Your Council

ENCOUNTER

New Encounter Elders

We have two new elders on council who will be working within the Encounter framework. You can look forward to reading future articles from Dave Hall and/or Kathy Reed. Welcome aboard, Dave and Kathy!

ENCOURAGE

Charge: To foster authentic community and encourage congregational life at LBPC

Goal: To serve as an umbrella for present and future ministries and promote communication among all ministries as well as with the congregation

Deacons' moderator;

Barbara Carlsen, representing the Presbyterian Women;

Jan Cox, who also works with the Health Care Team, and Penny Hickman, Priscilla Stephenson, Natalie Sarantos and Beth Williams.

We at Encourage Committee thank all of you who have helped with the Sunday coffee hour. We want to remind you of the Sundae-Sunday coming up July 15; this will be after the Sunday service; so join us for fun and connections. The committee is  also  working on some changes and clarification of our work, so stay tuned....

From the Healthcare Team
Making Progress against PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder-a severe form of anxiety-affects millions in the US, but therapies are emerging.

The current focus on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among military personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq obscures the fact that PTSD is a common problem among all segments of the US population. According to the US National Comorbidity Survey, the estimated lifetime prevalence of PTSD among all American men is 3.6 percent, and 9.7 percent among women.

PTSD develops following exposure to a traumatic event, which may be directly experienced or witnessed or affect others with whom the individual has contact. The event triggers deep fears of death or injury and feelings of intense helplessness. While it is normal to suffer distress following a trauma, usually the distress subsides over a few days or weeks. In the person with PTSD, symptoms may continue and/or worsen.

PTSD is characterized by chronic symptoms such as severe anxiety, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, emotional numbing, anger, social impairment and difficulty concentrating. Far from being confined to the violence of war, the precipitating cause can take the form of childhood abuse, a natural disaster, a terrible accident, the sudden death of a loved one, a violent crime, or an unexpected injury, among many possible triggers.

"PTSD is determined by the level of emotional upset a person feels," explains psychiatrist Roger Pitman, MD, Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Laboratory. "Without treatment, it can have serious consequences for the brain-such as atrophy, impairments in learning and memory, and abnormal emotional responses-for mental health, and ultimately for day-to-day functioning. With appropriate therapy, a person with PTSD can improve substantially and be able to function well. And exciting new research is identifying treatments that can counteract the effects of trauma in the hours immediately after a distressing event, reducing the risk of developing PTSD in the first place."

New Treatment
The research to which Dr. Pitman refers was published in the October 2011 edition of the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology. It suggests that an injection of cortisol administered within hours of a traumatic event may dramatically reduce the risk of PTSD. Scientists based their work on the observation that cortisol-a hormone produced by the adrenal gland in response to stress-is naturally increased after a traumatic event, but that this release may be deficient in people who go on to develop PTSD. They theorized that an injection of cortisol might help trauma victims weather their experiences. Working with randomly assigned patients in a hospital emergency room, the scientists gave some subjects a single shot of cortisol within a six-hour window of their trauma exposure, while others received standard treatment. The researchers followed up on the participants, comparing their progress. Results showed that participants who received cortisol injections were 60 percent less likely to develop PTSD later on than participants who received standard care.

Other scientists are looking into the use of chemicals to counteract the effects of the stress-related hormone adrenalin, and examining the benefits of depriving people of sleep as a post-traumatic treatment. The sleep deprivation research is based on evidence that delaying sleep over the hours immediately following a trauma can interfere with the process of laying down long-term memories that form the basis of harrowing recollections of the distressing event.

Getting Treatment 

Medications such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors can reduce PTSD symptoms, as well as anxiety and depression; cognitive therapy helps change dysfunctional thoughts that promote feelings such as anger and numbness; and exposure therapy, in which people with PTSD are repeatedly presented in therapy with reminders of the traumatic experience, can help desensitize them to these reminders. Another effective treatment is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, in which the person with PTSD is encouraged to think about the traumatic event while watching rhythmic left-right stimulation, such as the motion of the therapist's finger as it moves back and forth. The technique is thought to help create a new memor4y that inhibits the older, stressful one-a sort of memory updating process.

WHAT YOU CAN DO 

• The Sidran Institute: Telephone 410.825.8888 or contact help@sidran.org to communicate with a resource specialist.
• The Home Base Program, sponsored by Massachusetts General Hospital and the Red Sox Foundation, provides clinical care for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and families in New England affected by PTSD. Contact www.homebaseprogram.org.

Source: Massachusetts General Hospital newsletter Mind, Mood & Memory, Jan. 2012

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