Whether or not you agree with the policies that see thousands of troops sent overseas each year, there’s no denying the sacrifice that veterans make in order to serve their country. They give up what most of us take for granted, so they deserve a warm welcome and the best help we can give them to cope with what they’ve seen and endured in conflict. Unfortunately, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be difficult to treat. Therapy and medication aren’t guaranteed to be effective, and so the anxiety, nightmares and flashbacks can continue for years. But hopefully that’s all about to change, as researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have created a non-invasive treatment for PTSD which they’ve already successfully tested, according to a study published in Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface.
The treatment involves the use of a small electronic patch attached to the forehead to stimulate the trigeminal nerve—a large nerve that connects to a number of areas in the brain where PTSD patients typically display abnormal activity. It’s a non-invasive procedure, and simply requires connecting the patch to a 9-volt battery, which passes mild electrical currents through the forehead and into the brain. The process, called trigeminal nerve stimulation (TNS), had already been shown to help treat patients with depression and epilepsy, so the researchers believed it could be effective for combating PTSD too.
The subjects in the study were all long-term PTSD patients—survivors of assault, abuse, rape and traffic accidents—who were struggling to find relief from their symptoms through therapy and use of medication. They were required to wear the patch while they slept over the course of eight weeks and then report their results. On average, subjects reported a 30 percent reduction in the severity of their condition, with symptoms disappearing completely in some cases. Many reported having their first night of undisturbed sleep in years.
It should be noted that this was a fairly limited study with no controls and a small number of participants (there were just 12 subjects in total). It was only eight weeks long, and the findings were based on reported results rather than observation. With all that in mind, it’s impossible to state with 100 percent certainty that TNS will work for all PTSD sufferers. Nonetheless, the new technique has shown more than enough promise to warrant further investigation, and the findings offer hope in the battle to find an effective treatment for PTSD.
So what are the next steps? Well, the researchers will want to test the treatment on larger sample sizes and recruit military veterans—who are at greater risk for PTSD than the general population—for future studies. They’ll also be testing the efficacy of the treatment against various controls and placebos to make sure it’s actually having a tangible effect. There’s clearly plenty of work to be done yet, but there’s also every reason to be optimistic that we’ll have an unobtrusive, drug-free treatment for PTSD sometime in the near future.
Q: Do you have any experience with PTSD? What advice would you give to sufferers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
