PTSD Treatment Problems at the U.S. Veterans Administration

Addressing PTSD and suicide in US veterans.

To the Editor: We read with great interest the article by Wisco et al1 regarding the prevalence and impact of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a nationally representative sample of US veterans. After analyzing data from over 3,000 US veterans in 2011, the authors concluded that (1) the prevalence of lifetime and current PTSD was 8.0% and 4.8%, respectively; (2) PTSD was associated with a...

Treatment of Women Veterans with PTSD

Estimating PTSD prevalence in US veterans: considering combat exposure, PTSD checklist cutpoints, and DSM-5.

Despite the outstanding methodology, this study will no doubt generate questions and debate, like most veteran studies, concerning sample representativeness and interpretation in the context of other research related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, PCL validity, or diagnostic changes between DSM-IV and DSM-5. Questions concerning representativeness stem from the observation that veterans acco...

Prolonged exposure for PTSD in a Veterans Health Administration PTSD clinic.

With the move toward dissemination of empirically supported treatments in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), dissemination of additional data concerning the effectiveness of prolonged exposure (PE) among veterans is important. The authors present clinical treatment data from veterans with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treated in a VHA PTSD clinic (N = 10). Veterans demonst...

Implementing CBTI at the Veterans Health Administration.

T has been considerable research indicating that the prevalence for insomnia is high, that cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia (CBTI) is an effective treatment, and that it maintains its effectiveness during follow-up periods for as long as two years.1,2 Despite this, there have been diffi culties in disseminating CBTI so that more individuals would benefi t. The article by Manber et al. in...