A new study has found returned service people who underwent mindfulness-based therapies had a sharper short-term decline in PTSD symptoms than those undergoing other conventional therapies.
Melbourne man Jan Laczynski (right), who lost five friends in the Bali bombings meets Nasir Abbas, who trained the bombers.
SBS
What happens to kids who survive school shootings? What are some of the damaging effects they are left to cope with?
Earthquake survivor Krishna Kumari Khadka, 24, is rescued by the French, Israeli and Norwegian rescue teams from a collapsed building six days after the earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal April 30 2015.
Adnan Abidi/Reuters
People working in this field often view themselves with a “person-of-steel” mentality – placing themselves in peril by ignoring their own needs.
What is obscured in our understanding of returned servicemen’s problems is the private pain of families who bear the brunt of these psychological strains.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
Australia has continually faced a returned soldier crisis. This is something that marked men returning from all the wars of modern memory – from the Great War to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Medical opinion soon came to regard symptoms of ‘shell shock’, as exhibited by the solider at bottom left, as psychological in origin.
UK Government
People in Sydney and the broader community are feeling shocked, anxious, and sad about the actions of a lone, unstable person that led to the tragic loss of lives in the siege early this week. But there’s…
In 1954, the first director-general of the World Health Organisation, Dr Brock Chisholm, famously stated: “Without mental health there can be no true physical health.” More than half a century later, we…
Disclosing mental illness in the office can be difficult. But it doesn’t need to be.
Image of office worker via KieferPix/Shutterstock
Deciding to disclose information about a non-obvious disability at work is complicated and potentially risky, no matter what you do for a living. For people with a mental health issue, like bipolar disorder…
Triggers don’t only come on guns.
Soldier by Shutterstock
During World War I, severe post-traumatic reactions reached an epidemic scale that surpassed anything known from previous armed conflicts. The centenary of the Great War has reminded us of the tremendous…
Uncritically invoking neuroscience is a risky proposition.
Image of head via www.shutterstock.com
Recently I’ve seen news reports with headlines like this one: “Can Brain Science Help Lift People Out Of Poverty?” This particular article described the near miraculous recovery of a woman who grew up…
Five years on, the bush and people are recovering well from the Black Saturday fires.
AAP Image/Joe Castro
Five years on from the devastating Black Saturday fires that swept through central Victoria in February 2009, research shows that people and communities are largely recovering well. In the first major…
People with complex trauma appear like they are always anticipating or responding to a threat.
file404/Shutterstock
Experiencing trauma has significant implications for mental health. We’ve known this for some time but particularly since the early 1970s after observing and studying the effects of war on American servicemen…
Ajax fighting off the Trojans.
Antiquariat Dr. Haack Leipzig
The current understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is like an academic echo of the famous song Universal Soldier. The song imagines the warrior as timeless, unchanging, universal. According…
It’s no secret that yoga can aid mental well-being. What is more, it can help soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to new research. Some of the most damaging consequences of…
A French deserter or spy faces the firing squad in this photograph from 1914/15.
Wikimedia Commons
One of the most iconic images of the first world war, the outbreak of which is being commemorated all over the world, is the deserter – heartlessly tried for cowardice, blindfolded and bound to a post…
Children in Gaza are caught in the crossfire of the conflict.
Mohammed Saber/EPA
I was approached to write this piece a few weeks back. Everyday matters took precedence: a family visit, work deadlines, an imminent house move. Yesterday, after saying I didn’t have time to write it…
Therapy helps patients gradually confront situations, places and activities they’ve avoided since the traumatic event.
Bill Strain/Flickr
While human beings have always known about the mental health effects of trauma, it was only in 1980 that the term post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, was coined. This acceptance spawned an explosion…
US army ‘deserter’ Bowe Bergdahl had deep and abiding questions about the justice of the cause he signed up for.
EPA/IntelCenter
The public debate around the recent prisoner swap that saw US Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl returned from five years’ imprisonment in Afghanistan in exchange for five senior Taliban leaders has had two main…