MHA Society for Behavioral Health

Researchers develop tool for accurate PTSD detection

Researchers at Geisinger Health System have created a tool called New York PTSD Risk Score that they say proved successful in signaling the presence of post-traumatic stress disorder in hospital-discharged Level I trauma patients and chronic pain outpatients. The hope is to advance the study to more appropriate PTSD treatments, researchers reported in General Hospital Psychiatry.

Read more here.

Back From The Brink: War, Suicide, And PTSD

In the opening paragraph of his Narrative Matters essay in the July issue of Health Affairs, Ron Capps describes sitting in a pickup truck in the Darfur section of Sudan, planning to shoot himself with a borrowed pistol. He was stopped only by the chance timing of a phone call from his wife in Washington D.C.

Capps’ essay details his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As a soldier and Foreign Service officer he observed atrocities in a number of war zones, and he describes the images of the disfigured dead he had failed to save who tormented him through sleepless nights. Capps cites the huge unmet need for PTSD treatment among active soldiers and veterans, and he explains the barriers that prevent so many PTSD sufferers from seeking treatment.

Read more from the Health Affairs blog here.