The president of the American Psychiatric Association says he is “very open” to a request from the Army to come up with an alternative name for post-traumatic stress disorder so that troops returning from combat will feel less stigmatized and more encouraged to seek treatment.
Dr. John Oldham, who serves as senior vice president and chief of staff at the Houston-based Menninger Clinic, said he is looking into the possibility of updating the association’s diagnostic manual with a new subcategory for PTSD. The subcategory could be “combat post-traumatic stress injury,” or a similar term, he said.
“It would link it clearly to the impact and the injury of the combat situation and the deployment experience, rather than what people somewhat inaccurately but often assume, which is that you got it because you weren’t strong enough,” Oldham said.
The potential change was prompted by a request from Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, who wrote to Oldham last year, suggesting APA drop the world “disorder” from PTSD.
I am not going to say this came from me, however there are some interesting things that have happened in the past of which I am connected to. I have been saying for about four years that we should NOT use the “D” in PTSD for every soldier that has been diagnosed. I have made this statement in many public forums with the argument that people can suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress without having a disorder. I commonly call it PTS or more recently I have seen it called PTSS for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Continue reading
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