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. This was a crazy week around here, as we had multiple events going on all week long.
The CDP's weekly research update contains the latest news, journal articles and useful links from around the web. Some of this week's topics include:
● Clinician’s Trauma Update (February 2016)
● DSM-5 Criteria and Its Implications for Diagnosing PTSD in Military Service Members and Veterans.
My brother, Wayne, would have celebrated his 41st birthday this month, but he died by suicide 10 years ago. If you’ve ever doubted that stigma surrounds this topic, consider that it has taken me (a psychologist who’s spent years working with trauma and empathizing with clients’ darkest moments) a decade to acknowledge his suicide in a public, uncensored venue. My CDP colleagues have written powerful blogs about coping in survivors of suicide (see recent posts by Dr. Lisa French here and Dr. Regina Shillinglaw here) that inspired to me to reflect both on how I’ve coped with Wayne’s death, and how it has influenced my clinical work.
A U.S. Veteran, I’ll call him Steve, walked into my office following his third and final military deployment. He was referred to me for an evaluation of a potential traumatic brain injury (TBI). As a member of an artillery unit, traveling across Iraq in convoys, Steve, who is a composite, not an actual person, witnessed many deaths and injuries; he felt lucky to have returned safely home without significant limitations, other than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
59%
"The grant rate for Vietnam veterans applying for PTSD-based discharge upgrades" from the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records (ABCMR) since former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hegel issued a memo in 2014 ordering administrative boards "to grant 'liberal consideration' to applications from veterans with PTSD," according to a new report issued by the Veterans Legal Services Clinic, Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization of Yale Law School -- Unfinished Business: Correcting “Bad Paper” for Veterans with PTSD (PDF)