Can a Single Injection Cure the Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Marines Return Fire in Marjeh, Afghanistan, February 2010 Combat over the last ten years in places like Iraq and Afghanistan has left roughly 250,000 U.S. military personnel with symptoms of PTSD. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl Andres J. Lugo via WikimediaThe Navy investigates Everything from magnetic stimulation of the brain to virtual reality therapy to heavy regimens of conventional pharmaceuticals (and even some, like MDMA and cannabis, that aren't exactly conventional) has been floated as a potential treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and yet researchers have yet to find a method that works all--or even most of--the time. As the Pentagon grows quietly more desperate some in the services are willing to reach a little further for a potential cure, and now a Navy doctor thinks perhaps she's found one in the form of a single injection to the neck. The idea was born from a procedure used to...