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In after the 1991 Gulf War, PTSD rates spiked beyond rates ever seen in the US Army. A study commissioned to examine the effects of PTSD found that this long-te
by foenix 14y ago
In after the 1991 Gulf War, PTSD rates spiked beyond rates ever seen in the US Army. A study commissioned to examine the effects of PTSD found that this long-term stress was actually causing the hippocampus (the short-to-med/long term memory module of the brain, amongst other things) to atrophy.
This confirmed a similar effect they had found with mice a few years earlier.
The next push is to replicate the more positive result of environment enrichment, which has been shown in mice but not people. Basically, environment enrichment has been shown to help facilitate LTP (long-term potentiation — an extreme period of neurogenosis) and makes the hippocampus less prone to stress-induced atrophy.
I've personally been a few very high stress work environments, but I use this knowledge to help convince myself to relax productively.
- dctoedt 14y ago> In after the 1991 Gulf War, PTSD rates spiked beyond rates ever seen in the US Army. Last year the [U.S.] Army's vice-chief of staff urged psychiatrists to change the term to "post-traumatic stress injury." Apparently, too many troops come home with PTSI but refuse to seek help. And as a result, some portion of them end up taking their own lives. The Army's hope is that renaming the phenomenon as an "injury" will reduce the fear of being stigmatized [0]. (Apparently some psychiatrists have rejected the idea of changing the name, because heaven forbid that they should alter their sacred naming convention for no better reason than that it might help some people.) [0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/05/key-psychiatric-doctor-rejects-name-change-for-ptsd.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/05/key-psychiatric-...