Cure For PTSD - Does it Exist?

[lrs]

I am in a unique position. I wrote a story, which Anthony has been kind enough to allow to be posted on this forum. It is titled "I Believe PTSD is Curable". I described what I was like, what I did, and what I am like after, as honestly and accurately as I know how to do.
I am not only a former patient, but I am also a health care professional. However, I tried to stay within the boundaries of that of a patient.
There have been two threads on this forum that were relevant to this topic.
One was:
"What Criteria Would Have to be Met for PTSD to be Considered Curable?"
another was
"Left Brain Struggles To Put Right Brain Emotion Into Words"
It has been some time since anyone has responded on either thread, so I will go ahead and bump them up to today.
It is my belief that PTSD is curable. I know what I was like, how sick I was, and how my life today is so much different.

 

[waif123]

There is an unfortunate truth, the Doctors, therapists who do the work and cure patients do not have time to write up their research. I doubt there will ever be a magic cure to PTSD, but a process of intertwined techniques are working. Diet, stopping caffeine, CBT therapy such as what is found in the feeing good handbook, a very painful exposure therapy, exposing yourself to both your triggers and your traumas, adding in benifets such as group therapy, possibly psychodrama,, as well as adding in Eastern Philosophy of mindfullness. Also using medication to help control the symptoms until you have properly done the exposure work. every doctor I have encountered since I started my treatment, have all said this is how you cure PtSD

If you were to enter a private forum for sufferers of sexual abuse, rape, you would find a lot of people suffering from PTSD, however look on the bookshelves, talk to the survivors, they have overcome this, and on a forum if you said that they wouldn't be cured, there would be a huge out roar against you.

In North America we are looking for the quick fix, the magic pill. We look at studies such as emdr therapy, but unfortunately no one is doing studies on a combined look at all the treatments being used together. Will one treatment ever come about that cures PTSD I don't know.

And I am sorry Anthony, but if I do not believe this i will not be cured. We can only rise as high as our greatest expectations.

Belief is the foundation of change

 

[lrs]

I think you are right about how we are looking for the quick fix. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's how it appears to me as well.

 

[Deleted member 93]

Belief is the foundation of change

Waif please keep up your insight. I love reading what you write up! The combo you wrote up is a lot of what I have done for a while now. OK, I am not "better" but a damn lot closer than a few years ago doing those things. No quick fix here. I have had to a major lifestyle change on so many levels to get here.I hope to keep progressing.

I have yet to answer a poll on this since I got here. I still am on the fence.

 

[anthony]

There is an unfortunate truth, the Doctors, therapists who do the work and cure patients do not have time to write up their research.

I disagree with this Waif, in that many actually do write and publish their findings. You only need subscribe to the medical journals of mental health to see these very findings. The problem is with these, is that whilst some physicians do good work, many do not. This however is not a cure from their work, it is as you state below, more a method to teach a person how to heal, how to manage, however; it has certainly not cured their PTSD as an illness itself. If you at any stage expose them to stressors, remove some aspects from their life that help them relax or are their safe zone, they will quickly crash and symptoms exposed once again. Yes, the idea though is that the cycle become less each time, and it does if a person really wants it bad enough. I am walking proof of all this, as are others here, however; if you removed certain aspects in my life that ensure I manage my lifestyle, manage my exposure to daily stressors and so forth, I also end up ill again. If not, I can go for months, years without major issue compared to a person without PTSD, you would not know the difference. Change my lifestyle though, change my stressor exposure, a person without PTSD just goes through it, I would go through it also, but I would come out ill as a result compared to the person without PTSD.

I doubt there will ever be a magic cure to PTSD

I wouldn't agree with this either. Whilst there is factually no cure at present, and I will not allow any person to be dishonest here and state there is a "cure" as such, by definition a cure means: the successful treatment of a disease or illness to the preformed state. That means, like it never existed. Unfortunately that is not so with PTSD, because you can never be as before due to the requirements of lifetime management. However, with the work they are doing as you outlined, relating to the growing of human cells, they are even looking at growing human body parts so that if you got heart disease, they would simply grow you another heart from your tissue, one free of defect, then transplant your heart with one of an exact DNA match, which means 99.9% less chance of your body rejecting it. Science is moving at quite a pace, I do not deny that, as it is fact. Saying that though, and saying whilst they are finding some very interesting aspects to possibly fix (cure) a lot of mental healthy problems in the future, presently no fix (cure) exists. So I sit equally on the fence, but I do not ever tell anyone that I am cured, because I am not and simply what has occurred recently with my ex-wife being rather nasty to make my life shit, it affected me and made me ill. Yes, I bounced back quite quiickly due to all my CBT, education, learning techniques, healing past trauma, etc etc... but PTSD is still very much a physiological part of my brain which nothing I currently do, nor any medication on the market do, will reverse the damage and fix (cure) the changes that have taken place which force my body to have these symptomatic reactions.

but a process of intertwined techniques are working. Diet, stopping caffeine, CBT therapy such as what is found in the feeing good handbook, a very painful exposure therapy, exposing yourself to both your triggers and your traumas, adding in benefits such as group therapy, possibly psychodrama, as well as adding in Eastern Philosophy of mindfulness. Also using medication to help control the symptoms until you have properly done the exposure work.

This is accurate Waif, factual.... totally concur with this statement, well said.

every doctor I have encountered since I started my treatment, have all said this is how you cure PtSD

Every doctor you encountered was wrong then, if that is what they have stated to you, because the facts are; no cure currently exists for PTSD. The only thing that exists is known methods to reduce the symptoms, control them, medicate them, but nothing to actually reverse the brain damage that PTSD causes which makes it the incurable mental illness it is. I would rather people know the truth, to learn to be honest with themselves, than to live in the clouds of disbelief that a cure for this exists, which factually does not.

If you were to enter a private forum for sufferers of sexual abuse, rape, you would find a lot of people suffering from PTSD, however look on the bookshelves, talk to the survivors, they have overcome this, and on a forum if you said that they wouldn't be cured, there would be a huge out roar against you.

That may be what other forums do... they may feed one another bullshit, fictional statements, but this forum does not. This forum deals in facts only, and it will remain that way.

In North America we are looking for the quick fix, the magic pill. We look at studies such as emdr therapy, but unfortunately no one is doing studies on a combined look at all the treatments being used together. Will one treatment ever come about that cures PTSD I don't know.

I hope it does come along Waif, but until then we must deal with only the facts as they are presented... Society in general want a quick fix for things Waif... but society is also realizing the errors of their ignorant ways now. The greenhouse issue is one such realization of that ignorance, as to many thousands, millions off other ignorance's that society is now realizing.

And I am sorry Anthony, but if I do not believe this i will not be cured. We can only rise as high as our greatest expectations.

Belief is the foundation of change

Waif, I would never tell you not to believe what you wanted, however; I will tell you to not attempt to spread fiction here, because that is what a cure is, fictional at present. I don't care what other forums do, I care what this forum does only. I don't have physicians coming to this forum from around the world for the fun off it.... they come here to read, to learn, because they are finding truths that many forums just never discuss, facts, not fiction. Your beliefs are your beliefs Waif, and that I respect, however; as a result you must respect my way in which I run this forum, and that is; opinions are always welcome, facts welcome, venting welcome, fiction not welcome. We can discuss it, but at no time is it ever given as advice that a person can be cured from PTSD until factually that is proven.

I do not lie, and I will not have people telling lies upon the forum that I willingly know are such and have the power to cease. I want people to be honest, and to achieve that they must be factual, they must be realistic with what their dealing with, not thinking this forum can cure them, that their therapy can cure them, but instead know factually that they can participate in life if they heal their trauma, heal their pain, expose themselves to their fears and beyond, learn techniques to manage their daily stress, control their lifestyle, ensure they have a home of safety and security, that they maintain a good diet with exercise to manage the depression aspects, etc etc.

The facts though, once all this is done PTSD has not gone away, it is still very present within their brain. What you can do is heal trauma, you can do that. You cannot fix it, but you can heal it. You cannot cure it, because the memories never actually go away, you still have them, you just teach a person how to no longer fear them so they are caused pain from those memories.

Deal in facts Waif... I have no problems. Deal in fiction, and I will have issues with that, guaranteed. I would expect people in general to have issues with fiction.... because beyond reading it for a good story to relax and unwind, it serves no purpose otherwise in PTSD recovery techniques.

 

[anthony]

And I will add... LRS and I have discussed quite indepth what occurred surrounding LRS, though it was more to do with learning ambidexterity than playing a musical instrument. Music is factually proven to be a therapeudic form of stress relief, so it may be an aspect in what LRS says "cured" LRS, however; this is one person, not many, no studies... does it work on everyone? Was it the learning to play a musical instrument both hands equal or the chemical reaction that takes place with being ambidextrous? These are questions that are unknown, though discussed here in threads LRS bumped up already. I would hope physicians studied this, and I believe someone did pick it up for a study, or possible study to evaluate the effects. Problem once again, its a study that will take years to complete, then they must look at the results. Shit, even it such a thing actually did provide a cure for 50%, where 50% of the sufferers actually did have a chemical reversal, that would be good enough to try it. If it worked for LRS only, but not another, then its not a cure, it is pure luck or a combination of other factors surrounding LRS's life, lifestyle, symptoms, trauma, etc etc....

I personally believe that we have more hope in the scientists ability to regrow certain brain portions to reverse damaged parts. I believe one method is in trial already with a chemical they found to do this, and they are administering it by medication for the trial, though could be directly injected if required for near instant results. Again though, something they found on rats but has yet to be proven on humans. We won't know for a minimum of a decade, even more.... but I think it will happen....

 

[anthony]

There is also an existing poll on this very question, as veiled eluded she had not seen one, here is the link: [DLMURL]http://www.ptsdforum.org/thread248.html[/DLMURL]

 

[Deleted member 93]

Oh so right there is that poll here. I know that, what I mean is I have not voted on it as I am still on the fence. I believe the post here has been there longer than I. I just to this day cannot answer it in good faith or because I try to hold on to some. :wink:

 

[anthony]

Ah... cool... fair enough then. It is a hard one to answer IMHO.... because you must decide whether you use fact or belief I think.... I use both, but I still answered no on it based on the facts at that time. They have come a long way though in the past year IMHO with research surrounding regrowth and repair off human organs... which would even swing my opinion to include another addition to such a poll, something like:

• Yes
• No
• A cure will be found through science eventually

 

[Bradinn]

Okay, let me see if I can unravel at least for myself some of what is being espoused here.......

In regards to Doctors publishing their work, Anthony you replied to Waif:
I disagree with this Waif, in that many actually do write and publish their findings. You only need subscribe to the medical journals of mental health to see these very findings.

Statistically, I would have to say Waif is correct in this. All you need to do is to look at the numbers. Look at the medical journals published in the course of a month, count the number of articles they contain. That number is a hell of a lot smaller than the number of practicing health professionals. Or even the number of individuals published in the course of a year, or two, or 5. It's still a lot smaller. If you narrow the scope of comparison to articles about mental health, in specific articles about PTSD, and then compare the number to the number of mental health professionals working with trauma victims, the ratio gets even more skewed. Some of them have reached a point where they can publish, or are in a situation where they are required to publish, but so many of them tend to invest their time in working with their patients, and have little time to publish.

Then we move on to the magic cure for PTSD...the quick fix....when this was mentioned Anthony, you responded:
by definition a cure means: the successful treatment of a disease or illness to the preformed state. That means, like it never existed. Unfortunately that is not so with PTSD

Like it never existed? If that's the definition that you're working from, then by that definition, no disease or illness has ever been cured in the history of medicine. Every disease, every illness leaves it's mark on the body (or mind in some cases). A case of the flu can leave microscopic scars in the lungs. they may not cause pain, but they're there. Appendicitis, the cure alone for that one leaves a hell of a mark on the body. It's an interesting thought that in medical terms, the idea of a cure can quite often involve doing nearly as much damage to the body as the illness itself. You can cure a lot of things by surgery, but surgery is in and of itself a trauma inflicted on the human body under carefully controlled circumstances. An illness or disease will never disappear as though it never existed. Though by that definition....there already is a quick fix, a fairly simple procedure. I believe they call it a lobotomy. That would make it as though it never existed. If we open up our handy dictionary.com and have a look at the actual definition of the word:

CURE:

1. a means of healing or restoring to health; remedy.
2. a method or course of remedial treatment, as for disease.
3. successful remedial treatment; restoration to health.
4. a means of correcting or relieving anything that is troublesome or detrimental: to seek a cure for inflation.
5. the act or a method of preserving meat, fish, etc., by smoking, salting, or the like.
6. spiritual or religious charge of the people in a certain district.
7. the office or district of a curate or parish priest.
–verb (used with object)
8. to restore to health.
9. to relieve or rid of something detrimental, as an illness or a bad habit.
10. to prepare (meat, fish, etc.) for preservation by salting, drying, etc.
11. to promote hardening of (fresh concrete or mortar), as by keeping it damp.
12. to process (rubber, tobacco, etc.) as by fermentation or aging.
–verb (used without object)
13. to effect a cure.
14. to become cured.

Okay we'll ignore the whole preserving meat since that's not a part of this conversation, but I don't see anything about causing symptoms to be "as though they never were". I see restoration to health. But there we are back to that little problem of semantics. Health is not a constant. Health is not your weight, you can weight yourself and say, great, I'm 250 now, I want to be 210....and work towards it. You can't do that with health. Health is an individual determination based on a general feeling of well being measured on an individual basis.....To relieve or rid of something detrimental.....taking away that which is detrimental, I don't read into that making it as though it was never there. Removing the detriment is not the same thing as erasing all evidence of it's existence. The things which cause the health problems are gone, but the scars remain. As it is with PTSD, the trauma can be healed, and the health detriments can be removed. But the scars; the memories, remain, they no longer cause the same pain, or the same health detriments, but they will always be there. Memories are integral, irremovable, but I would say that in the end they are similar to the scars of an illness.

On the whole I agree with Waif that western society has gotten lazy. We are looking for a quick fix to everything, and mental health is no exception (everyone on the Atkins diet raise your hands!) Everybody wants one treatment, or one quick little therapy that will solve all their problems, and they could have it (see lobotomy comment above) but the cure might be worse than the problem. It's a combination of factors. It's the human mind, and no two think alike. A cure for 100 people with PTSD will be 100 different cocktails of therapy, medication, mindfulness and hard work.

This goes right back to my problem with all of the studies you can quote. They're all crap. Especially when it comes to PTSD. A medical study look at a treatment under very carefully controlled circumstances. There is a regiment that must be followed in order to ensure the validity of the data. It's a process with inviolable rules if you want to get it published. Studies are rigid and unbending. How can anyone who has ever lived with PTSD place any faith whatsoever, or believe for a second that any study done under such controlled circumstances can ever produce a valid finding for something as varied, and as individual as this illness? You have already agreed with Waif that treatment must be varied, must contain a number of different approaches, and must be modified as that treatment progresses......and it's going to be different for each and every person. Medical studies are incredibly biased against illnesses of the mind. In reading through what Waif has said, I don't see how this is getting misinterpreted.

Regarding Waif saying that every doctor she has dealt with has told her this was how to cure PTSD, a reply was made:
"Every doctor you encountered was wrong then, if that is what they have stated to you, because the facts are; no cure currently exists for PTSD. The only thing that exists is known methods to reduce the symptoms, control them, medicate them, but nothing to actually reverse the brain damage that PTSD causes which makes it the incurable mental illness it is. I would rather people know the truth, to learn to be honest with themselves, than to live in the clouds of disbelief that a cure for this exists, which factually does not."

First off.....wow. For a forum based on support and open exchange in a comfortable and non judgmental environment.....that was.....that was just so....not.
In an earlier post Waif has already noted that the brain, in particular the hipocampus can regrow, it doesn't even need medication to do it, just a proper lifestyle. The brain can reverse it's damage. You're asking for medical strictures to be applied to an illness that treads into the philosophical and the spiritual. They are diametric opposites.

Speaking of the more philosophical....Waif noted that if you were to espouse such an opinion in a sexual abuse survivors forum, there would be an outroar, and Anthony replied: "That may be what other forums do... they may feed one another bullshit, fictional statements, but this forum does not. This forum deals in facts only, and it will remain that way."

I read this, and I have to wonder, "How healthy is that?" Of course as the board administrator you're the boss here, and as such, you're perfectly correct to hold to your own ideals about how information on this board is presented. Although I find it to be a bit of a mystery. Let's step back from mental illness for a moment and look at medicine in general. One of the things that any doctor will agree to is that beating any illness is the work of the patient. Medicine and drugs, treatment regimens and surgery can only go so far. The patient has to want to get better. They tell cancer patients that the most important thing they can do is to fight to heal, to believe it. Your mind can aid the healing process, or it can impair it. My thing is....essentially this board is telling someone not to bother believing they will ever get better. While I may understand the semantical differences, and accept the premise that you believe, a confused and scared person entering the world of PTSD is going to read all of this and think, "well damn, I'm stuck in this forever". Right off the bat, the first thing that happens is that they lose their hope. It's crushed beneath the boots of facts derived from a medical environment that has been applying the rules for cutting up apples to oranges. This is simply a philosophical thought, a hypothetical question if you will, but if you have two people, lets call them Jack and Jill......both have PTSD, both are looking for how to proceed. Jack wanders in and reads there is no cure, you'll never get any better, deal with it, you're stuck here the rest of your life. And poor old Jack believes that, and now, right off the bat, Jack is working at a disadvantage. Considering that with PTSD he is already in pain mentally, and prone to negative thinking, that thought has now taken hold and sabotaged him. Then we have Jill, who hears for the first thing, "You can get through it, you can come out the other side, this can be beaten, this can be overcome". Who is going to be in a better position to actually benefit from help? From a philosophical point of view, what you call truthfulness, I see as fostering a hopeless outlook. Anthony, you mentioned several times that fiction is not welcome. I would contend that letting people live without hope is the worst kind of fiction.

 

[waif123]

I am wondering Anthony do you believe people can not be cured but can recover?

 

[spiritofnow]

I wanted to add what my doctor spoke to me about today - I know there is not much weighting in one persons perception - but I believe him to be a very good doctor!

I told him about this forum and about the types of information that there was on PTSD. He agreed that there is an ongoing debate about PTSD being curable and that was highly dependant on the school of thought that a proffesional belongs to as much as anything.

He was a doctor in the Royal Air Force and treated/worked with POW's - ultimatley he said that some did recover and some did not - those who did not where individuals who had experienced the worst types of trauma whilst imprisoned.

So I guess alot of this comes down to a persons experience and the support they receive alongside their determination. I do realsie that life is much more complex than that!

I guess if you have the odds staked against you like not having any emotional attachmetns with people who can love and support you, that your fight would be much harder than those who do have this.

Anyway, I just wanted to add that! I DO BELIEVE THAT IT IS TREATABLE AND CURABLE -it is about my strength of mind! That does nto neagate that I am struggling and realy struggling right now but that frame of mind has got to be a good start to healing?