Blog posts with the tag "Staff Perspective"

Staff Perspective: Around the Web - 8 May 2019

By Christopher Adams  on 08.05.2019 1:54 pm

We're going to mix things up a bit this week. Instead of our usual one topic, we're going to take a quick look at a series of relevant stories from around the web. The articles we'll be looking are:

  • Prolonged exposure therapy is more effective in treating veterans with PTSD, alcohol use disorder
  • Virtual Reality as Therapy for Pain
  • Frustrations mount over lack of progress on preventing veterans’ suicide

Staff Perspective: Two Weeks in Australia - A Memoir on Mitigating Jet Lag and Feeding Kangaroos

By Carin Lefkowitz  on 01.05.2019 8:57 am
Carin Lefkowitz, Psy.D.

I don’t have to tell you that jet lag can impact the first few days of travel, regardless of whether you’re on vacation or a deployment, and even if you’re only traveling through a couple of different time zones. Many of our physical and cognitive functions are regulated by our circadian rhythm, including alertness, logical reasoning, and appetite (Kryger, Roth, & Dement, 2016). So symptoms associated with jet lag – grogginess, mood changes, fatigue – result from a systemic mismatch between our personal circadian rhythm and the local time. In general, it takes about one day to adjust to each hour of time change when traveling across time zones. However, a recent trip to Australia, which is (on average) 16 hours ahead of my Eastern US time zone, would take some serious adjustments ahead of time.

Staff Perspective: Sleep's Importance Highlighted at Risk, Resilience, and Recovery Conference

By David Reynolds  on 24.04.2019 8:34 am

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. 

Staff Perspective: Let’s Talk About Insufficient Sleep - An Interview with Neuroscientist Dr. Tracy Jill Doty

By Diana Dolan  on 17.04.2019 10:18 am
Diana Dolan, Ph.D., CBSM

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.

Staff Perspective: Sleep Disturbances and Suicide Risk

By Regina Shillinglaw  on 10.04.2019 1:51 pm

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.

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