Military Officer - June 2007 - (Page 62)

include substance abuse, ﬁts of violence or rage, dangerous behaviors, and relationship difﬁculties. Psychotherapy and medication have become the gold standard for PTSD treatment. However, they don’t work for all patients. “PTSD is not a unitary condition,” explains Lt. Col. Michael Russell, USA, Ph.D., command psychologist for the Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va. “Its primary symptoms and secondary issues make for a very complex picture within each individual. As a result, we have yet to ﬁnd an ideal treatment that is a cure for everyone.” But there’s hope. Military and other researchers are investigating alternative modalities, many of which show promise as effective complements to common treatments. Col. Brian Rees, USAR, battalion surgeon of the 310th MP Battalion, has practiced TM for 35 years. It has beneﬁted him in many ways including helping him cope with the harsh realities of medical service in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I feel ﬁne when I’m there, an actual calm,” Rees explains. “I still feel awful over some of the things I see, but that’s just the way it is. I grieve, I shed tears, but as far as not being able to sleep or enjoy anything afterward, I really haven’t had any of that.” Yoga nidra T Transcendental meditation Transcendental meditation (TM) is a centuries-old, mantra-based relaxation technique that has been studied as a therapeutic modality for a variety of disorders, including PTSD, reports Sarina Grosswald, who has a doctorate in education. She is president of SJ Grosswald & Associates, a medical education consulting ﬁrm based in Arlington, Va., and project director for a research study on the TM program at Kingsbury Day School in Washington, D.C. “TM addresses not just the mental issues of PTSD but also the physical problems that accompany stress disorders, including hypertension and heart disease,” Grosswald says. “There are many years of research showing the effectiveness of TM in reducing stress and anxiety and improving well-being and mental outlook.” Despite extensive research in other areas, only one study — conducted at the University of Colorado in Denver in the mid-1980s — has evaluated TM’s effectiveness in treating military personnel affected by PTSD. In that study, published in 1985 in the Journal of Counseling and Development, researcher James Brooks and colleagues randomly assigned Vietnam veterans seeking treatment for PTSD to either a three-month TM program or psychotherapy. At the end of the three months, the majority of the 10 participants in the TM program reported a signiﬁcant reduction in overall symptoms, including depression, anxiety, and emotional numbness. Seven of the 10 participants said they thought they had improved enough to discontinue counseling at their local VA medical center. TM can beneﬁt victims of PTSD by giving their minds and bodies a deep rest, says Maj. D. Edwards Smith, USAR-Ret., a retired physician and current TM practitioner and instructor in Baltimore. “When you practice TM twice a day, you get rid of any accumulated stresses of the day, then you begin to go back and get rid of the backlog of stress,” explains Smith. “It’s a matter of giving the body the rest it needs to do its own self-repair.” 62 MILITARY OFFICER JUNE 2007 Y Yoga nidra (YN) is an ancient, transformative meditative technique that can help PTSD patients release self-destructive patterns and achieve psychological, physical, and spiritual healing, says Dr. Richard Miller, a clinical psychologist in Sebastopol, Calif. Miller studied the use of YN as a potential treatment for PTSD in July and August 2006 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), Washington, D.C. Although the study group was just seven participants, the results were promising. “The trend we [saw] was very favorable in the direction of decreasing the participants’ PTSD symptoms, and it seems comparable to cognitive behavioral therapy or exposure therapy,” Miller says. “It was positive enough for us to want to continue the study with a larger population.” The technique, which Miller renamed “integrative restoration,” or iRest, includes several components, including deep, progressive relaxation and breathing exercises, with the ultimate goal of deconstructing the thoughts and emotions that trigger and keep PTSD in place. “The protocol eventually leads to a sense of equanimity and well-being that [patients] can carry into the rest of their lives and help them overcome triggering events or other stressful situations,” explains Miller, director of the Center of Timeless Being, which offers YN instruction. T RESOURCE Virtual reality The virtual reality (VR) technology used to create today’s ultrarealistic video games and military simulators might one day be used to treat service personnel with PTSD, says Cmdr. Russell Shilling, USN, program ofﬁcer for medical science and technology at the Ofﬁce of Naval Research (ONR) in Arlington, Va. In 2005, the ONR awarded $4 million to support tests of VR treatment at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego and at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii. The ■ For a concise summary of the causes and effects of PTSD, see “Ask the Doctor,” page 48. To find out what assistance programs are available to help treat patients with PTSD, visit www.moaa.org/ magazine/november2005/f_aftershock.asp. http://www.moaa.org/magazine/november2005/f_aftershock.asp http://www.moaa.org/magazine/november2005/f_aftershock.asp

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Military Officer - June 2007 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Getting the Best Care Stand By Me Promise for PTSD Cover Story: Heavy Duty Unified Medical Command Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Member Books Advertising Index MOAA Member Services MOAA Calendar MOAA Scholarship Donors Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - June 2007

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