Post-traumatic stress disorder remains a difficult, urgent, and prevalent problem among combat veterans, but millions of non-veterans experience the condition, too.
A new study suggests treatment resources for these patients, who can be affected following crimes, disasters, and accidents, are much less cohesive and helpful.
“For the other people affected by PTSD—victims of sexual assault, child abuse, and natural disasters—there really isn’t an organized body of research that generates guidance for how they and their caregivers should deal with their PTSD,” says lead author Judith Bentkover, a professor at Brown University.
“We know that gender, race, and culture affect how people deal with anxiety. The research that there is to date doesn’t provide a robust evidence base for treating PTSD in specific vulnerable subpopulations, by either sociodemographic cohort or by cause of PTSD. And where there are some good studies, we need better ways of organizing, synthesizing, retrieving, and translating the information we do have so that all treatment providers, patients, and caregivers can benefit from this knowledge.”
While many veterans continue to struggle to get help for the difficult but treatable condition, understanding what good care is and locating it is even more challenging for some nonveterans to come by, Bentkover says.
“The best PTSD treatment model we have can be found within the VA. Kids have PTSD. Women have PTSD. It’s not just a disease of veterans, although they are a very important and poignant cohort of people who have it. Sexual assault victims, abused children, survivors of natural disasters do not necessarily have a VA to go to. What do they do?”
For many nonveterans, it may be daunting to get connected to care. Some people with PTSD who remain untreated may develop other medical problems and tend to account for more healthcare costs than those persons who receive PTSD treatment.
As an economist, Bentkover recognizes not only that people are suffering but also that they may be considerably less productive during their struggle. Those who are not treated may require public expenditures if they become jobless or homeless. Marital and family discord that results in broken families could impose costs on their children.
“PTSD is not only a huge healthcare problem, it is a huge cost,” she says.
ONLINE RESOURCES
To learn more about what resources civilians might have access to, researchers reviewed the academic and economic research literature on civilian PTSD treatment as well as consumer-oriented websites and found that while some research and resources specific to nonveterans can be found, too little is available to help nonveterans or their doctors understand, compare, and access treatment they believe would be right for them.
“Caregiver and patient-centered internet searches for PTSD treatment programs and support resources located sites that were often rich in information but not necessarily organized to facilitate consumer decision-making,” the authors write in a study published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry.
“Generally speaking, consumer websites could perform several key functions more effectively, such as simplifying complex evidence regarding treatments, identifying areas of consensus versus controversy, and providing concrete tips for navigating among the different treatment options and providers.”
To some extent the lack of patient-specific treatment guidance stems from a dearth of studies that have evaluated the effectiveness of PTSD treatment delivery among different civilian populations, the authors said, but also there hasn’t been a coordinated effort to amass what is known.
“A major finding of the authors’ search for nonmilitary service providers is that there is no centralized listing of PTSD providers, treatment programs, and support programs at the state or local level and limited listings at the federal level.”
While many institutions and segments of society, including DoD and the VHA, have become more supportive of veterans affected by PTSD in recent years, a robust support network for nonveterans with PTSD does not appear to have emerged, she says.
HOW TO IMPROVE
The authors provide several recommendations to improve treatment information for nonveterans, including:
- Further research on treatment outcomes, access, and costs.
- Uniform measures across such studies to ensure comparability and standard means of indexing to improve information discovery.
- More research related to specific causes (such as violent crime) and populations (such as women or children).
- Establishment of a patient-centered institute to marshal and maintain resources and best practices for treatment.
“We’d like to see information on outcomes for particular patients that reflect implementation in the real world,” Bentkover says. “We’d like to see a lot of program evaluation with empirical data about treatment efficacy and effectiveness and we’d like to see information on cost effectiveness.”
One Mind for Research and the Tug McGraw Foundation supported the study.
Source: Brown University and Futurity.org
My daughter has been diagnosed with PTSD due to issue that happened with her college coach. I’d like to learn as much as I can regarding ptsd because it has changed my whole family’s life.
My daughter suffers with PTSD after becoming a rape victim. She was hit over the head, drugged, gagged and then raped by two men. We live in the UK and it is the same over here, she has had no proper therapy treatment since first entering the mental health system back in November 2014. She has been sectioned 4 times after various suicide attempts, she has taken overdoses, tried to jump off of bridges and stairwells. Most of the nurses that nursed her did not even understand the effects ptsd has on individuals and she has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. We all feel that this is a misdiagnosis due to the non understanding of PTSD by her treating consultant as she was perfectly fine up until her assault. She was training to be a nurse, had a doctor boyfriend and she has lost everything through all of this. I just thought that I would let you know that it is just not in America that this happens.
Kind Regards
Mrs Myra Tutty
So sorry to hear about what happened to your daughter and the lack of support afterwards. It is like being victimized a second time unfortunately. Thank you for sharing your story.
Ms. Dixon thank you for sharing. We will make plans to share a future story in 2016.
I was diagnosed with ptsd last year 4 years after the traumatic birth of my son. At the time it was written off as baby blues as I could or outwardly appeared fine to other people around me. As the years passed and I fell pregnant with my 2 nd child my symptoms worsened however it still took a futher year and a half to be diagnosed. All that time I was convinced it was iny head and couldn’t make sense of the way I reacted or felt about such on the face of it insignificant situations. It has been a year since I was diagnosed and received end treatment as well as continuing to take antidepressants. But help out there and understanding is so few and far between not just for those who suffer ptsd but the support and information for those supporting that individual too. Too many times. People don’t understand just how many things can cause ptsd and how many different ways it affects both your life and those around you.
Thank you for sharing your story Laura!