Author: Dennis Hickey

There are no limits to success to those who never stop learning. Learning will nourish your personal growth. I hope you enjoy this website and visit often so you too keep learning and growing.

PTSD and the VA

Today and tomorrow

PTSD is no longer an anxiety disorder. PTSD is sometimes associated with other mood states (for example, depression) and with angry or reckless behavior rather than anxiety. So, PTSD is now in a new category, Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders. PTSD includes four different types of symptoms: reliving the traumatic event (also called re-experiencing or intrusion); avoiding situations that are reminders of the event; negative changes in beliefs and feelings; and feeling keyed up (also called hyperarousal or over-reactive to situations). Most people experience some of these symptoms after a traumatic event, so PTSD is not diagnosed unless all four types of symptoms last for at least a month and cause significant distress or problems with day-to-day functioning.

Today VA operates more than 200 specialized programs for the treatment of PTSD. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, more than a half million Veterans diagnosed with PTSD received treatment at VA medical centers and clinics.

VA is committed to provide the most effective, evidence-based care for PTSD. It has created programs to ensure VA clinicians receive training in state-of-the-art treatments for PTSD. At of the end of FY 2013, VA had trained more than 5000 of its clinicians to use Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) or Prolonged Exposure (PE), which are cited by the Institute of Medicine Committee on Treatment of PTSD as proven to be effective treatments for PTSD.

VA’s National Center for PTSD was created in 1989 by an act of Congress and celebrated its 25th anniversary on August 29, 2014. We continue to be at the forefront of progress in the scientific understanding and treatment of PTSD. In addition to improving upon existing treatments, we are researching effective new treatments. We are also developing new educational products such as our What is PTSD? whiteboard video.

Epidemiology of PTSD

What is epidemiology?

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of disease in a population. Numerous studies have been conducted to assess the prevalence of PTSD across different populations. Below is a brief review of some of the major studies that have assessed the prevalence of PTSD in nationally representative samples as well as in samples of Veterans.

What is prevalence?

Prevalence is the proportion of people in a population that have a given disorder at a given time. It represents the existing cases of a disorder in a population or group. Prevalence estimates can be influenced by many factors including disorder occurrence (if new disorder occurrences increase, prevalence will increase) and the duration of the disorder (the longer people live with a disorder, the higher the prevalence). These estimates can also differ by demographic factors such as age and gender. It is important to qualify prevalence estimates with the time at which they were measured, as prevalence estimates can shift over time. Similarly, when interpreting prevalence estimates, it is important to keep in mind that prevalence is dynamic – it can change over people, places, and time.

Often prevalence is discussed in terms of lifetime prevalence. Other times, statistics will be given on current prevalence of PTSD in a given time frame, usually one year. At the end of this fact sheet you will find descriptions of other terms commonly used in epidemiology.

Prevalence of PTSD in the Community

 

Prevalence of PTSD in Veterans

National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study

The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) , conducted between November 1986 and February 1988, comprised interviews of 3,016 American Veterans selected to provide a representative sample of those who served in the armed forces during the Vietnam era. The estimated lifetime prevalence of PTSD among these Veterans was 30.9% for men and 26.9% for women. Of Vietnam theater Veterans, 15.2% of males and 8.1% of females were currently diagnosed with PTSD at the time the study was conducted (8).

Gulf War Veterans

Kang and others conducted a study to estimate the prevalence of PTSD in a population-based sample of 11,441 Gulf War Veterans from 1995 to 1997. PTSD was assessed using the PTSD Checklist (PCL;9) rather than interviews, with those scoring 50 or higher considered to have met criteria for PTSD. The prevalence of current PTSD in this sample of Gulf War Veterans was 12.1%. Further, the authors estimated the prevalence of PTSD among the total Gulf War Veteran population to be 10.1% (10).

Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom

In 2008, the RAND Corporation, Center for Military Health Policy Research, published a population-based study that examined the prevalence of PTSD among previously deployed Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Afghanistan and Iraq) service members (11). PTSD was assessed using the PCL, as in the Gulf War Veterans study. Among the 1,938 participants, the prevalence of current PTSD was 13.8%.

 

 

20 Writing Mistakes

It’s nearly impossible to find success without making (many) mistakes along the way. However, we don’t want to sit on the sidelines and see writers repeat the same mistakes over and over again.  So here is an infographic of common writing mistakes writers make along with tips on how to fix them.

Sorry about the image. To see a full-size image, go to grammarcheck.net/writing-mistakes

Career Focus

 I have worked with leaders who are too paranoid about the results that they don’t care about relationships and the ones who are so internally focused that they miss the beat of the market. 

Leadership in a complex world (made all the more complex by the pandemic) requires leaders to have a more holistic focus on their own needs (and values), needs of the others (stakeholders, customers, employees) and needs of the context that they operate in (trends, future outlook, changing market needs, tech disruptions etc.)

Leaders need to cultivate their awareness at three levels and what they can do to improve upon these three areas of focus. This is timeless advice for leaders and learners who really want to create an impact through their work.

Here is the sketch note version I created to capture the essence.

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Source: TANMAY VORA

Seriously Still Alive

How Many Vietnam Veterans Are Still Alive?

2.7 million, the estimated number of veterans who actually served in Vietnam, rather than at home or in some other theater. This made it appear that nearly one-third of those veterans were dead in 2000 and that they were dying at a rate of almost 400 a day. That would have meant more than 100,000 deaths a year, or nearly two million between 2000 and 2015 — a path to near-total disappearance.

But I remain…