Called "prolonged exposure" therapy, it requires patients to imagine reliving their most terrifying moments — the rapes, muggings, combat scenarios, or accidents that sent them to therapy in the first place. Long used for OCD, phobias, and anxiety, exposure therapy hasn't been popular for post-traumatic stress disorder because, according to Kamps, "PTSD sufferers may be in extremis, crippled by their fear and sometimes violent." But therapist and anxiety expert Edna Foa says "that people need to viscerally learn that they can withstand what they think they can't." When they repeat their traumatic memories over and over, they can "become, if not bored by them, then at least less distressed."

Kamps quotes Kim McGillivray, who received the therapy to help her deal with dramatic memories of her abusive ex-husband. She tells the story of seeing her ex-husband after a breakthrough in therapy. He was "wearing tiny jogging shorts and tube socks pulled up snug to his knees." McGillivray says,

I had that instant flash of recognition, but in the second flash, I just thought, Dork! I was sitting there in the car, laughing, going, ‘Oh my God. Whatever is happening is working, it's taking root.' I could finally see him as other people did-as just this nerd who didn't have the right athletic equipment-instead of as the monster he was to me. After years of being told I was utterly useless, it's like I've been given another shot. And that I'm able to say all this without weeping-to view things in my past without having to be totally rolled-is testament to the process. I'm back in the human race.

The science seems to back up her experience. A small survey of 127 women who underwent prolonged exposure therapy showed that, at an average of six years post-treatment, 80% had none of the symptoms of PTSD. Other studies have found that the therapy reduces PTSD symptoms by 70%. These findings are particularly encouraging in a field where confirmation of a technique's effectiveness is uncommon — Kamps reports that there is no hard data on how well traditional psychodynamic therapy works.

These concepts — "evidence," the very idea of something "working" — are fraught in the field of psychotherapy. I've had a therapist tell me my goal shouldn't be getting rid of my anxiety, but rather gaining better insight into myself, and I'm sure I'm not alone. And while insight is indeed valuable, patients do have the right to therapy that improve their ability to live their lives. And insofar as this improvement can be measured — obviously, it's not as simple as curing strep throat — it should be.

Kamps talks to psychologist Patricia Resick, who suggests that our relatively safe modern-day lives have given us an "illusion of control" that contributes to PTSD and other mental illnesses. "When something bad happens," Resick says, "people think they must have done something wrong to deserve it." But in reality, there are plenty of things in modern life that we don't control — from our own health to, say, healthcare reform — and people are smart enough to know that. By giving them an evidence-based tool they can use, exposure therapy may give PTSD sufferers a way to control, if not their lives, at least their thoughts. Being able to do this is a big step along the way to being mentally well — and to feeling empowered again after something or someone has taken that power away.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy [Elle]

It is not like there hasn't been enough stories about female soldiers and military contractors subjected to sexual harassment and sexually assaulted while serving their country. And yet, it keeps happening and the military keeps coming up short. It's like if they spend a little money to try to prevent assault, they have to take it away from treating the women who are assaulted.

Martin explains:

For more than a year after she got out of the military, she was unable to hold a job, lying lethargic and depressed in front of the television for days on end (something she say she never would have been capable of prior to her service). Her marriage dissolved. Suicide seemed like the only option. She had almost every sign of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

And yet when Guzman applied for benefits, the military denied her claim for mental health care. In part, she suspects, this is because she never actually saw "combat" — defined as "active fighting in a war."

During her time "not" serving in a war, she was sexually assaulted, and did not report it. Martin admits that separating out combat- and non-combat veterans for different services makes sense, except for one key point.

When the sexual assault rates among female veterans are so astronomically high — at least 30, and as high as 70 percent, according to Helen Benedict, author of the new book The Lonely Soldier — the "combat" classification becomes a moot point. Keep in mind that sexual assault is a hugely underreported crime; even the Pentagon admits that only 10 to 20 percent of cases are probably being reported.

And if that's not shocking enough, think about it this way:

Everyone who signs his or her name on the dotted line of a military contract is destined for psychological trauma of one kind or another, especially if they're female.

That doesn't exactly sound good for recruitment — which means you'd think the military would be keen to stop this problem, uh, yesterday.

And when it comes to care as well as to prevention, women continue to get the short end of the stick.

A study conducted by the VA in 2004 found that women veterans who had experienced military sexual assault (MSA) were nine times more likely to have PTSD — whether they had been in combat or not. The conclusion reads: "Although women with MSA are more likely to have PTSD, results suggest that they are receiving fewer health care services."

So it's not just the military that needs to get its head out of its ass with how it deals with soldiers coping with sexual assault — and the fellow soldiers committing said assaults, it's also the Veterans Administration. Looks like there's a few more articles that need to be written.

The Combat Within: Female Veterans And PTSD Benefits [The American Prospect]

Related: The War Against Female Soldiers [Daily Beast]

Earlier: "What, Don't You Always End Up In Need Of Reconstructive Surgery After A Night Of Good Consensual Sex?"
Jamie Leigh Jones
Defense Contractors: If It Wasn't For Diplomatic Immunity-Protected Rape, They'd Never Get Laid
Be All You Can Be
Is The Military Finally Going To Do Something About The Sexual Harassment Of Soldiers?
U.S. Army Finally Vows To Prevent Sexual Assault In Its Ranks
VA Report: 1 In 7 Deployed Female Soldiers Suffer From Sexual Trauma
Sexual Assault Victims Get New Action From U.S. Military
What's The Military Hiding About LaVena Johnson & Kamisha Block's Deaths?
Sexual Assault Reports In The Armed Forces Are Up
Fighting Our Wars Without Reproductive Choice

• A study of the gynecological screening tests for cervical cancer in Sweden has found that immigrants from Norway, Denmark, and Central America are more likely to develop cervical cancer than Swedish nationals. • Germany has the largest wage gap between men and women in Western Europe, which is due in part to maternity leave and shortened hours for working moms and outright gender discrimination.• In related news: New laws in England that would extend maternity leave benefits to a full year and allow parents to demand flexible working hours have some "employment lawyers" worrying that employers will stop hiring women altogether. • Louise Glueck, former U.S. poet laureate, has been awarded the Wallace Stevens Award for "outstanding and proven mastery of the art of poetry." • Women's activists in Iran enjoyed a victory on Monday when Iran's parliament decided to shelve a proposed law that would allow husbands to take multiple wives without permission from their first spouse. • The victory was brief, however, as four Iranian women's activists were imprisoned on Tuesday for contributing to banned women's websites. • Darlene Harris, a police officer in Atlanta, tells the story of how she discovered at the age of 35 that she is an "intersexed" person, or someone whose internal or external sexual anatomy don't fit the typical definitions of female or male. •

Have we become so precious and hyper-conscious that something women have been doing for time immemorial is now ranked alongside war as a painful event? Besides, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, the kind of anxiety experienced by people with PTSD is felt by 1 in 10 people — about on par with the 9% of women who get postpartum PTSD. Even Shari Lusskin, director of reproductive psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, tells the WSJ, "We don't want to overmedicalize a normal part of human development…Just because you had a traumatic birth, doesn't mean you'll get PTSD."

It's sort of a pat explanation to say that the diagnosis of PTSD in women post-childbirth is all a big pharma conspiracy to get women hooked on anti-depressants, and I think that it's much more complicated than that. Certainly, having a bowling ball of a baby shooting out your vag isn't a picnic for anyone, but the hysteria surrounding something so matter-of-fact is troubling.

Birth Trauma: Stress Disorder Afflicts Moms [WSJ]

No Door Doggy Video [Random Good Stuff]

The questions, in no particular order, are whether the singular tragedy of Nicole's death got unfairly pushed aside in the news by the larger, more complex and deeply politicized tragedy of the Iraq war. "They are practically saying that President Bush killed Nicole. Well, Walter killed Nicole," says Nicole's dad, who nevertheless concedes that "They said Walter confessed because of us...I think he did care for us."

It's a pretty fair question, since we definitely wouldn't be reading this in a Times series on the crimes committed by Iraq war vets if Walter had suffered his post-traumatic stress disorder during some sort of drug cartel standoff or police shootout back home. Which naturally makes you wonder about the gulf between the experiences of people who have experienced harrowing violence and people who haven't — and whether it's a good thing that so many of the kids we send to war these days fall into the former camp.

But there we go again, wading into another stupid political debate when there ought to be nothing partisan about asserting that violence is bad, and war is deeply traumatizing, and that good people who grow up trying to value human life should expect nothing less. If the Speirs sense an element of liberal Blue State "I told you so"-ism to the media circus surrounding their daughters' wrenching murder, they're probably not wrong; both sides of the aisle spin stories like this to suit their political agendas all the time, when the only real takeaway is the salient point that war — just or no, properly executed or no — is bad, and it doesn't end when it ends.

"I can't completely honestly say that, yes, PTSD was the sole cause of what I did. I don't want to use it as a crutch. I'd feel like I was copping out of something I claim responibility for. But I know for a fact that before I went to Iraq, there's no way I would have taken somebody else's life."

"Not to be coarse, but I've been around a ton of death, and it doesn't affect me anymore."

In all seriousness, can we please get these guys some Ecstasy?

An Iraq Soldier's Descent; A Prosecutor's Tough Choice [NY Times]