This would be great. I actually it would be more helpful for clinicians to understand the neurological connections to trauma. We shouldn't have to pay for major medical testing to know that someone does not have PTSD from being cheated on. But if the technology could be made cheaper, great. I know some people have been able to get their hormones checked (like adrenaline and all related stuff), but that doesn't seem like common practice (my doctor thinks it's too messy and inconclusive).
"Researchers are looking at biomarkers in the blood, genetic markers to see if people are predisposed to developing the disorder, brain imaging studies to see where connections in the brain are lost, eye studies to see if eye contact is off, and much more. Their hope is that they will be able to employ these tactics for diagnosis within five years."
This all makes good sense for understanding PTSD better. Five years sounds idealistic. My clinic is pretty good but they don't even have a person doing neurofeedback. And the whole field of neuroendocrinology is pretty new. But there are obvious markers. We already know that. The affordable technology and diagnostic methods (like which markers do we need) just have to be set forth.
Bessel Van Der Kolk wrote about a couple who were in the same horrid car crash. When reminded of the trauma, they each had very different responses, shown by brain scans. The wife went numb and felt nothing. Most of her brain shut down. For her, this response related to her earlier experiences in life. The husband went into hyper-arousal. Very different parts of his brain were activated. But both could be seen as traumatic responses.
Being able to do further testing like this (whether looking at hormone levels or what is happening in the brain) might be most useful for difficult PTSD cases...as a way to prescribe better treatment (medication, therapy, etc). I can't imagine going through the expenses of such testing for people who believe they have PTSD from a bad break-up. But maybe better markers like this are necessary for the confused clinicians who don't understand the nature of trauma...help them stay in line to the existing diagnosis perhaps...and have available tools for further testing when looking for better ways to assess hyper-arousal or dissociation and match to better treatments.
Ultimately I assume these kinds of assessment tools could help us better research treatment for PTSD. And the clinicians who diagnose PTSD for being fired or dumped need to just stop it.
