The Clinical Sequelae of Dysfunctional Defense Responses: Dissociative Amnesia, Pain and Somatization, Emotional Motor Memory, and Interoceptive Loops

To maximize the possibility of survival in a situation of extreme danger, the defense responses have an immediacy that confers precedence of the midbrain over the cortex (Mobbs et al., 2009). This is especially important in the child's brain, which develops from ...

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Systematic review of the prevalence and characteristics of battle casualties from NATO coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan

BACKGROUND: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) coalition forces remain heavily committed on combat operations overseas. Understanding the prevalence and characteristics of battlefield injury of coalition partners is vital to combat casualty care performance improvement. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of battle casualties from NATO coalition partners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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'Strength at Home' Intervention to Prevent Conflict and Violence in Military Couples: Pilot Findings

In this article, we report on a pilot study of Strength at Home-Couples (SAH-C), a 10-session cognitive-behavioral couples-based group intervention designed to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) in military couples. The primary purposes of this pilot study were to determine feasibility of recruiting, retaining, and assessing SAH-C participants in addition to those participating in a comparison Supportive Therapy (ST) group-based couples intervention.

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Social support, oxytocin, and PTSD

AbstractBackground: A lack of social support and recognition by the environment is one of the most consistent risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and PTSD patients will recover faster with proper social support. The oxytocin system has been proposed to underlie beneficial effects of social support as it is implicated in both social bonding behavior and reducing stress responsivity, notably amygdala reactivity (Koch et al., 2014, Olff et al., 2010, Olff, 2012).

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Sleep Disturbances Predict Later Trauma-Related Distress: Cross-Panel Investigation Amidst Violent Turmoil

Objective: Sleep disturbances, including trouble falling and remaining asleep and recurrent nightmares, are symptoms of posttraumatic stress. A growing body of literature indicates that sleep disturbance may also convey vulnerability for the continuation of other symptoms of posttraumatic stress, including fear, anxiety, and heightened arousal. However, longitudinal research, which could help understand how these relationships unfold over time, has been limited.

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Sleep structure and emotional memory processing in police officers and combat veterans with PTSD

Disturbed sleep is one of the key symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and may contribute to the genesis and maintenance of PTSD. Our previously published study*, executed in healthy subjects, suggests that adaptive changes occur in sleep architecture, after emotional experiences, that benefit emotional housekeeping and the attenuation of emotional responses to negative emotional experiences. Little is known, however, about the relation between sleep and emotional memory processing in PTSD.

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Responses to terrorism : can psychosocial approaches break the cycle of violence?

Why do responses to terrorist attacks often perpetuate cycles of deadly violence? Using the violence in Northern Ireland and Rwanda as case studies throughout, Part 1, The Context of Terrorism, looks at the psychological and social influences behind extremism, terrorism and conflict. Part 2, Reponses to a Terrorist Attack, examines the responses that can feed a cycle of violence and assesses a range of approaches for their success in ending violence.

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Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: interdisciplinary perspectives

In this paper, inspired by the plenary panel at the 2013 meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Dr. Steven Southwick (chair) and multidisciplinary panelists Drs. George Bonanno, Ann Masten, Catherine Panter-Brick, and Rachel Yehuda tackle some of the most pressing current questions in the field of resilience research including: (1) how do we define resilience, (2) what are the most important determinants of resilience, (3) how are new technologies informing the science of resilience, and (4) what are the most effective ways to enhance resilience?

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Rapid emotional processing in relation to trauma-related symptoms as revealed by magnetic source imaging

Traumatic stress leads to functional reorganization in the brain and may trigger an alarm response. However, when the traumatic event produces severe helplessness, the predominant peri-traumatic response may instead be marked by a dissociative shutdown reaction. The neural correlates of this dissociative shutdown were investigated by presenting rapidly presented affective pictures to female participants with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and comparing responses to a Non-PTSD control group

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PTSD in the military: special considerations for understanding prevalence, pathophysiology and treatment following deployment

Given the unique context of warzone engagement, which may include chronic threat, multiple and lengthy deployments, and loss, there is a need to understand whether and to what extent knowledge about PTSD derived from studies of civilian trauma exposure is generalizeable to the military. This special issue on PTSD in the military addresses a range of issues and debates related to mental health in military personnel and combat veterans.

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