Washington U. researcher seeks Iraq, Afghanistan veterans

[cato2]

Washington U. researcher seeks Iraq, Afghanistan veterans
By Repps Hudson
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
04/16/2006

Rumi Kato Price is looking for a few good men -- and women -- "who've been shipped to the most dangerous places" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Washington University School of Medicine researcher has an educated hunch that veterans returning from combat may experience changes in their brain functions and in their social lives.

How they deal with their return to civilian life is important to understand.

Building on long-term research into the lives of hundreds of Vietnam veterans, Price wants to find at least 50 men and women who expect to go into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan for the first time.

Her research team has begun talking with reservists and National Guardsmen and women who are soon to be deployed in an effort to get them to participate.

Research dating to the late 1990s has shown that Vietnam veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder may experience changes in their brains and hormones after the violent trauma of combat, Price said.

PTSD is recognized by the Veterans Administration and conventional medicine as an intense reaction to a stressful incident, such as combat, rape or genocide.

The research also shows that vets with PTSD often have social problems: disorder in families and on the job, divorce, abuse of alcohol and drugs, even suicide.

Price, a professor of epidemiology in the university's department of psychiatry, believes the study will help explain how combat relates to the symptoms of PTSD.

"Why do some people handle combat better than others?" Price asked. "Out of research on Vietnam veterans, we think that biological and social factors interact with each other to affect individuals over time."

Price came to St. Louis in 1988 to explore psychiatric abnormalities with Lee N. Robins, who led a team that interviewed nearly 900 veterans for a study entitled "Narcotic Use in Southeast Asia and Afterward."

A native of Nagoya, Japan, Price first came to the United States as an exchange student at the University of California at Berkeley. She fell in love with the campus and returned to earn her master's and doctorate degrees.

In later contacts with veterans from the original group Robins and her colleagues studied, Price found some veterans still suffer from adverse circumstances.

"I got a letter from the wife of a person we had interviewed," she said "He committed suicide."

Out of about 1,200 Vietnam vets, she said, eight have taken their lives. About 30 have tried.

The research she hopes to do with the new group of Iraq and Afghan vets will try to pin down how combat changes those who experience it. She also wants to know how combatants differ before they go into battle.

With that knowledge, Price said, the military may be able to screen out those who may be most vulnerable to combat stress. It also may help the military and the VA counsel those in the field.

Rumi Kato Price
Age: 54
Education: B.A. in philosophy, Ochanomize University in Tokyo; master's and Ph.D. in sociology, University of California at Berkeley.
Residence: Clayton
Family: Daughter, 21
E-mail contact: syl@rkp.wustl.edu

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/bus...4?OpenDocument

[Snowden]

It would be interesting to have an update on this from time to time, if at all possible. It's something we all must wonder about, isn't it.