Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

People think you're supposed to just bounce back and be OK. Is there someone out there who can tell me how I am supposed to do that?" - INEZ GRAHAM, who escaped from the North Tower of the World Trade Center before it collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001; the 45-year-old New Jersey woman has been diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder

Patrick Cavanaugh, 60, a former manager of the Coasters who was convicted of killing one of the 1950s rock group's singers in Las Vegas, has died in a Nevada prison. Cavanaugh, who had long-term health problems aggravated by smoking, died of natural causes Monday in Ely State Prison, said Fritz Schlottman, a spokesman for the prison system. He was sentenced to death in 1984 for murdering Nathaniel "Buster" Wilson. He lost repeated appeals to the state Supreme Court, including one a year ago in which he claimed he had ineffective legal counsel.

Echoing Vietnam and other wars, combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan has triggered symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder among many troops returning home. Researchers reporting in a medical journal today found that 15 percent to 17 percent of the combat troops who served in Iraq suffered from at least one of the three disorders - yet few sought help because they feared being stigmatized. A somewhat lower proportion, 11.2 percent, reported symptoms of mental distress after serving in Afghanistan, but most also kept their problems secret.

Combat leaves many wounds. Some soldiers will heal and go on. Others will sustain injuries that change their lives. And some will be haunted by physical and psychological problems induced by the fear, grief and sheer horror of war. To minimize long-term suffering, hundreds of military therapists and counselors have been shadowing U.S. combat troops in Iraq. Their tactic has been to step in quickly when troops need help and get them back to their units as soon as possible. "We see them as soldiers having a normal amount of stress in an abnormal situation," said Maj. Timothy Patterson, an Ohio psychiatrist and a reservist stationed in Iraq.

Jacob Mendes Da Costa, a U.S. Army surgeon during the Civil War, was among the first to study them: battle-weary warriors who sweat profusely, startle easily and exhibit irregular heartbeats. Baffled, he and others dubbed the affliction "soldier's heart." It would be the first of many labels that doctors would give to stress-related illnesses in subsequent years: shell shock, battle fatigue, war neurosis - even battered wife syndrome, as symptoms began showing up off the battlefield. Now, nearly 150 years after doctors first began puzzling over stress-related sickness, scientists are finally uncovering clues to its biological roots.

On a bitter December night in 1987, Army Pfc. Lisa Conti and another female soldier hastened through the village of Tongduchan below the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea for a supper of spicy kimchi and rice.Taking a familiar shortcut, they were jumped from behind by four Korean men, overpowered and shoved into a car. The women were driven to an isolated spot where they were tortured with lighted cigarettes and raped.That began an excruciating, 10-year odyssey for Conti that has included a string of hospital stays, suicide attempts, nightmares and crippling panic attacks.

WASHINGTON -- In the hands of Margaret Hagen, an anecdote can be a deadly weapon. Here is an example from her new book, ''Whores of the Court'':''David Willard Phipps Jr., a Gulf War veteran, was convicted of first-degree murder . . . for killing his wife's lover, Michael Presson. Phipps did not deny killing Presson. . . . He claimed that he was unable to formulate the mens rea [intent] for first-degree murder because he was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.''Judge Julian Guinn of Tennessee apparently thought this claim did not hold water and instructed the jury, 'I charge you that post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression are not defenses to a criminal charge.

The 47-year-old professional woman wasn't sleeping well. She was skipping menstrual periods and fighting the combined forces of anxiety and depression. By the time she was examined by reproductive endocrinologist Marian Damewood, she was taking Prozac and Xanax to manage her mood swings.Like a lot of women in their 40s -- many of whom must deal with children, careers and their changing bodies -- the patient said she did not understand her symptoms, but couldn't afford to keep "losing it."A simple blood test revealed that her symptoms were related to perimenopause -- the transitional years leading up to menopause.

Shortly after a Howard County 911 dispatcher overheard a murder-suicide in the middle of the night last week, her supervisor woke an Ellicott City psychologist, Dr. Jeffrey T. Mitchell, with an urgent phone call.Within minutes, Dr. Mitchell -- who developed a debriefing technique used throughout the world to help emergency personnel deal with horror -- was in the county's 911 command center listening to the tape of the murder-suicide and going over the case with the dispatcher.When events turn ghastly, Dr. Mitchell gets the call -- not just in Howard County, but in Oklahoma City, Charleston, S.C., Los Angeles, Yugoslavia and Kobe, Japan.

Two women who have accused a Baltimore priest of sexually abusing them when they were high school students in the late 1960s suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their experiences, two scientists testified yesterday.The women were evaluated separately, but Dr. Neil Blumberg, a psychiatrist, and Lawrence Donner, a psychologist, reached similar diagnoses that they said accounted for the women's loss of memory after they left Archbishop Keough High School in the early 1970s.