University launches study of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans

MADISON, Wis. -- Why do some veterans return from war able to move beyond the horrors they experienced while others suffer ongoing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

The answer may lie in differences in how their brains process anxiety and anticipation.

A team of psychiatrists at the University of Wisconsin and the William S. Middleton Veterans' Hospital in Madison has launched a large clinical study aimed at finding better treatments for veterans returning from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"We became aware of how many veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious PTSD, and were interested in finding out the best ways to help,'' says Dr. Jack Nitschke, a psychiatry professor in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. His collaborators are Drs. Eileen Ahearn and Tracey Smith, both UW clinical psychiatry faculty who practice at the Veterans' Hospital.

Doctors say PTSD is a debilitating condition that often follows a terrifying physical or emotional event causing the person who survived the event to have persistent, frightening thoughts and memories, or flashbacks, of the ordeal. Persons with PTSD often feel chronically, emotionally numb; the disorder is associated with higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse and suicide.

Nitschke, who treats severely anxious patients (in the psychiatry department at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute and Clinics) and studies brain differences in the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, suspects those veterans who suffer the most debilitating PTSD have brain differences that set them up for the disorder.