HGI: New option for PTSD treatment offers way out of political and ethical dilemma

Tuesday, 05, Jun 2007 12:00

From the journal Human Givens (Vol 14, Issue 2), by Piers Bishop, a director of the Human Givens Institute (HGI).

So you have come home from Iraq and even though you’re out of the war zone, every night your sleep is splintered by nightmares of death and destruction.

Do you a) apply for a pension, accept the label of PTSD and become part of the victim culture, or b) ignore it and hope it will go away, risking the slide into depression and suicidality that has now claimed the lives of more Falklands veterans than the Falklands War itself did? This is the dilemma facing soldiers all over the world, and it has had some curious side-effects:

• In the US, compensation for veterans with PTSD costs billion a year, with no sign of slowing down. There is now a move to restrict the diagnosis of PTSD.

• In Australia a new business has emerged – coaching veteran in how to display the symptoms of PTSD so they can get enhanced pensions.

• All over the world there are cases of violence and murder where PTSD is being cited as a defence.

• In the UK it is very hard for soldiers to get a diagnosis of PTSD, and in a number of cases military specialists have reversed civilian psychiatrists’ trauma diagnoses.

All of this is happening because it is believed that PTSD is a long-term, disabling and very expensive condition. But there is a way out of this dilemma once you have a simple and effective way to detraumatised people quickly.

The HGI has that treatment, and Bishop argues in this article that this makes it possible, sensible, humane and ethically necessary to offer quick, early treatment to anyone who has the symptoms, before they get ‘stuck’ in the compensation system or victim culture.