GREENVILLE, N.C. - First lady Michelle Obama's Joining Forces project has gotten a commitment from 100 medical schools to teach future physicians how to better diagnose and treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury.
ECU is playing a big role in helping our vets.
“I think it's a noble idea,” said Dr. Carmen Russoniello of ECU Studies. He’s working on better ways to help treat vets with PTSD.
He said he's hopeful of this new push to train future doctors to diagnose and treat PTSD. But the problem he said is properly diagnosing it.
Dr. Russoniello said the vet could have a Traumatic Brain Injury, be suffering from depression or anxiety, not have PTSD at all, but is trying to get benefits or is just covering their PTSD up.
“One of the things that we do know about PTSD is that it is an emotional disorder,” said Russoniello. He said while his colleagues work on finding biological markers or scans to diagnose the disorder, physicians need to know that medication won't necessarily fix the problem. “What really has to happen is that person has to touch that emotion to that event and that is very fearful what will happen if you let it go.”
Another problem Dr. Russoniello said is that PTSD may not show up for years.
And he should know, he's a former Marine who served in Vietnam who suffers from PTSD.
“There will be events throughout your life that will trigger those memory processes again. So for instance I was involved in a situation that involved a 19-year-old female that was an enemy combatant that was killed,” said Dr. Russoniello. “Well, when my daughter was 19, all those thoughts came back, you start to think about where would this person be now? And things of that nature. It never goes away.”
But as more understanding of the disorder comes to light, the better the future will be for our vets, especially in the east as more are coming home from war.
“I think that's a great plan but it's a long way out than where we are right now,” said Dr. Russoniello.
For their part, ECU's Brody School of Medicine will focus on traumatic brain injuries.
One major drawback for the project is there will be no additional funding for the teaching.
The medical schools at Wake Forest and UNC Chapel Hill are also taking part.
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