BETHESDA, MD — It never occurred to Lt. Col. Eric Holt, DO, that he wouldn’t fully recover from the multiple injuries — including traumatic brain injury — he suffered when an IED hit his vehicle in Afghanistan. The blast ripped the vehicle apart and threw Holt into a compound wall.

Researchers Call for Larger Studies at Lower Oxygen Doses
WASHINGTON — The use of hyperbaric oxygen to improve mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) resulted in no symptom relief at the exposure pressure tested, according to a new report, which calls for larger studies at lower total oxygen doses.

BOSTON - PTSD and TBI are frequently co-morbid in veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan - so frequently that physicians are surprised when they find one without the other. And yet the two injuries are still mostly thought of as isolated conditions and are treated separately, even though symptoms of the two injuries are so interwoven they sometimes cannot be differentiated.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WA—At a recent resiliency camp held here, 60 children getting ready for the return of a parent from long deployment were asked to write down all of the bad thoughts they had faced in the past year—because of deployment or anxious anticipation about the return. All of the notes then were gathered and set ablaze, as the children discussed the importance of letting those concerns disappear as if they were smoke.

AARHUS, DENMARK--Traumatic experiences in childhood, not wartime experiences, may have greater influence on which deployed servicemembers develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

WASHINGTON — Only days before the opening game of the NFL season, the NFL and Army announced they were teaming up to raise awareness about TBI, an injury that plagues both organizations.

ROCHESTER, MN — With sweeping new initiatives from the White House and elsewhere in response to the burgeoning military suicide rate, little guidance has been offered to the clinicians in the trenches who are best positioned to recognize and prevent such drastic actions.

FORT DETRICK, MD — In the wake of a memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense Jonathan Woodson, MD, expressing concern about potential over-prescription of antipsychotic drugs for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, the Army and VA have launched an interagency research program to evaluate the effectiveness of several other medications to treat common PTSD symptoms.

WASHINGTON —Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond Chandler III said he was faced with his “own mortality” in Iraq in 2004, when a rocket blew up in the room where he was.

A new study suggests that providing more telemental health could have an especially beneficial effect on treatment of rural veterans with PTSD.¹