Differences between Vietnam Vets and today’s Veterans

I started working with soldiers suffering from PTSD during the Vietnam War.  Those men and women were mostly a draft military with shorter deployments, and much was still unknown about post-traumatic stress.  Today, troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are all-volunteer, and we know much more about the causes and treatment of war-related psychological problems.   Still many of today’s soldiers signed up as Reservists or National Guardsmen, and never expected to be sent to multiple, extended combat deployments.  This article from Health Journeys discusses these differences and others between Vietnam-era Veterans and those from our current conflicts.

A New Scientific Way to Diagnose PTSD

Diagnosing PTSD, especially when it comes to proving the condition to the military or the VA, can be a challenge.   A Soldier or Veteran can experience symptoms of the disorder, but unless the government ties it to a documented, service-related incident they deem significant enough, getting a Veteran benefits for the condition can be an uphill battle. 

This piece in Time Magazine reports on a new way to diagnose PTSD.    Researchers from the Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and University of Minnesota say they have developed methods that prove PTSD is a brain disorder that they can diagnose in individual patients.  These researchers are also claiming they can chart the progress of therapies in PTSD sufferers. 

Their method involves a brain scan using “magnetoencephalography (MEG), a way of monitoring the flow of electrical signals along the brain's neural pathways from cell to cell.”

While this new technology probably won’t be a complete solution to diagnosing PTSD, the data is very promising and the new scans they are using could be a valuable tool in indentifying PTSD sufferers and measuring the effectiveness of different treatments.

Thousands of Wounded Veterans Already Require Full-time Care by Family

As I’ve written about before, the fallout here at home from our current wars is something that cannot be predicted, but based on the issues we’ve already seen with our returning Veterans, you can bet these wars will have long-lasting effects on those men and women who served in combat as well as their families and communities. 

One issue that has been identified in this article from USA Today is the impact on family members thrust into the roles of full-time caregivers, when a military family member comes home severely wounded.   According to the article, there are “thousands of unpaid caregivers — parents, spouses, siblings and war buddies — helping Veterans injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars get through each day.”