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VA'S CINCINNATI PTSD CLINIC TOUTS HIGH SUCCESS
RATE -- Using cognitive processing therapy,
clinicians
claim 70% success rate in treating PTSD.
Secretary
Nicholson calls treatment plan a model for VA.
(PHOTO FOR THIS ARTICLE IS HERE)
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Story here...
http://news.enquirer.com/
apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200708
17/NEWS01/308170029
Story below:
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Post-traumatic stress clinic succeeds
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
HWILKINSON@ENQUIRER.COM
A 70 percent success rate in the Cincinnati VA Medical Center’s programs
for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – particularly
its residential treatment program for women veterans – has caught the
attention of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Jim Nicholson.
Last month, Kate Chard, the director of the PTSD and Anxiety Disorders
Clinic at the VA’s Ft. Thomas facility, was called to Washington for a
private meeting with Nicholson, a Vietnam veteran who plans to leave
President Bush’s cabinet later this year.
“He wants to see PTSD care for every veteran returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan who needs it and he was much interested in how we how we do
it here,” said Chard, who was accompanied in the meeting by Lt. Sylvia
Blackwood, an Army reservist from Washington, D.C. who went through
Chard’s residential treatment program.
Chard said the secretary also wanted to know more about the system of
therapy Chard uses, called “cognitive processing therapy.”
Cognitive Processing Therapy, Chard said, is about learning to accept
natural emotions like grief and sadness while adjusting the
“manufactured” emotions many PTSD-afflicted veterans feel – emotions
like guilt for having survived while comrades died, or blaming
themselves for not doing enough to save their fellow soldiers.
“He said he thought we were the model for how therapy should be done,”
Chard said.
That is why Chard will spend much of the next year traveling to VA
medical centers around the country teaching her therapy methods to other
mental health care professionals.
The VA’s National Center on PTSD has estimated that 40 percent of those
who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan are suffering now from PTSD or
are likely to in the future.
In the Cincinnati area, hundreds of veterans – including many Vietnam
veterans – have walked through the doors of Chard’s clinic at the Fort
Thomas Nursing Home, one of the first VA PTSD clinics in the country.
Many receive out-patient care, but some end up in the clinic’s
seven-week residential program, where groups of 10 veterans receive
individual and group treatment.
Chard runs separate programs for men and women. The residential program
for women is the only one in the Midwest and Plains states.
Of the 103 Iraq-Afghanistan veterans who had gone through the program by
early June, 70 percent no longer met the criteria for PTSD. Some of the
criteria: irritability or outbursts of anger; difficulty sleeping;
disturbing dreams; feelings of detachment; and lack of interest in
things that were once part of the sufferer’s life.
“We haven’t had a single drop-out in the residential program among the
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans,” Chard said.
Chard said Nicholson told her he would instruct VA hospitals around the
country to do a better job of advertising the services for women
veterans at Chard’s clinics and others around the country.
The secretary, Chard said, also said he wants to eliminate delays in
veterans getting PTSD treatments while they go through the
time-consuming process of getting a PTSD disability rating from the VA.
National VA officials did not return calls.
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Larry Scott --
