Renowned sleep researcher, Dr. Anne Germain from the University of Pittsburg, reviewed her and others’ research at the 14th Annual Amygdala, Stress, and PTSD Conference on April 16th in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Germain’s talk, “Wake up to Sleep! A Translational Perspective of the Role of Sleep in Readiness and Resilience" was presented to over 300 clinicians, researchers and graduate students.
Insomnia among Service members receives a lot of well-deserved attention, as evidenced by the need for the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) workshops CDP provides. That said, insufficient sleep or sleep deprivation is arguably more common. Data shows while approximately 20% of soldiers score above the cutoff score on an insomnia screener (Taylor et al, 2016), 69-72% of Service members obtain six hours or less sleep nightly (Mysliwiec et al, 2013; Luxton et al, 2011). In other words, only a little over a quarter of Service members get into the recommended range of 7-8 hours of sleep nightly. Personally, I would go so far as to say that even seven hours of sleep is insufficient for the majority of people based on my evaluation of sleep research.
Relatively recent research has established sleep problems as an important predictor of elevated suicide risk. Specific aspects of sleep problems that are associated with greater suicide risk are not clear, but insomnia severity, insomnia duration, nightmare severity, and nightmare duration are possibilities. Since there are multiple dimensions of sleep that may play a role in suicide risk, more attention is needed to understand the mechanisms by which sleep influences one’s risk for suicide.
CDP, together with National Center for PTSD, recently completed the first of three training events in Prolonged Exposure (PE) with community providers who treat Veterans with PTSD as part of a pilot project funded by the National Center for PTSD. We interviewed Dr. Sonya Norman, director of the VA’s PTSD Consultation Program and Mr. Todd McKee, program manager, who are leading this project.
After exploring the effects on the immediate family, I’d like to refocus on the injured Service member/Veteran and highlight some important resources for better understanding the experiences of TBI through the words of the survivors themselves. The following links highlight several examples of interviews and documentaries with Service members and Veterans who experienced TBI during their military careers.