Co-Occurring Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Alcohol Use Disorder in U S. Military and Veteran Populations Alcohol Research: Current Reviews

With a focus on expanding care access, empowering choice, and enhancing care quality, the company delivers innovative solutions that support individuals throughout their mental health journey. A person experiencing trauma is in the best position to define their experience based on what they are thinking, feeling, and going through. After experiencing a traumatic event, it’s common to feel differently than you did before. Maybe you’re experiencing unwanted thoughts or flashbacks to the traumatic event. Maybe you even feel the urge to drink to help you forget these stressful memories or help you fall asleep.

Treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD) is complicated by the presence of psychiatric comorbidity including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is a critical review of the literature to date on pharmacotherapy treatments of AUD and PTSD. Further, women are more likely to experience a traumatic experience due to disproportionately being affected by domestic violence, sexual abuse, and sexual assault. Women affected by PTSD are more likely to use alcohol after the trauma experience, whereas men seem to be more likely to use other substances. Data from the Department of Veterans Affairs indicates that as many as 63 percent of veterans diagnosed with alcohol use or other substance use disorder also meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. While PTSD does not result solely from trauma experienced with military duty, PTSD and alcohol abuse in veterans are occurring at higher rates than in the general population.

Bivariate analysis of gender and binge and hazardous drinking (Table

Finally, several studies investigated medications that were hypothesized to treat both AUD and PTSD (e.g., prazosin and aprepitant), with no clear benefit on AUD or PTSD outcomes. A number of factors may have influenced the findings noted in this review, including gender differences, veteran vs. civilian status, and the various behavioral platform employed. In summary, Petrakis and colleagues conclude that clinicians can be reassured that medications that are approved to treat AUD can be used safety and with some efficacy in patients with PTSD, and vice versa. Addressing both disorders, either by pharmacological interventions, behavioral interventions or their combination, is encouraged and likely to yield the most effective outcomes for patients with comorbid AUD/PTSD. For additional review of the two papers addressing behavioral and pharmacological treatments for comorbid SUD and PTSD, refer to Norman and Hamblen (2017).

Seven institutions were rehabilitation centers operating on non-pharmacological methods of care and one was a tertiary hospital. One of the rehabilitation centers exclusively served women, while the remaining centers, accepted only male patients. The hospital would receive patients with acute and chronic physical problems related to heavy drinking, whereas, the rehabilitation centers were often used by self-motivated users or their family to achieve abstinence using nonpharmacological methods. The rehabilitation centers were comparable in terms of user fees, and treatment modality.

PTSD and Alcohol: How They Affect You

More information about military-specific factors and barriers will help guide prevention and intervention efforts. An important limitation to acknowledge was the relatively brief monitoring period, which impacted our ability to evaluate different lagged associations between these variables. Additionally, multiple assessment intervals within days might be even more useful in evaluating how PTSD and drinking are temporally related. Because we did not assess PTSD symptoms and drinking multiple times within each day, we cannot say with any certainty that PTSD symptom severity is causally related to amount of drinking within the same day. Thus, future studies would benefit from a longer assessment period that involves multiple within-day measurements.

A better understanding of AUD etiology among racial/ethnic minority individuals is an important and necessary next step in the development of effective interventions. First, findings from this study were specific to a treatment-seeking sample, who may already be making efforts to reduce alcohol consumption. Thus, findings may not generalize to individuals with comorbid PTSD/AUD who are not seeking treatment.

PTSD and Alcoholism

The time interval of IVR data collection was targeted for the 7 days prior to receipt of a brief intervention but this pre-treatment baseline period ranged from 6 to 20 days due to scheduling difficulties. Integrated treatment that addresses both disorders is important to begin recovery. Treatment for co-occurring PTSD and alcohol use disorders may include both individual therapy and group therapy. Medication is available to assist with PTSD symptoms that can cause setbacks like intrusive nightmares. A team of professionals at The Recovery Village can assist in designing a comprehensive treatment plan to suit someone’s specific disorders. PTSD and alcohol abuse may occur together due to the tendency of people diagnosed with PTSD to engage in self-destructive behavior and the desire to avoid thinking about the trauma.

Each year, newer, quicker therapies for PTSD are introduced, and conventional therapies have shown that people can recover from PTSD using existing treatments. These two conditions can cause the symptoms of the other to worsen and can make treatment particularly difficult. Luckily, many treatment centers offer specialized programs that address the unique difficulties presented by a dual diagnosis like PTSD and addiction. You deserve to know what life is like after healing and we can help you get there by providing our comprehensive level of support and high-quality treatment programs. We focus on whole-person healing, and we have created a better rehab experience because of this.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptoms

We calculated between-person PTSD by grand-mean standardizing (GMS) each person’s overall PTSD scores. GMS PTSD, therefore, quantified the relative severity of each participant’s PTSD over the entire IVR monitoring period compared to others in the sample. Research on the factors leading to participant dropout and on ways of increasing can ptsd cause blackouts treatment engagement and retention is critical. Among military and veteran populations, the risk for both PTSD and alcohol misuse may vary because of differences in demographic factors, aspects of military culture, and trauma or stress exposure. Relatively little research has addressed risk factors for co-occurring PTSD and AUD.

• It was used to characterize the sample and ensure that participants had used alcohol in the previous two weeks.
• However, this interrupts the natural protective function the body was already doing.
• We also discuss the efficacy of these treatments for military and veteran populations.
• This is a critical review of the literature to date on pharmacotherapy treatments of AUD and PTSD.