One of the most common questions related to post-traumatic stress disorder is “How do you know if you have PTSD?” It’s a question asked by police officers, soldiers, victims of physical assault, car accident survivors and more, tens of thousands of times every day. Members of the mental health profession have devised a set of 8 criteria that must be met to help determine if a person is suffering from PTSD. Below we’ll go through them one at a time.
For people with chronic pain syndrome, pain is their daily reality. In some cases, there may have been a clear cause for the pain. In other cases, the cause may be a mystery. But either way, the pain persists and may continue to do so for weeks, months or years. Just to add a bit of insult to injury research is now suggesting that pain may actually contribute to hypertension – otherwise known as high blood pressure. But can that be? Can chronic pain cause high blood pressure? That’s what we’re here to find out.
Anxiety is part of your body’s natural defense mechanism. In its ideal form, it’s a state of heightened awareness to danger and a precursor to either standing down, fleeing or fighting. Problems arise when anxiety becomes a chronic state; an end unto itself that often arises for irrational reasons. When that happens it’s considered an anxiety disorder. At some point, you may wind up asking yourself “Do I have anxiety?” Below, we’ll provide some tips to help you answer that question.
Since childhood, Rachael Petersen had lived with an unexplainable sense of grief that no drug or talk therapy could entirely ease. So in 2017 she volunteered for a small clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University that was testing psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, for chronic depression.
Currently, there is an unmet need for the development of rapid-acting antidepressants aimed at treatment-resistant patients with either major depressive disorder (MDD) or bipolar disorder. A review of existing treatment options, as well as future possibilities, was published in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
Date:July 31, 2019
Source:Johns Hopkins Medicine Summary:
In a new paper, the researchers clarify the mechanism behind ketamine’s mechanism of action in hopes of restoring the therapy’s standing among health care professionals and the public.
SARASOTA — This month’s decision by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to offer a psychedelic drug to treat post-traumatic stress disorder while marijuana remains off limits is leaving some stakeholders flummoxed amid the ongoing wave of veteran suicides.
