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What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

nytimes.com

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Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#31

Post by bane »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I can certainly believe that there is more going on than just stress, and the argument that compression waves travelling through the brain can damage it is pretty compelling. The question then is how would you block it? How would you protect yourself from a compression (blast) wave such that it went "around" your head rather than through it. Is there some material that could conduct that energy preferentially?

The evidence that TBI is becoming a real problem is certainly compelling, but PTSD occurs in many people who didn't suffer from this.

However, I'm on the side that thinks that periods of intense stress can produce a permanent, possibly physical, change in a person. These periods can be prolonged or particularly intense moments.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#33

Post by jcfrei »

ruffrey wrote: post #12

With a background in philosophy and neuroscience, I cringe at articles like this drawing a distinction psychological and physical. They are simply the same thing.

FYI: I read the same complaint in the comments of the article and submitted it with a different title. But mods have since changed it.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#34

Post by dctoedt »

dvanduzer wrote: post #9
mamon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the matter of material but shape. Soldier would have to wear something that completely surrounds his head, like motorcycle helmet. Which is very uncomfortable to wear if you have to wear it all the time.

When I talk to experienced motorcyclists, the biggest issue isn't the physical sensation of wearing a helmet. The problem is changing the acoustics around your ears. An enclosed helmet that "hears" like a human, but filters the spikes (powering your iPod in the process)?

> An enclosed helmet that "hears" like a human, but filters the spikes (powering your iPod in the process)?

A friend of mine is a big hunter; he has over-the-ear hearing protectors (battery-powered electronics) that do just that.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#35

Post by Madmallard »

Or, get this, and this is super radical of an idea I know:

There is not much of a separation between physical and psychological in the first place. Every part of the body is interconnected--as people develop disease, often times mental symptoms develop secondarily so. Depression and anxiety are super common in all sorts of illness states. There are numerous studies showing cellular dysfunction and rampant oxidative stress connecting to the more serious mental illnesses.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#36

Post by prutschman »

naasking wrote: post #20
whatshisface wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are simply the same thing. Not really, not in any useful way. To draw an analogy to computers, a "lesioned" transistor can be expected to produce an entirely different class of bug than an incorrect line of code. While a missing semicolon is technically a case of misplaced electrons, it really wouldn't be helpful to think of it in the same way you would think of 50,000V of misplaced static charge.

It's a false analogy though. Brains don't run software the way computers run software. The brain's behaviour is emergent from its physical structure.

A computer's behavior is no less emergent from its physical structure.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#38

Post by ht85 »

kmm wrote: post #15
ruffrey wrote: post #12

With a background in philosophy and neuroscience, I cringe at articles like this drawing a distinction psychological and physical. They are simply the same thing.

It's still a useful distinction. That's like saying all software is hardware because the bits and bytes are stored in magnetic moments on hard drives etc... Or that biology and chemistry are the same thing because all living things are made of chemicals. Sure, there's some overlap, but the fields are still very distinct. Not to mention that the physiology of the mind isn't very well known. Physicalism of the mind isn…

Except comparing body to hardware and mind to software doesn't make much sense.

If you want a better comparison, you could compare the mind to what happens within the CPU. Other chips would be other organs/subsystems, connected by veins, nerves and various canals (power and data buses). Then you'd have peripherals (limbs) with their firmware (reflexes), and sensors (eyes). All of those communicate together and have side effects on each other.

In the analogy, the body is the whole computer, and the CPU is a part of it, they aren't two separate entities that run in parallel.

If you want to compare hardware software, for humans it'd rather be flesh electrical/chemical signals.

You'll notice that almost all interesting behavior happens on the right side of the . Flesh/hardware are pretty boring, they mostly limit performance and just have to be in good enough condition to function. Slight alterations of those (burnt transistor, internal bleeding) will bring everything down.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#39

Post by adammunich »

Madmallard wrote: post #35

Or, get this, and this is super radical of an idea I know: There is not much of a separation between physical and psychological in the first place. Every part of the body is interconnected--as people develop disease, often times mental symptoms develop secondarily so. Depression and anxiety are super common in all sorts of illness states. There are numerous studies showing cellular dysfunction and rampant oxidative s…

I never understood why people rarely take this approach. It's not as if these things occur in isolation.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#40

Post by _delirium »

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #25
_delirium wrote: post #6

A historical quibble with the article, It was first known as shell shock, then combat fatigue and finally PTSD, and in each case, it was almost universally understood as a psychic rather than a physical affliction. This underplays a pretty significant history of doctors considering it a physical condition, as the old name "shell shock" itself suggests. The article does mention one such doctor, Fredrick Mott, but ther…

The article covers this: there were those who suggested physical causes, but they were, quite literally, out of fashion: Cf the article's mention of the, in this case, possibly incorrect and ultimately distracting influence of Freudians and other proponents of non-conscious, non-physical causes.

The article doesn't really cover this. It makes it sound like there was only "one British doctor" in 1916 who thought the cause was physical trauma, whose "views were soon eclipsed by those of other doctors who saw shell shock more as a matter of emotional trauma", a consensus that thereafter "held sway for decades", not to be questioned again until "yet another European war broke out", the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.

That is not really an accurate picture. There was more than just Mott with that view even in the World War I era, and the article forgets one minor European war between World War I and the Balkan Wars, during which the question was reopened, with a number of physicians in the 1930s-50s arguing for a physical cause. The article wants to position this as a radical new proposal overturning 100 years of ironclad consensus, while in reality it's more of a recurring proposal that has had periodic champions.

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