PTSD is one of the most misunderstood mental health conditions, especially among military service members. Despite growing awareness, myths persist—about who gets it, why it happens, and what it looks like. To help clear things up, here’s a fictional but realistic conversation between a service member and his behavioral health provider, designed to separate fact from fiction.
The collaboration study "Turning Training into Action: Translating Training of Behavioral Health Providers into Evidence-Based Practices" is led by Dr. Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth from the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University, with CDP site-PI Jeffrey Cook. The study utilizes the Star Behavioral Health Providers (SBHP) program, a training and referral system used by the National Guard Bureau to elevate the standard of community-based behavioral health services. SBHP recruits and equips community providers with evidence-based knowledge through online and in-person training delivered to thousands across the country.
Traumatic invalidation is a powerful and often misunderstood concept that can play a significant role in the development and maintenance of PTSD. In our latest P4P episode, we sit down with Dr. Robin Brody who shared her insights on what traumatic invalidation is and how it contributes to trauma responses, including PTSD.
I’ve had mixed experiences with group therapy in my clinical practice. There’s no doubt that groups offer unique benefits beyond individual therapy. But they can also be difficult to initiate, in terms of recruiting group members, conducting screenings, and finding a time (and location) that works for all. And, in my experience, the choice to offer a group can sometimes be made out of necessity, as opposed to being a thoughtful recommendation based on the particular needs of the patient(s)
A few months ago, I was treating a patient with PTSD, but after greater exploration of his distress, which included guilt, shame, and feeling betrayed by his military boss, we fleshed out that moral injury was a salient part of his clinical picture. Currently, there is no consensus in the field on the exact definition of moral injury, but one I like refers to it as “enduring psychosocial and spiritual harms following exposures to high-stakes events that involve transgressions of one’s deeply held moral convictions or beliefs of right and wrong through one’s own or others’ action or inaction, or perceived betrayal by those in positions of authority or trust” (Phelps et al., 2022).