Deployment Psychology Blog

Staff Perspective: My client says marijuana helps with PTSD symptoms. That can’t be the case… right?

Josh Gray, Ph.D.

If a client proclaimed during a session that drugs with abuse potential are beneficial in managing PTSD symptoms, most therapists would identify this as cause for concern. When drugs with abuse potential are used in response to PTSD symptoms, they generally maintain or exacerbate the condition. For example, the classic client with alcohol use disorder and PTSD drinks to avoid trauma-related thoughts and reduce heightened arousal symptoms (e.g., hypervigilance).

By the Numbers - 28 August 2017

By the Numbers Graphic

26% 

The percentage of Veterans who meet "the criteria for an insomnia disorder," according to a new commentary article in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine -- Insomnia in Primary Care: Misreported, Mishandled, and Just Plain Missed. Approximately 10% meet those criteria in the general U.S. population (although a related article gives a range of 4% to 22%). 

CDP News: 25 August 2017

Welcome to this week’s edition of CDP News! We like to use this space to review recent happenings in and around the Center for Deployment Psychology, while also looking ahead to upcoming events. We’re already into the last week of August and summer will be over before we know it.

Staff Perspective: Lessons Learned from Examining Sleep Functioning of At-Home Partners Over the Course of Military Deployment

Timothy Rogers, Ph.D.

Miller et al. (2017) conducted a study on the sleep functioning of at-home partners from the Readiness and Resilience in National Guard Soldiers (RINGS-2) project. The RINGS-2 project is a prospective longitudinal study of National Guard soldiers deployed to Iraq/Kuwait in 2011-2012. This is an important study because despite existing literature indicating deployments having negative effects on the health of military spouses, there has been limited research focused specifically on sleep functioning changes across the deployment cycle.

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