. At her homecoming, “I ran to...

A temporal twist to a therapeutic technique could block old terrors. Fearful memories can be wiped out for at least a year using a drug-free technique, according to a study done in the United States. The technique exploits the way that human brains store and recall memories. When a long-term memory is recalled, it goes through a brief period of vulnerability, after which it must be stored anew to be remembered again. While the memory is in its fragile state, it can be modified or disrupted. Studies in animals1 have used drugs to interfere with this reconsolidation process, stirring hope...

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - Marines treated at Camp Lejeune for post-traumatic stress had to undergo therapy for months in temporary trailers where they could hear bomb blasts, machine-gun fire and war cries through the thin walls, according to servicemen and their former psychiatrist. The eight trailers were used for nearly two years, until a permanent clinic was completed in September in another location on the base, said a Camp Lejeune medical spokesman, Navy Lt. j.g. Mark Jean-Pierre. The noise from training exercises "shook me up real bad. I couldn't take it. I almost ran out of there a couple of...

Nov. 20 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army recently funded a five-year, $50 million study by the National Institute of Mental Health to examine the factors possibly associated with suicide, including combat-related trauma, personal and economic stress, family history, childhood abuse, a military unit's cohesion and general mental health. With all due respect to the eminent scientists at NIMH, I wonder if much of that information is available already from civilian sources, both online and in paper-bound publications. I would doubt that surveying hundreds of thousands of recruits and interviewing soldiers will, in the end, provide that eureka moment they seem...