Here, yet not here

John Bradley

The latest DANA newsletter (reference 3) included an interesting article about PTSD, built around the work and experience of a one-time US army medical colonel - experience which includes a tour in Iraq and a father who did two tours in Vietnam.

PTSD - post traumatic stress disorder - with soldiers being the people far and away most likely to get it - is now recognised as a proper illness by its inclusion in that Bible of psychiatric diagnosis, DSM-III, back in the 1980's. See reference 4.

It seems that this illness accounts more than half of the spend of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on health, that National Health sized health operation in the country where most of the leaders think that national health is something that commies do. All very odd. See reference 5.

That maybe as many as a fifth of those returning from deployments to war zones will have or will develop PTSD.

That there have been reports of PTSD-like complaints from ancient Sumer and ancient India, some 5,000 years ago. Much more recent reports from the Thirty Years War in Europe and the Civil War in the U.S.. Not to mention those from the two world wars and beyond. While I have often thought that veterans of the Battle of Waterloo probably got their fair share. And what about the brutal and sanguinary battles of the Roman era?

That PTSD is not just the result of being in combat; being witness to the violence and brutality incidental to battle proper can be enough. The witness cannot cope with the disconnect with what he learned at home at his mother's knee and what he is seeing abroad.

I also learn that VA is building a million person database containing all kinds of stuff, including blood and DNA samples. A database which will be a research resource for a long time to come.

PS: there were a couple of other articles which caught my eye. One about a large meta-study of genetic factors underlying psychiatric and neurological disorders. Another million person database. Reference 7. Another article about how some emotions or feelings appear to be derivatives of the motor system - with the evidence being their link to whether one is right or left handed or not. Left or right hemisphere. Reference 8.

Reference 1: Here, Yet Not Here: When traumatic events etch themselves in the brain, behavior, well-being, and even the perception of reality can become altered, disrupting daily life - Kevin Jiang - 2018.

Reference 2: http://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/cost-conflict/here-yet-not-here. A source for reference 1.

Reference 3: Brain in the News - DANA Foundation - July/August 2018.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/06/dsm-5.html.

Reference 5: https://va.gov/.

Reference 6: https://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/36327/million-veteran-program-aims-revolutionize-genomic-research-help-veterans/. 'Well over 550,000 Veterans have enrolled in MVP as of early spring 2017. It is now the world’s largest genomic database tied to a health care system. VA predicts that a million Veterans will be enrolled by 2020. Volunteers give blood samples, which are stored at the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center in Boston'. I think it says somewhere else that they have already hit this target.

Reference 7: Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain - The Brainstorm Consortium, Verneri Anttila, Brendan Bulik-Sullivan, Hilary K. Finucane, Raymond K. Walter and others – 2018.

Reference 8: Approach motivation in human cerebral cortex - Geoffrey Brookshire, Daniel Casasanto – 2018.