PTSD News

SAN DIEGO —A nationwide shortage of mental health professionals and other barriers to care may make home-based telemedicine an effective option for the diagnosis, assessment and treatment of many mental health conditions, including PTSD, according to data presented at U.S. Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress.

Some parents of children with cancer experience distress for many years, regardless of the treatment outcome, according to results of a longitudinal study.

Most mothers living in Louisiana did not experience increased depressive symptom trajectories following Hurricane Katrina, and social support was a protective factor of depression resilience, according to recent findings.

The spindle and kinetochore-associated complex subunit 2 gene may be a predictor of PTSD symptoms and cortical thinning in brain regions that regulate strong emotions and coping with stress, according to study findings in Molecular Psychiatry.

Patients with combat-related PTSD who also had obstructive sleep apnea demonstrated worsened sleep-related symptoms and quality of life compared with patients without sleep apnea and healthy controls, according to study results.

Among active U.S. military members and veterans, risk for PTSD did not significantly differ between genders.

Strong relationships with neighbors had a protective effect on risk for PTSD among older adults exposed to Hurricane Sandy, a destructive hurricane that affected the northeast United States in 2012.

Attention bias variability may be a useful cognitive biomarker of PTSD, according to study findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Analysis of MRI data indicated a relationship between re-experiencing PTSD symptoms and weakened connectivity in a brain network involved in providing contextual information, and a similar relationship was observed in veterans who experienced mild traumatic brain injury.

A review of randomized clinical trials shows cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure led to clinically meaningful improvements for many individuals with military-related PTSD; however, non-response rates were high and many patients continued to have symptoms.