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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Associated With Dementia Among Older Veterans
* From: Science Codex *
Older veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) appear more likely to develop dementia over a seven-year period than those without PTSD, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
PTSD is a common psychiatric symptom and often occurs in veterans returning from combat, according to background information in the article. As many as 17 percent of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to have PTSD, and 10 percent to 15 percent of Vietnam veterans had PTSD symptoms 15 years or longer after their return. Previous studies have associated PTSD with a wide variety of medical conditions in younger and middle-aged veterans, along with declines in cognitive (thinking, learning and memory) performance.
Kristine Yaffe, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues studied 181,093 veterans 55 years and older (average age 68.8, 96.5 percent men) between 1997 and 2000. Of these, 53,155 had PTSD and 127,938 did not.
Over seven years of follow-up, from 2000 to 2007, 31,107 (17.2 percent) of the veterans developed dementia. Veterans with PTSD had a 10.6 percent risk of developing dementia, whereas the risk among those without dementia was 6.6 percent.
Those with PTSD were still more likely to develop dementia when the analyses were adjusted for important differences, including demographic variables and other medical and psychiatric illnesses.
Read more Science Codex
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=35025
Posted by Bob Higgins on Jun 8 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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this is great so i had ptsd since i was in my 20′s after returning from vietnam. so i’m almost guaranteed to get dimentia.real nice. what the hells the va doing about all this. i’m already 100% disabled for other things and now this.thank you ,good old us government those of us who don’t die by our 60′s won’t know or remember anything anyways.unbelievable.
What was your name again?
Bless your soul, Peter. Limited dementia might be a welcome relief for you — I mean this is seriousness, not humor. You’re one of the first MAAG guys I’ve ever heard talk about that experience. I know exactly where you’re coming from. I think most Maagots (humorous reference to us) are dead by by now — jungle rot, bullet rot, etc. Glad you’re still here.
Tom Texas Vet, First Cav, Route 1 etc, Laos, DMZs
Tom you are funny. But it rings so true. I pray if only we could have this terrible infliction with no bad memories.
Thanks for posting this Bob.
Frankly, I believe that any Veteran, or active duty member for that matter, who is experiencing memory problems outside of ordinary aging should simply ask their primary care manager to refer them for a cognitive evaluation.
Hell, being sent for a cognitive evaluation frankly has less stigma associated with it than being referred for Mental Health per se.
What they do is a series of cognitive (memory) tests by computer, the old fashion pointy talky when I show you this picture what comes to mind, and of course mind games to see how fast your reflexes are for your age.
This they set as a baseline.
If you show some abnormality in your testing, they might send you for a CAT SCAN or other medical or neurological testing to see what can be done to improve your ability to THINK.
If you are within normal limits for your age group, it’s like an endoscopy or colonoscopy, you may not need another one for a few years (5 to 10).
However, if you show some degree of problems, you will be scheduled for a follow up cognitive evaluation within a year to match it against your baseline testing.
Part of my VA rating is based on these test scores taken while on active duty before I retired. I was diagnosed with early onset of limited dementia.
That said, regardless if you are dealing with a military base or the VA, this testing is all voluntary. At least I treat them that way. My last test suggested that I take a driving evaluation to see if I’m still capable of driving.
Nope I’ll wait for my next drivers license exam for someone to tell me I can’t drive when I’m only 59.
Bobby Hanafin
PTSD a Poem on an Feeling Janice L. Vallee…
I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog
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