On August 29, the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) celebrated its 25th anniversary. For the past 25 years, the Center has been the leader in research and education helping those who are living with PTSD. I was privileged to be a part of the team that started the Center, and for being part of an ever-growing number of people who work to further understanding of the consequences of being exposed to a traumatic event.
The proposal to create the Center arose from the growing mental health needs of Vietnam Veterans and others, and the recognition in 1980 of the PTSD diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association. In 1984 Congress directed VA to form a National Center for PTSD "to carry out and promote the training of health-care and related personnel in, and research into, the causes and diagnosis of PTSD and the treatment of Veterans for PTSD."
The Department of Veterans Affairs established the National Center for PTSD in 1989 as a center of excellence that would set the agenda for research and education on PTSD. The diagnosis of PTSD had been formalized only 9 years earlier, in the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The new diagnosis -- for symptoms that had been observed in the medical literature after the Great London Fire in 1666 and had been described in more recent medical literature as railway spine, shell shock, and rape trauma syndrome -- significantly increased research on the consequences of exposure to horrific, life-threatening events. (DOI: 10.1002/jts.2490050310).
[For more of this story, written by Paula Schnurr, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...;ir=Healthy%20Living]
Comments (0)