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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

#91

Post by heisenbit »

A more accurate title for the NYT would have been

What if SOME PTSD is more physical than psychological.

The are a number of mental conditions that have more than one cause. Brain is a complex system and one disturbs it in one place or another and at the surface it all looks the same. Computers are similar - one place it goes wrong and the screen it looks like BSOD.

There is a real value of finding one clear physical cause->effect opening targeted opportunities for treatment and prevention.

But then there are plenty of people with PTSD that have not been anywhere near a blast. It may be one piece of a huge puzzle.

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

#92

Post by sandworm101 »

PTSD is common amongst soldiers, but it is far from a soldier's disease. It hits lots of people far away from any hint of a battlefield. Train drivers suffer it (they may witness many suicides). Doctors suffer it. Some types may even suffer it at a higher rate than soldiers (pediatric oncology).

If there is a physical injury that results in similar symptoms, then that syndrome should probably be given a different name in order that it be separated from the wider disease that seems to have no physical trigger.

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

#93

Post by PeterWhittaker »

eric_h wrote: post #70
PeterWhittaker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but you seemed to have the point about many of these injuries being non-concussive, in the sense of not causing concussion. This is an additional mechanism, heretofore unidentified, causing a significantly different injury than concussion.

I'm not convinced that the injury is significantly different. The mechanics certainly are: rather than the the brain trauma being caused by the brain bouncing off the skull, it's because the whole system is hit by a wave of pressure, but the end result is likely quite similar, though perhaps magnified when subject to an explosion (a holistic TBI, if you will). The difference, I suspect, is that rather than the injury…

The article discusses the physical differences between concussion injuries and this other form of injury, as revealed through detailed imagining of brain tissues.

I'm asking this purely out of curiosity and to foster discussion: what is about this aspect of the article you find unconvincing? Thanks!

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

#94

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

heisenbit wrote: post #91

A more accurate title for the NYT would have been What if SOME PTSD is more physical than psychological. The are a number of mental conditions that have more than one cause. Brain is a complex system and one disturbs it in one place or another and at the surface it all looks the same. Computers are similar - one place it goes wrong and the screen it looks like BSOD. There is a real value of finding one clear physical…

Yes, this article seems to reinforce the notion that PTSD is the exclusive domain of combat veterans, which is very far from reality.

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

#95

Post by vwcx »

_delirium wrote: post #40
PeterWhittaker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Yeah, and in some ways, the new study is a complete return to 150+ years ago. In the American Civil War, a theory of "windage" was put forward, that the concussion from a projectile's blast was responsible for "soldier's heart" in the head.

And don't forget the stories in the late 1800s in the UK related to "railway spine" -- the documentation of psychosomatic effects following a railroad accident, attributed to torsion of the spine and brainstem.

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

#96

Post by gnaritas »

naasking wrote: post #53
gnaritas wrote: post #49

> Physicalism of the mind isn't unanimously accepted in philosophy. Much philosophy is just bad science. Pontificating over unanswerable questions is little more than a waste of time. Philosophy's greatest achievement was science, which is a better way to explore reality because logic alone isn't enough, it needs to be backed by evidence. Physicalism is all that is known to exist, those asserting otherwise have no ev…

> Pontificating over unanswerable questions is little more than a waste of time. You clearly don't understand philosophy. Some philosophers like hearing their own voice talk about such questions, just like some physicists are themselves crackpots. Most philosophers are trying to properly define an otherwise ill-defined subject, and the only way to do that is via various types of thought experiments, just like Einstei…

Seems you didn't really digest what I said, I understand philosophy just fine. You've quoted one sentence out of context and pretended I said all philosophy is wasting time on unanswerable questions, I didn't. Additionally your last sentence makes it utterly clear you didn't actually read my entire reply as I said philosophy's greatest achievement was science, so to ask if I know science is natural philosophy is a dead giveaway you're not paying attention at all.

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

#97

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

jcoffland wrote: post #47

The desire for such a distinction is strong. We prefer to attribute illness to physical causes because in our society we blame the patient for mental but not for physical illness. This disparity drives the push to find physical causes to which we can more comfortably redirect blame. Such as DNA, leptin, bacteria, enzymes, etc. It is wise to be skeptical of any new findings which fit too well with human desires and th…

I'm not sure. We have both strong desires to escape blame, but also the strong desires to blame others. And once we've become accustomed to blaming people for a particular thing, it's hard to let go.

To what extent the mental is distinct (or not) from the physical body/brain, well... we have no frakking clue. We have a laundry list of disorders previously thought to be purely "mental", that are now known to be physical. Then the rest we just kind of blame people for.

I think really what we should ask is, "Does blame work in case X, Y or Z"?

e.g.

- Does blame cause your child to do better in school and stop acting like a monster? Yes? Great, use blame.

- Does blame cause PTSD victims to get over it? No? Then stop blaming them, lets find another way (possibly physical) to fix it.

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

#98

Post by eric_h »

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #93
eric_h wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that the injury is significantly different. The mechanics certainly are: rather than the the brain trauma being caused by the brain bouncing off the skull, it's because the whole system is hit by a wave of pressure, but the end result is likely quite similar, though perhaps magnified when subject to an explosion (a holistic TBI, if you will). The difference, I suspect, is that rather than the injury…

The article discusses the physical differences between concussion injuries and this other form of injury, as revealed through detailed imagining of brain tissues. I'm asking this purely out of curiosity and to foster discussion: what is about this aspect of the article you find unconvincing? Thanks!

The sense that I got from the article is that unlike "normal" TBIs, this type of brain trauma is very difficult if not impossible to see on a scan.

The symptoms, on the other hand seem very very similar. The progressive degradation in cognitive ability with exposure to explosions is (to my admittedly untrained eye) exactly the same as that of multiple concussions.

Which is not to say I didn't find this article interesting. I think the key difference between TBIs caused by explosions and those due to physical trauma is purely because there's no obvious lesion on the brain visible in a scan. As a result, the military treated it differently, which the article points out was a fundamental error that the military has now taken steps to correct.

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

#99

Post by kordless »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #86
kordless wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called measuring things. It's what we do, after all.

Measurement is great. I'm all for it. But there's a serious problem with scientism in the modern world. I think it's great to develop a way of looking at the world that 'takes people out' - we can predict the motion of the moon without regard to what people think or feel about how the moon will move. The moon's motion does not take our feelings into account. It starts to get really silly, though, when you try to use…

The problem you are referring to is known, although I'm not sure how widely spread.

You can't measure the measurer, so there's a gap in our perception. There's a RI talk on this, where the color purple is discussed. There's really no color purple, for example. It's your eye picking up the absence of green when seeing blue and red light together.

In other words, perhaps purple is a program in your head.

Perhaps our ability to understand the nature of a measurement is an absence of something we yet to integrate into our knowledge base? My vote is for a momentary access to the global consciousness. Like an API with a "search" timer on it. It serves efficient queries faster. It does this in a fixed timeframe using a hierarchical form of evaluation. It knows everything it knows so far.

In other words, perhaps causality in this reality is based on some type of immutable programmable storage. Perhaps that' why it's hard to change things here too.

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

#100

Post by naasking »

gnaritas wrote: post #96
naasking wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pontificating over unanswerable questions is little more than a waste of time. You clearly don't understand philosophy. Some philosophers like hearing their own voice talk about such questions, just like some physicists are themselves crackpots. Most philosophers are trying to properly define an otherwise ill-defined subject, and the only way to do that is via various types of thought experiments, just like Einstei…

Seems you didn't really digest what I said, I understand philosophy just fine. You've quoted one sentence out of context and pretended I said all philosophy is wasting time on unanswerable questions, I didn't. Additionally your last sentence makes it utterly clear you didn't actually read my entire reply as I said philosophy's greatest achievement was science, so to ask if I know science is natural philosophy is a de…

I commented on that specific line because that exact sentiment is all too common, and entirely unjustified.
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