Have We Shut Down Possible Treatments For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Have We Shut Down Possible Treatments For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Is it more valuable for a soldier to be dead after war then to stay alive? A recent case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder victimized another solider of the Iraqian War. Eugene , a 36 year old Iraqian war victim and a specialist in the United States Army has suffered from PTSD after his service in the army from his war activities where he shot an innocent man during a combat and later on watched the mother of the man search for the body and her grief for the loss. This experience forever changed his life and has lead to severe chronic pain.

     Over the course of past couple of decades, psychiatrists have put in extraneous efforts to find cure for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Several therapies such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Exposure Therapy and Psychomotor Therapy have been developed to overcome the disorder. Several critics of the Psychomotor Therapy address it as the worst option to treat PTSD and very few individuals practice it . Different psychiatrists implement different therapies or a combination based on the individual case. Despite the continuous argument amongst the psychiatrist on which therapy is the best and efficient, every psychiatrist agrees that the cause is rooted from the conscious experience, which one engages in, that is stored in the unconscious mind. In Daniel Bor’s book, The Ravenous Brain: How the new science of consciousness explains our instantiable search for meaning, he addresses Ao Dijksterhuis’s point that it is beneficial for an individual to think consciously about simple issues and leave the complex matter for the unconscious mind.  Ao Dijksterhuis’s, a Dutch researcher, whose experiment results suggested a higher success rate amongst the volunteers who used unconscious mind to make a correct decision about cars when higher number of criteria/ fact needed to be evaluated.

     Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist and a strong proponent and implementer of Psychomotor theory, suggests that PTSD rises in patients when memories stored in the unconscious mind from their trauma events evade the subconscious thoughts that prolongs the flight or fight period in an individual. The prolonging period lead to the development of chronic pain further described as PTSD. In the case of Eugene, the psychomotor theory reenacts the trauma where he is able to express all his emotions that he failed to during the actual trauma. This helped him replenish his memory by replacing his bad memory with alternative perspective which eventually reduced his chronic pain. This occurs because the learning process as Bor suggests is primary complex and conscious while the retention process is unconscious and the only way to alter these unconscious storage is through conscious experience. The trauma that individuals suffer from has nothing to do with cognition it is rooted in the memory which is what needs to be target as Dr.Kolk suggests. Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Exposure Therapy do not address this issue, and instead treat the effect rather than the cause by monitoring the behavior. Eugene who has now finished a couple of this therapy sessions no longer feels anxious visiting his doctor which is a significant improvement compared to his first visit.

Reference:

Bor, Daniel. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Conscousness Explains Our Insatiable Search
    for Meaning. New York: Basic, 2012. Print.

Interlandi, Jeneen. "A Revolution Approach To Treating PTSD." New York Times 22 May 2014.
   Web. 16 Oct. 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/a-revolutionary-approach-to-treating-ptsd.html