Article Summaries of PTSD in Vietnam Vets

 "MRI-based measurement of hippocampal volume in patients with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder" by Bremner, Randall, Scott, and Bronen, R. A., et al. (1995). This article presents findings related to hippocampal volume found in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Vietnam Vets. The authors investigated the hypothesis that patients with combat-related PTSD would demonstrate smaller right hippocampal volume. The purpose of their study was well supported with relevant studies that previously found relations between stress and hippocampus damage. Although the sample size (26 Vietnam veterans with PTSD and 22 comparison subjects) was small, it was well matched with controls and considered representative of the veteran population. Assessment included numerous validated tests as well as interrater and test-retest reliability. Conclusions were statistically supported. An added strength of this study was its numerous attempts to overcome the possibility that drugs and alcohol may be a confounding variable effecting results; both patient and comparison groups had equal numbers of subjects in this category. A weakness included a lack in adequate efforts to eliminate the potential hippocampal effects of comorbid disorders such as bipolar or major depression.

"Attempted suicide among Vietnam veterans: A model of etiology in a community sample" by Fontana and Rosenheck (1995).

This study investigated the high rates of suicid

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ent treatment program on 51 male Vietnam veterans and found that the long-term intensive inpatient treatment was not effective. Weaknesses of the study include small sample size, inadequate reporting of treatment variables, and a lack of support from literature concerning treatment issues. Strengths of the study include appropriate repeated-measures assessment with findings that lead to logical and helpful conclusions regarding needs for adequate treatment to include additional factors such as length of stay, treatment focus, and patient characteristics. "Sleep events among veterans with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder" by Mellman, Kulick-Bell, Ashlock, Nolan (1995). This study presents sleep disturbances as the hallmark of PTSD and substantiates this claim with numerous reports in the literature referring to frequency of nightmares found with PTSD. Weaknesses of the study include small sample sizes of Vietnam veterans and surveys that relied on self-reporting which was subjective and retrospective. A strength of the study includes its efforts to go beyond an archival data analysis and pursue more objective data from sleep laboratory assessments which included physiological measures. However this data may or ma
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1334
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)