**Transcript of Cyberseminar**

**Timely Topics of Interest**

**Management TBI Rehab/Co Occurring Mental Health Issues: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, Depression, Substance Use Disorders, and Pain Disorders**

**Presenters: Lisa Brenner, PhD; Alison Cernich, PhD; Jennifer Vasterling, PhD**

**November 13, 2012**

**Management TBI Rehab/Co Occurring Mental Health Issues: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, Depression, Substance Use Disorders, and Pain Disorders**

**November 13, 2012**

Molly:And we are at the top of the hour. So, at this time, I would like to introduce Ralph DePalma.  He is the Special Operations Officer of VA OR&D and he is going to introduce this miniseries for us.  Go ahead Ralph. 

Dr. Ralph DePalma:Thank you very much Molly.  This is the fourth of our series on traumatic brain injury, its diagnosis and now its management. But today, expert clinician scientists will discuss comorbidity management in TBI. We look forward to more in the spring about management, but for the time being, these are our experts and you are all welcome to ask questions.  Thank you. 

Molly:Thank you very much Dr. DePalma, and without further ado, I would like to introduce our presenters. Speaking first, we have Dr. Alison Cernich. She is the Acting Deputy Director and VA Senior TBI liaison of Defense Centers of Excellence for Phycological Health and TBI Assistant, also a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University School of Medicine. I am sorry, University of Maryland School of Medicine. Speaking second is Dr. Jennifer Vasterling.  She is Chief of Psychology Service at VA Boston Healthcare System, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School.  And finally, we have Dr. Lisa Brenner speaking. She is the Director of the VISN 19 Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center and associate professor of psychiatry, neurology, and physical medicine, and rehabilitation at the University of Colorado in Denver at the School of Medicine.  So, without further ado, I would like to turn it over to you Alison. 

Dr. Alison Cernich:Thanks so much.  So, I will be kicking us off today with, I believe my screen is showing now. I am hoping. I will be starting with the management of TBI rehabilitation co-occuring health issues with depression, pain and substance use disorders being the main things that I will be covering, but I will also be doing just a slight overview for those of you who are not familiar with the co-occurrence of these conditions. So, just for a background for folks, and if you are interested, this is available on the VA public health website. This data site is from the VA Healthcare Utilization by recent veterans.  It just gives you an idea of what the primary conditions that our returning veterans are coming into the VA for. The data that I am showing is essentially, ICD9 codes and ICD10 codes of the types of conditions with which veterans are presenting when they enter our system. As you can see from the top of the list, we are really seeing a lot of folks that are coming in for musculoskeletal conditions, followed next by mental disorders, then sort of ill-defined symptoms. 

The TBI codes actually fall in the injury and poisoning section, so a little bit further on the list. But it gives you a sense that many of the veterans that are coming in, one, these things are overlapping, so the percentages here represented are overlapping, so many of our veterans are coming in with multiple conditions. Many of them are coming in with multiple overlapping conditions, but the primary things that we are looking at when people present are that they are coming in with some musculoskeletal conditions, including pain conditions, and mental health conditions. As many of you may be familiar with in the literature, and there has been quite a bit of literature produced by the Department of Veterans Affairs researchers, essentially show that the vast majority of patients that come in with mild traumatic brain injury do not present with that alone. But those that have positive TBI screens are more likely to have a diagnosis of PTSD, depression and substance abuse disorder.

We also need to be aware that there is a great burden of evidence that the more co-occurring disorders that present with a traumatic brain injury, the higher the likelihood that symptoms will persist following a mild traumatic brain injury. The other thing to be cognisant of as we talk about this is that many of the symptoms that present with a mild traumatic brain injury, can overlap with some of these other disorders leading many clinicians to wrestle with what is the best diagnostic assignment for this person? What is the best treatment with which I can start to help alleviate symptoms? 

And then the other thing is that the definitive etiology often eludes us. And so, it has been documented often that there is a – one of the classic articles was by Dr. Lew and I have it highlighted on the slide. It essentially says that most of the folks here, about 47% or so are coming in with overlap of PTSD, pain, and post-concussion syndrome. So, the majority of folks that we see are going to have these overlapping diagnoses. Other studies by Dr. Ross and  his colleagues, essentially says that 66% of veterans presenting with headache and TBI, presented with cognitive deficits.  They have more severe and more frequent headaches, more reports of pain, higher rates of PTSD and more impairment in sleep. The other thing that we also understand from recent studies is that this also is reflected in the cost of care, with those that had TBI pain and PTSD having the highest medium cost of care. 

So, just by way of background, depression as an entity with TBI is frequently noted in individuals with chronic post-concussion syndrome, both in the civilian and in military and veteran population. In individuals with mild traumatic brain injury who experience depression often report more symptoms and more severe symptoms than those mild traumatic brain injury patients without depression. So, having that premorbid history of depression may really be a prognostic indicator that the person may have a more chronic presentation of their TBI symptoms. The other difficulty with this in depression, specifically is that as we know with individuals with depression, many of them can feel that some of their problems are overwhelming, or that they can’t be helped, or that they are more severe than they may initially seem without a depressive diagnosis. So, for those folks that have depression anxiety and PTSD, in the veteran population specifically, it can exacerbate the report of their cognitive problems over and above what is noted on their psychological testing as was found by Spencer in 2010. 

Finally, depression after mild traumatic brain injury is linked to abnormal imaging results. So, more often than not, people who have depression following mild traumatic brain injury often have what is termed in literature outside of the VA and DOT guidelines as complicated mild traumatic brain injury. So, mild traumatic brain injury that does have some finding on imaging. Older age at the time of injury often predicts whether or not somebody is going to have depression after the mild traumatic brain injury as well as higher levels of depressive symptoms in the week following injury. 

There has been some literature to suggest that there in the moderate to severe traumatic brain injury population as well, that there is fairly high rate of diagnosis, about 22% to 26% following moderate to severe injury. Usually, it is in individuals who have had preinjury mental health treatment substance abuse. And really that it may also link to how much functional change the person has experienced. So, for the moderate to severe brain injury populations if they have not demonstrated significant functional changes six months post injury, it may be predictive of diagnosis depression at the year point. 

With respect to pain, we have a recent metaanalysis that looked at the rate of pain diagnoses in veteran populations and they found 43.1% pain prevalence, which is a fairly high prevalence rate across the veteran population. They also looked at, within that study, what the relationship was between brain injury and pain. That study in particular found that there was an independent relationship between brain injury and pain over and above other diagnoses, for example, PTSD and depression.  However there have been other reports in the literature that essentially have demonstrated the contribution of PTSD, insomnia, fatigue, and depression to reports of pain severity. So, the literature is somewhat mixed with respect to how much brain injury and pain are directly related, and obviously some of the polytrauma literature also suggests that there are a host of other injuries with which these veterans will present. And so, depending on the severity of their other injuries whether it be amputation, orthopedic injuries or even chronic use injuries from carrying heavy packs or doing other work that may have indicated that they would be susceptible to pain diagnoses. Those injuries, the prevalence of pain reports is generally higher and generally the pain is rated as more severe than in civilian studies. So, it is just something to keep in mind that the pain diagnosis may not be specifically related to the traumatic brain injury, especially in the polytrauma population, but it will be something that has to be considered in the treatment plan. One of the most commonly occurring pain diagnoses following diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury is headache and it's the most frequently cited persistent symptoms. About 90% of individuals experience headache following mild traumatic brain injury, and they generally develop within seven days, and usually about one-third to one-half of individuals with mild traumatic brain injury in the civilian literature report headache five hear after injury. The thing to be cognizant of with headache is that it doesn't necessarily have to with a specific injury to the brain, but may also be, because of other orthopedic injuries, and as noted in The International Headache Society Guidelines for 2004, trauma to the head or neck can lead to genesis of pain from the cervical spinal column, spinal cord, or the neck musculature. Early symptoms of headache, dizziness, or nausea in the immediate period following injury when the person was first seen, usually are associated with sustained post-concussion symptoms months after injury. 

So even having headache to a fairly severe headache may be indicative of problems longer-term. Finally, we reach the portion where I talk just briefly in background, about substance use disorders in traumatic-brain injury, and so in general, and especially when considering the moderate to severe population, substance-use rates decline following brain injury. And so, when we look at the evidence from level-one trauma centers that when you look at folks that present there, the prevalence of substance-use disorders went from 41% preinjury to 21% post injury. There was a recent study that looked at active-duty soldiers with mild traumatic brain injury, because many people will say, that may not mean necessarily be the case at a level-one trauma center, but for folks who have a mild traumatic brain injury who are just reentering the workforce, or reentering military service, would that be necessarily the same? And in this recent study, there was a slightly higher rate of alcohol abuse in individuals with comorbid mild traumatic brain injury diagnoses. 

However, what happened was, when they looked at it in multivariant way the relationship was not as strong, especially, when they considered other diagnoses such as mental health diagnoses in the analysis. On civilian-brain injury study, there is an increased risk for alcohol or substance use in the present of a cooccurring mood disorder which would fit well with the study from the active-duty population. And so, what some have posited is that what places the individual as mild traumatic, and potential risk for development of substance-use disorders are cognitive and emotional deficits following the injury, and then, potentially poor psychosocial adjustment, or coping skills following their injury. But again, there's not specific data from the veteran population that would suggest that there is a potentially higher diagnostic rate, just one study of active duty. 

So, when I talk about treatment guidance, I'm going to be referring primarily to The VA DOD clinical practice guidelines in a management in concussion in mild traumatic brain injury, mostly because the preponderance of individuals that we see within The VA, have a mild traumatic brain injury, rather than a moderate to severe injury. So, this guideline was developed. It was started in 2007. They reviewed literature up to 2008. it include management algorithms, and really, what came out of this was that there's really not that much evidence with respect to class A evidence from randomized control trials about what we can do for mild traumatic brain injury here. So, I also augmented some of this discussion with some recent findings that were discussed in the CPG for folks awareness, so the CPG, as it stands right now, indicates that for depression, really, one should try to start with non-pharmacologic treatment if one can with reassurance related to recovery in the early stages. Reduce the person's activity restriction; get them out, moving, and doing things. Educate them about sleep hygiene. Do a sleep study if it's indicated with their indication of OSA or other sleep disorders that may, or may not be contributing to the depressive symptoms, or underlying some of the fatigue, and encourage the person to get regular aerobic exercise. If pharmacotherapy is recommended for the individual, one can start either with antiepileptics or SSRI. However, there's some recent evidence following the publication of the CPG. There was a single randomized control trial for Citrulline, in the mild traumatic brain population, and in the moderate-sever population that showed not significant improvements in depressive symptoms. 

A recent evidence synthesis by the association for health-related quality essentially reflected a paucity of evidence for treatment of depression following a TBI. There have been a few studies, recently, to explore non-pharmacotherapeutic treatments in traumatic brain injury. One by Waldron and colleagues in 2012 documented the effectiveness from metaanalysis of cognitive behavioral therapy with a fairly large effect size in populations with brain injury. So, understand that this was across severity, so, mild, moderate, and severe with higher concentration in that metaanalysis in moderate to severe population. Finally, a small study looked at mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with a very small sample, 20 patients, with moderate to severe injuries, and they did demonstrate reduced symptoms of depression. With respect to treatment of pain, really, one of the biggest things that a clinician can do to help an individual with mild traumatic brain injury and pain, is to do a thorough evaluation, and really try to understand the genesis of the pain, severity of the pain, what makes the pain worse, and what helps to ameliorate the pain, and really treatment's going to depend on that, and so, the guidelines for TBI and pain suggest that a maximization of non-pharmacologic interventions is best before medications are initiated. So, this can include heat, ultrasound, cryotherapy, TNF, some of the non-Pharma psychotherapeutic techniques like relaxation, or CBT, may be useful, but could require modification if the individual has TBI that prevents them from staying within the manual treatment approaches available. The other thing that needs to be considered is that interventions that are used with folks with pain, and mild traumatic brain injury really need to focus on those that minimize side effects notable in traumatic brain injury. For example, you know, from the traumatic brain injury CPD analgesic bomb, acetaminophen and NSAID's are the first-line treatment for most types of pain. 

And finally just as with the pain guidelines and the recent guidelines from VA on pain treatment we really are looking to minimize the medications that have the potential for abuse in those with pain. For headaches specifically, from the DOD in VA CPG, the management, really, is similar to conventional headache management, and the only caveat to that is the medications that are used should be carefully prescribed to avoid sedation. So, as I noted in the headache-pain genesis, one thing to really insure is that any associated neck or upper-back injury is ruled out as the primary etiology of pain. Those can respond really well to physical therapy interventions and other interventions. Other to look at is medication use. Are they getting rebound headaches, because of the type of medications that they're using. Are they getting headaches, because of significant use, and are those causing worsening of headache, and also what the contribution of sleep and fatigue is, and really, as I noted, pharmacotherapy can include first-line treatment with NSAID's, and can expand to triptans prophylactic-headache treatments as necessary. 

The real vesting issue is what to do for substance-use disorders with respect to mild traumatic brain injury specifically. There have been some recent randomized control trials to look at the effect of brief interventions to reduce alcohol use in individuals with moderate to severe traumatic-brain injury, so little to no effect was demonstrated. Those trials were limited by small sample size, and interventions did vary with respect to time since injury to implementation, but what the field is really lacking at this point, is really effective interventions that consider the effect of brain injury. There's been work by Corrigan and others to develop manuals, and other treatment techniques for moderate to severe, but few randomized control trials that would give us class-A evidence to suggest one, or the other treatments. What often happens at clinical practices that there is a speciality referral to a substance-use disorder clinic was collaborative work on modification of treatments for individuals with brain injury. There's no clear evidence for that approach, but that is the approach that is recommended at this point. So, with that, I've come to the end of my slide, and I'm going to turn in over to Dr. Vasterling for her presentation. 

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:All right. I am calling up my slides, now. Thanks, Allison for the overview, and good morning to those of you in The West, and Pacific Isles, and good afternoon to the rest of you. My topic today is TBI, and PTSD comorbidity in returning veterans.

Molly:Jennifer, I'm sorry to interrupt. We're not actually seeing your slides, right now.

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:Uh-oh. So they're on my screen.

Molly:Okay. Let me turn it over to you one more time. You should see a pop up that says show my screen?

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:Yes. 

Molly:Click on that. There we go.

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:Alright. Good. Okay. We didn't really miss anything in terms of slides, anyway. So, just to overview what I'm going to talk about today, start with a brief description of the epidemiology, talk some about the mechanisms that lead to this comorbidity of PTSD and TBI, and then, spend more time talking about the clinical implications. So, let's start with the epidemiology. So, you probably know from your own experience, clinically as well as from previous presentations that the bulk of what we're dealing with in VA, unless you're working in a specialized setting is going to be mild TBI. That's who is being seen within DoD, so that's who we see within VA, keeping in mind of course, that although, we force TBI into these categories of mild, moderate, and severe, really the severity is continuous. So someone with 29 minutes of loss of consciousness isn't necessarily going to be very different clinically than someone with 31 minutes of loss of consciousness. Now, these data by Charles Hoge and his colleagues, really show, and this is all within predominately mild TBI that as the brain become more involved, more likely to have PTSD. Again, that's within mild. 

So, compared to no injury; to an injury that doesn't involve the brain at all to the mildest of TBI where somebody expresses alteration of consciousness, but not frank loss of consciousness to TBI with loss of consciousness. You see a real progressive slope in how many people are going to develop PTSD. So, not so, once you get into moderate and severe TBI; once you get beyond mild, and the slide that I'm showing is one that describes civilians, but a very large sample of civilians, and what happens is as the TBI becomes more severe, there's actually a decrease risk of PTSD. What's interesting about that, to me, is that at one point in the history of people thinking about this issue of TBI, and PTSD, people really believed pretty strongly that you couldn't develop PTSD if you had a moderate, and especially a severe TBI, and why is that? Because PTSD, of course, a lot of what the disorder is about is the memory of the trauma, and the reexperiencing symptoms, etc. 

And so, the theory was that if you had significant loss of consciousness, you didn't process an event at all. You may have had retrograde amnesia, so you forgot things before the head injury event, and then, you had antegrade amnesia afterwards. You had post-traumatic amnesia, and you weren't encoding anything afterwards for a while. Well, how could you be bothered by this memory, and I'm not going to go into why, but there are many different reasons why it could, and although, the prevalence decreases at the TBI gets more severe, it's still there, and people uniformly believe now that you can have PTSD at any level of TBI, and that's particularly true in combat situations, because usually, there's not this one single trauma even that lead to a head injury, that also, lead to psychological trauma. Usually, it's in a broader context of trauma exposure. So, even if someone's amnestic for the specific head-injury event, it tends to be in this much broader context of psychological trauma exposure.

So, what are the mechanisms that lead to the comorbidity? Well, first of all, it's again, the context itself, combat, it increases the risk of any sort of physical injury, but certainly in this, in recent military operations of head injury that may lead to traumatic-brain injury, but it's also very stressful. So even if the exact same event doesn't lead to the TBI, and the PTSD you have this context that increases risk of each of those things, but what is also really interesting, and this is where there are potential points of intervention, is that once you're stress exposed, and once you have a brain injury, it's possible that the brain injury, and then, it's sequellae, post-concussive symptoms for some people, and the psychological-stress exposure, and its sequellae post-traumatic stress disorder, and any number of other related mental disorders that they can really influence recovery from each other, so the TBI can influence recovery from the stress exposure. The PTSD can, potentially, influence recovery from the TBI. 

So what do we know about the ways in which PTSD might influence recovery from TBI, and above the little dotted line up here, I just cite one of Charles’s studies that demonstrates that statistically, when he accounts for PTSD, most of the post-concussive symptoms that were displayed in his sample of OEF/OIF participants could really be accounted for by PTSD. That doesn't mean that the TBI isn't real. It doesn't mean that the TBI isn't doing anything, but what it does mean is that in terms of lingering post-acute symptoms that there's a really strong influence of PTSD in TBI recovery of the PTSD above and beyond the injury itself, so why is that? Well, to recover from any sort of physical injury you need to be able to cope with it, and display a certain amount of resilience which is a fairly broad word and concept. In psychiatric symptoms, potentially reduce one's ability to cope with a TBI. It may reduce it. There's cognitive impairment. Are people able to reappraise what's going on with them in terms of their physical injury in an adaptive way? Are they able to establish, and connect to social support networks to help them get through, and recover from the injury? There are many different mechanisms there that could be chipped away at just a little bit by active psychiatric symptoms. The other thing that happens that isn't exclusive to PTSD, but sometimes happens in anxiety disorders more generally, is that anxiety disorders are often associated with somatic preoccupation. So, if someone is experiencing headaches that are related to either the brain injury, or as Allison mentioned to the related orthopedic injury it's not that the PTSD explains those headaches, but the anxiety associated with the PTSD draw one's focus to them, and does that make the headaches worse, because then, you're adding, in addition to the primary injury mechanisms, you're adding this worry, and tension component beyond it. 

So, what about TBI, increasing risk for poor PTSD outcomes? We know first of all, that having an injury of any sort, and then, all the associated complications, whether somebody's had that Allison delineated so well including whether people may have chronic pain, and orthopedic injuries. All of that can be really stressful. Well, we know in terms of PTSD recovery if you keep piling on stress, even if it's not traumatic, to the initial traumatic stress, it really hurts your ability to recover from the traumatic stress itself. So, it's kind of a cumulative thing of stress exposures. We also know that between mild TBI, or TBI more generally, and PTSD, there's a certain overlap in some of the neural structures. PTSD is not without its own neurobiology, and its own neuroanatomy, and its own neuropsychological profile, so there's a certain amount of overlap, and I point out here some of the structures that are thought to be potentially involved in both that may really add to cumulative effects. The literature suggests that even in people who don't have a brain injury, so even in normals in terms of neurological functioning that both premorbid-brain integrity, and neuropsychological or neurocognitive integrity that's experience before exposure to a psychological trauma can influence PTSD outcomes. 

So if we take that literature, and extrapolate to this particular situation, anything that TBI might bring to the table in term of neuro insult, and neuropsychological abnormalities that too, could potentially influence the course of PTSD. It's unlikely to explain everything. A lot of it has to do with how severe a psychological trauma is, but it moderates to a certain extent how quickly people may recover. So the chronicity in maybe how severely people experience the PTSD symptoms. And, sure enough, Richard Bryant who's in Australia did a big study on civilian with traumatic injuries. Some of the injuries involved the brain, and some of them were orthopedic, and what he did was he screened for psychological disorders right after the injury. These were people that were admitted to a trauma unit. He looked at them then, and then, he looked at them 12 months later, and what he found was that the people with mild TBI as compared to other types of physical injuries were twice as likely to develop a whole host of anxiety disorders a year later, and these are new-onset disorders, and that included PTSD. What was really interesting, though, is that the functional impairment 12 months later as to how well people were navigating through their daily lives was more closely related to psychiatric status than it was to TBI.

So, what does all this mean in terms of what we want to do clinically, and what are some of the challenges we have clinically? It sounds like in previous presentations, you've talked some about the diagnostic process, and the first challenge, when there's just comorbidity, of PTSD and TBI is diagnostic. There's a lot of overlap in the subjective complaints of post-concussive symptoms, and in PTSD symptoms. There's not total overlap. Post-concussive symptoms aren't going to make you reexperience a trauma, and although, PTSD might contribute to physical symptoms like headaches, PTSD by itself isn't necessarily going to be associated with sensitivity to light, and dizziness, and that type of thing, but there's enough overlap that it can make it really tough to try to distinguish. So, what are these symptoms attributable to be? It's a little bit harder to say that post-concussive symptoms are not attributable to PTSD than the other way around; because of the PTSD we're experiencing symptoms which are pretty pathognomonic of PTSD. 

So, what some people have tried to do, though, in trying to disentangle this is people say, well, what if we look beyond subjective report, and what if we looked to neuropsychological testing. So, we did this in a large cohort of Army soldiers where we were able to test them before their very first deployment, and we were able to test them after their first deployment, and what we found is that TBI, when it wasn't adjusted for PTSD or depression severity, it did show a little bit of relationship to self-reported health-related functioning, and it showed a small relationship to performance on one neuropsychological test that went away when we adjusted for PTSD symptom severity. On the other hand, in the far right here, what we see is that PTSD symptom severity, even taking into account TBI, and most of these were very mild TBI's, was related to just a host of neuropsychological performances. So, the important thing to know here, is that this would look different if we were looking at very acute TBI where the cognitive impairment's manifest themselves more prominently on neuropsychological tests, or if we were looking at TBI that was more severe. This is mild TBI, and this is definitely post-acute. This is months later, but this is a lot of whom we see in the VA, and finding documentable objective neuropsychological deficits, the story here is it doesn’t necessarily differentiate between the PTSD and the TBI, because the PTSD has such a strong influence, itself. 

So, in terms of assessment implications, first it is potentially very difficult to differentiate etiological factors based on symptoms, and neuropsychological tests, and it may be a little bit more informative to look at the course of symptoms. We expect after a mild TBI, or any TBI, that if anything, we should see some recovery, and at worst stability of neuropsychological deficits and other types of symptoms. Whereas, if PTSD is a contributing factor, we might expect as long as there's PTSD symptoms, and if they're increasing, we may see a different trajectory of symptoms over time with people, and that's something that we can ask people about even if we can necessarily access data, or information doesn't exist about what they do on objective tests. So, the big question that I get asked a lot in my world is in regards to PTSD treatment, and PTSD treatments, one of the first-line approaches is cognitive/behavioral therapy. So, people want to know, can I treat PTSD as usual, especially with cognitive/behavioral therapies like cognitive-processing therapy which requires a lot of mental flexibility, because you have to reappraise thoughts, and exposure-based therapies which means that you actually, have to deal with the trauma memory itself. 

So, I really think that it's two questions, rather than one, and the first and more basic question is does TBI contraindicate PTSD symptom? My answer would be probably not, except under special circumstance, but there's little data on this. In the PTSD world there are a couple of very small single-group pre/post tests of various PTSD interventions. CBT typed interventions on people with a range, mild and moderate. And there's certainly no contraindication, and you heard Allison talk about the literature on CBT for TBI independently of PTSD, and certainly there's some success there, so I do think, it's certainly safe. What are the exceptions? There's a case study or so that show people with severe executive disfunction where they're very, very perseverative that they may have trouble. You don't necessarily want to expose somebody with those sorts of problems to a traumatic memory, because it may be that they can move off of it, once they leave the therapy context, but that's a very exceptional circumstance. 

The bigger question is whether TBI in various severity influences treatment response. And, that's largely unknown. There are a number of people looking at this, right now, but the answer is possibly if there's cognitive impairment. Why do I say that? Well, a fairly small randomized study that was done not on veterans, but on other trauma survivors, and this is people without TBI, but just in normal variation in cognitive functioning. They found that the level at which people were proficient on verbal learning and memory influenced how well people did. So, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do these treatments. It just suggests that there may to be a certain patience with the treatments if people do have cognitive impairment. One of the strongest bits of evidence for CBT in the PTSD and mild-TBI context is the treatment study that Richard Bryant did some time ago, and it's small in terms of the sample, but it's a randomized control trial which strengthens it, and they did a cognitive behavioral therapy for acute-stress disorder. So, before the PTSD developed after mild TBI, and found that the people who received cognitive/behavioral therapy tended to,  compared to the other people show reduced development of PTSD months later. 

So in summary, what would I recommend in terms of treatment? I didn't talk a lot about this , but from the rehab perspective, because PTSD and TBI can each be associated with neurocognitive deficits, but say, address them, and say, don't worry about whether it's, because of PTSD or TBI. If somebody has demonstrable cognitive deficits, do what you would do normally. If you're going to do some sort of compensatory training or whatever, there's no evidence that PTSD treatment is contraindicated in mild TBI. If the TBI is mild, and probably also if moderate, you treat the PTSD as usual, but potentially allow for attenuated response if there are cognitive deficits, and proceed more cautiously with standard PTSD treatment if the TBI is more severe. So that really concludes the main points that I wanted to make about this, so I am now, going to turn this over to Dr. Brenner. Thank you very much. 

Molly:Great! Thank you, Jennifer. Dr. Brenner, feel free to take your time. We do only have about five pending questions. 

Dr. Lisa Brenner:Okay. I just clicked onto my screen, but I don't see it yet, so.

Molly:We do see your screen. Just go ahead, and click on the PowerPoint.

Dr. Lisa Brenner:Okay. Great! Okay. So, just as always, want to make sure that everybody knows what I say to day is my opinion, and not The VA's.

Molly:I'm going to need you to double click up on it, so we can see the slides.

Dr. Lisa Brenner:Oh, okay. There we go. How’s that? Yay! Thank you. So, this was a quote from a veteran that was in a study of ours a while ago, and he said, " think it took a while before I realized, and then, when I started thinking about thing, and realizing that I was going to be like this for the rest of my life, it gives me a really down feeling, and makes me think why should I be around like this for the rest of my life." This is a really important place to start in talking about suicide, and suicide prevention for those with TBI. The hope is that we can find ways to help individuals cope with challenges that arise for them whether it's related to their TBI or their depression or any of the other things we heard about today and also, how do we provide them with opportunities to get back to living, and you know, create meaning in people's lives, even after they have been injured, or struggling with different conditions? I am not seeing my slides go forward. I'm sorry. Just.

Molly:Just click anywhere on the slide, and it should advance through. 

Dr. Lisa Brenner:It's not. 

Molly:Okay, hover down over the bottom-left-hand corner, and you'll see an arrow to the right, that one, just click on that. 

Dr. Lisa Brenner:Yep. There we go. Great! Thank you. Okay, so what I did want to start with is, is suicide really a problem for veterans? And what we did is we used a large national database with our friends in the [inaud.] , and looked at the relationship between suicide and TBI among individuals seeking care in The VA, and one thing I just want to highlight in talking about in this study that we did, is that you just need a huge amount of individuals to be able to look at the question of suicide as an outcome, because it is such a low-base read behavior. That being said, it's a very significant, and of course, traumatic event for people when it occurs, both for clinicians and family members, but it is hard to study, because it doesn’t' happen particularly often. The statistics suggest that there are probably about 25 suicide attempts for each death, so certainly each death suggests that there's a lot that comes before it, and I'll talk about that in a moment. 

So, what we did is we looked through many, many VA records, and we found those with a history of TBI, and over this period between FY1 and FY6, a 105 died by suicide. We were interested in looking across severity level, and we looked using diagnostic codes that had been used in previous civilian studies, and so, you can see here, we saw any combined versus concussion fracture, versus what we termed as being more severe injury, injured involving hemorrhages and contusions. And what we did find was increased risk across all groups. Interestingly what we did hear is we controlled for sex and age, but also, psychiatric condition, and what you've seen in the slide already, today, is this sense that maybe, in some cases, psychiatric conditions, or psychiatric symptoms are actually symptoms of the TBI. So even controlling for potential symptoms of the disorder, although, they may also be related to concurrent psychiatric conditions, we found that increase risk across all severity levels. 

Interestingly, here you'll note that there was greater risk for those with concussion than those with more severe injury, then, and I think like the other speakers before me, I really want to highlight that these are very different conditions, and we need to be thinking about them differently. That is mild TBI in recovery is very different than moderate TBI, or severe TBI in recovery. We looked at psychiatric conditions across those who died by suicide, and those who did not, and what we found was that the rates of conditions were really high in all who had TBI which you've already heard about today, but that they were even higher in those who died by suicide. Suggesting that those comorbidities whether they were TBI related, or co-occurring, played a significant role in the lives of individuals who did have a history of TBI, and then, went on to die by suicide. And then, the last point I want to make here is that, although, we did find this increased risk across those with moderate versus more severe injuries, we did suggest that the risk for-for those groups is really related to different things, and so, one thing I'd like to put out there is this idea that perhaps for those with mild TBI, and I would say, this is civilian acquired TBI, individuals who are in the community, and doing things that get you mild TBI's like fighting, or perhaps falling, or perhaps abusing substances; that those are risky behaviors, and it may be that death by suicide is at the end of a long line of risky behavior for those individuals with mild TBI, and it may be that mild TBI is more of a marker for risky behavior, which suicide and suicide attempts are also, and for more moderate to severe injury that suicide may be more related to frustration. Challenges associated with having that severe injury, and trying to live with a history of TBI.

So again, the idea that maybe the relationship between mild TBI, and suicide, and moderate to severe TBI and suicide are very different, and can tell us different things clinically about a strategy that we need to employ when people with mild TBI are engaging in suicidal behavior versus those with moderate to severe TBI. This hypothesis is supported by a recent study that was completed by our colleagues at T2 in The Department of Defense where they looked at death by suicide amongst those with TBI, and this was mostly mild TBI, and again, this group is a little bit different, because the mild TBI's they sustained were secondary to the duties of their job; not necessarily engaging in risky behavior, and what they found was that there was no increase in death by suicide amongst those with mild TBI, but there was for those who had mood disorders, alcohol dependence, and other stresses in their life, like partner relationship problems and family circumstances. And again, our colleagues also wrote much about the same thing that they said that perhaps that the relationship between mild TBI and risk is really the important thing to look at in civilian populations, and that the risk,  a history of risk behavior may not pan out for those with TBI who sustain them in a military setting. One thing to think about is that we know a risk factor for future TBI is previous TBI. So then, the question really is do those who sustain mild TBI's in combat settings plus psychiatric conditions create future risks for future TBI's that then, go on to start creating risk for future risky behavior. 

So, we're not quite out of the woods, yet, but these are really complicated relationships between things, so just to say, there is this relationship between mild TBI and suicide, and everybody who has a mild TBI is at risk for future suicide is not really looking at the complicated nature of that potential relationship. The idea that suicide is generally preceded for many people by previous attempts including those with a history of TBI has been shown in a number of cases. These are all civilian studies. We don't have a study, right now, of suicide attempt prevalence amongst veterans or DOD with a history of TBI, but you can see that the attempt rate for those studies that are in civilian studies ranges from three to about 25%, and you have the very high rate in those with severe injuries. That was a study that was done by Grant Simpson and Robin Tate in Australia, so and much higher rates obviously then, in the civilian setting. We did do a preliminary investigation looking at suicide attempts in veterans who were psychiatrically hospitalized. We looked at 22 veterans, and these 22 veterans had 114 psychiatric admissions. The number of admissions ranged from one to 20, so already telling you that what is happening during these admissions doesn't seem like it may necessarily be addressing the problems of the individuals, and also, very costly both in time, energy, and quality of life for the individuals being psychiatrically hospitalized 20 times, but also, for the healthcare system. 

Sometimes people say to me, are individuals with moderate to severe TBI actually seeking help in the mental health system, and in the VA, and I hope this data suggests to you that they are, not only are they seeking help in outpatient settings, but they're also seeking help in inpatient settings. What we also found was that the length of stay was quite extensive for some of these individuals ranging for up to 120 days as you'll see here. About 11% of the total admissions were for suicide attempts, and the number of suicide attempts for these individuals ranged from one to five with a median of two. We often talk about firearms being the number one reason, the number one mechanism by which people engage in suicidal behavior, and die, and that's true. Firearms are very dangerous, and people who do use firearms often die, but people who engage in non-lethal suicidal behaviors, often were using overdoses here. I've also had people say to me, people with TBI, they can't make a plan enough to engage in lethal-suicidal behavior. That's actually not true. Some of these were very lethal, and the individuals, the seven who did overdose, overdosed, all of them, on medications they received at the VA. 

So, one thing we can do is to think about the medications for prescribing, and how lethal they are, and how frequently, and how much we're giving at a time. I want to move for a moment to risk factors. There has been some research in terms of looking at risk factors specifically for those with TBI, and again, to make things confusing across, looking at psychiatric symptoms in TBI, it does look like that people who are psychiatrically distressed are really at greatest risk, and the other thing that has been looked at is the idea of hopelessness, and Grahame Simpson in their work found that hopelessness was a very strong independent predictor of suicidal ideation, and then, future attempts in those with TBI in fact, they found that 35% of individuals had moderate to severe hopelessness one to ten years post injury, so again, this isn't just something that people are having immediately after their injury, and then, they get used to living with the TBI. For those with moderate to severe TBI disease the hopelessness does seem to persist. We were really interested in this, and so, we looked, wanted to look at this more qualitatively with veterans with a history of moderate to severe TBI, and we asked them what were the things that precipitate their ideation and behavior. 

And, veterans talked about just challenges and frustration with their cognitive impairment; not being able to function like they were used to in the world and I have some quotes here. I won't read them to you for time sake. They talked about, again, this idea of the emotional distress, feeling depressed as one veteran said, that he got depressed, and figure that his wife could use the life insurance money a lot better, and so, that he was just thinking about falling in front of a truck as he went out to do his morning exercise. This was a huge theme the veterans spoke about, this loss of sense of self. And, they spoke about losing the sense of who they were, and not knowing where to go, and not knowing how to create meaning in their life, and that really creating much distress, and just wondering, and hopelessness wondering about whether they should continue living. 

Just wanted to highlight the next finding, also, we've talked some today about the rates of comorbidities. Sometimes people have asked me, is PTSD a risk factor for suicide, in those with TBI, and we did the study that also does seem to suggest as with those without TBI, PTSD does increase risk for those risk for a suicide attempt in those with a history of TBI. And so, just quickly about prevention, and right now, there are just very few evidenced-based practices for addressing suicide in the population on whole, and even fewer for addressing suicidal behavior, or suicidality amongst those with a history of TBI. In fact, to date, there has been one published study, and this is the study it was done by Grahame Simpson. He did an RCT, and the program is aimed at addressing helplessness in those with a history of moderate to severe TBI. The program's called Window to Hope, and what they were able to find is significant reductions in hopelessness for those who engaged in the treatment. 

We were very impressed by the work done by Grahame, and we were able to work with Grahame to get a grant here at The Denver VA to look at The Window to Hope treatment for veterans with moderate to severe TBI, and The Window to Hope, it's very basic strategies presented in a way that is meaningful to individuals with moderate to severe injury. And so, this is the four pane window to hope. You focus on these four specific themes over group therapy sessions, so, looking at positive lifestyle changes, taking another look, doing some cognitive restructuring, doing some problem solving, and working on post traumatic growth. I'm happy to say that we're running groups, now, and I'm excited to be able to present findings of this to you as we move forward.

And finally, I just want to encourage everybody to keep looking at this really important problem. One of our veterans said, I've talked to a professional. That's why you guys are here, professionally trained to deal with people with my problem or problems like I have. Left but to myself, I'd probably kill myself, but that didn't feel right, so I turned to professionals, you guys, and so, the more that we can do to increase our knowledge base so that we can engage in evidence-based practices for those with TBI, I think, we'll be doing a great service to not only veterans, but ourselves in the system on whole. So, I want to thank you, and move to the questions. 

Molly:Thank you very much Dr. Brenner. We do have eleven pending questions, so we'll hop right into those. I will alternate between the presenters that they were asked to. This first one is for Dr. Cernich. Have there been any studies using a low dose of lithium? 

Dr. Alison Cernich:I'm unsure for what specific conditions folks are asking that question for. I'm not aware of any randomized control trials of lithium, that would be pertinent for I guess, they're asking for depression, or for effective disorders. I'm aware of some of those in case study for moderate to severe, but I'm not clear as to whether they're asking that also for pain, and again, I'm not familiar with any randomized control treatments for using lithium for pain, either, in the traumatic brain-injury population. 

Molly:Not a problem. Thank you for that reply. The first question is for Dr. Vasterling, any role for prazosin in post concussive headache?

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:I know some people who are interested in looking at that. I don't know that there's an evidence base for that, yet, and in terms of me speculating on what I think? That's out of my area of confidence to comment on the pharmacology, but I know that whoever asked that would not be unique in having that thought. I know there are some people interesting in examining it. For headache, also, I know Dr. Rough and his colleague in Cleveland have done a small trial with seventy veterans, and they treated headache really by improving sleep with prazosin, and that's also Dr. Raskin's approach. The primary target of their treatment was sleep, not headache per se, but headache improved in both of those publications.

Molly:The next question is for Dr. Brenner. Does untreated PTSD contraindicate mild TBI cognitive therapy, for example, speech therapy?

Dr. Lisa Brenner:I have not seen studies on that. Jennifer talked about the studies by Kate Chard, and in addition to Kate's data there was an expert consensus meeting several years ago. The Expert Consensus Meeting was focused specifically on evidence-based treatment for TBI, but what I guess, I would suggest is that I don't believe that TBI would be a contraindication for those, but you, I guess you would need to see how the treatment went, and what the specific concerns were, so I would say, no, if I'm understanding the question correctly.

Dr. Alison Cernich: And in terms of the reverse, because I think there was a reverse question about does PTSD contraindicate the speech therapy, and I would say, probably not. PTSD presents in many different forms, and in anything somebody shows up on a very acutely distressed state, that's going to make anything difficult, but just experiencing PTSD as a disorder doesn't necessarily mean that at every meeting somebody's going to be so acutely distressed that they can't engage in something like that, and I mean, when you think about what cognitive behavioral therapy; how structured it is for PTSD, if people can do that, they can do various types of cognitive rehabilitation techniques in my opinion. 

Dr. Lisa Brenner:And, I would that, and if the question is does cognitive rehabilitation work, that's a different question, but I think our speech therapists the ones that I've worked with here in Denver, and I'm sure across The VA, actually have a long history of working with individuals with PTSD from the inpatient units from just their regular case loads, and it do think, it's important to have a good working knowledge of PTSD if you work in The VA as any kind of provider. 

Molly:Thank you both. I just want to confirm with our presenters that you each have a few more minutes to stay on, and finish answering questions?

Dr. Alison Cernich:Sure. 

Molly:Great! Thank you. A question for Dr. Cernich, there was a note that relaxations programs need to be modified for TBI patients. Why, and in what ways?

Dr. Alison Cernich:So really, it depends on the severity of the TBI, so if you use relaxation protocols, and you don't, if you're relying more on the person, and/or rely on a tape, sometimes you have to perform rehearsal with the individual so that they can remember what the procedures are, or what they're supposed to do in response to the queues. Other times, it may be that you have to shorten some of the protocols with individuals with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, especially in the subacute setting. Sometimes those sessions are simply shorter, because the person can't attend, or can't really stay in a session for long periods of time, and direct attention. Other times, it's because, so instead of the pain treatments are more familiar with this than probably I. It's been some time since I've done this, but the other thing is that sometimes it's the just the ability to tolerate focus on specific areas, at times we used to, and people with specific orthopedic injuries, we would do shorter sessions targeted on relaxing muscles especially with folks with spasticity. So, it really depended on what the nature of the injury is, what the severity of the injury is, and what the cognitive deficits were, and how the relaxation treatments were being introduced that would make modifications necessary. All of this is pretty much saying that you have to consider the individual, with whom you're working, and how well those specific protocols would be, or how good those would be for the particular individual with whom you work.

Molly:Thank you very much. We do have a very engaged audience. We now have 14 pending questions, and the next one for Dr. Vasterling. A colleague and I employed with The Epilepsy Centers of Excellence are listening in on the webinar. The implementation of The Center of Excellence is based on TBI/epilepsy using Vietnam War Veterans as a cohort. We do not see that there is anything more recent. Do you see this as another significant comorbid factor with TBI?Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:Seizure disorder? Yes. I would see that as a significant factor in certain people with TBI. Obviously, this is not directed at the people who asked the question, because they know this, but it's directed at a broader audience that seizure disorder isn't going to develop epilepsy isn't going to happen in everybody that has TBI, but it's certainly the TBI is the risk factor for it, and it would be a complicating factor, and it could complicate in all sorts of ways. I mean, it is increase stress. It is increased functional impairment, and certain seizure disorders would obviously affect limbic functioning, and influence PTSD directly. 

Dr. Lisa Brenner:Can, I just add to that also, that I know there has been some recent interesting work in looking at seizure-like symptoms in individuals with TBI, OEF/OIF returning veterans, and I think, just a really important, back to the somatic symptoms that Alison was talking about. Needing to do a better job at identifying if it's true seizure disorder, or a different way of manifesting challenges associated with trauma, and there is some recent writing on that.

Molly:Great! Thank you both for that reply. This one is for Dr. Brenner. Professional football players appear to develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy CCE, over a period of time. What assessment guideline, exist for ongoing monitoring in the assessment of TBI, possibly leading to CTE?

Dr. Lisa Brenner:Well, I'm so glad somebody brought up CTE, so we've also been interested, because I know it's been in the press a lot, and I just want to let people know that the actual number of cases, number of published papers on this is very, very small. And although, by reading the popular press you would think that this is an absolutely established relationship between CTE, let's say, TBI and CTE, and then, CTE and suicide. Both of those relationships are still really being explored, and I would say in a very young stage of research. That being said, there are not ongoing protocols if you're thinking over a lifetime for screening for TBI, and some people would suggest that screening for TBI is problematic. 

I've actually been doing some work, here, for screening for TBI in our mental health setting have been finding some interesting outcomes in terms of risky behavior, again, and also, in terms of potential future negative psychiatric outcomes. My hope is that I'll be able to get that data out to people sooner, rather than, later. But again, we're at a very early stage in looking at the relationships between histories of multiple TBI's, and developing CTE, which I should also say at this point, CTE can only be diagnosed at death. We don't even have good diagnostic criteria while people are still alive, and then again, CTE and suicide. 

Molly:Thank you for that reply. Back to Allison, will there always be changes in imaging studies within TBI? Does the type of study performed, MRI versus CT make a difference?

Dr. Alison Cernich:So, often with mild traumatic brain injury, specifically, there are no imaging findings, and that's the distinction that's been made in The TBI Model Systems, and sponsored by The National Institutes of Disability and Rehabilitation. Mild injury, generally, does not have imaging findings on CT, or MRI. Complicated mild-brain injury is often noted when someone does have imaging findings that’s what the VA DOD clinical practice guidelines don't make that distinction, so if you look at those, you won't see that there, and they really default to moderate for that. The other piece of that is that there are new imaging studies coming out every day, looking at whether, or not mild traumatic brain injury can be detected by different imaging approaches, and again, this is really more in the researcher arena than it is in the clinical practice area, so people are looking at diffusion tensor imaging. People are looking at PET, at STACKED [PH]; they are looking at things like arterial stem labeling. They are looking at MEG images, and various things are emerging from that, but really nothing definitive with respect to a neural imagining protocol that has been specified for mild traumatic brain injury has yielded anything that is consistent enough to indicate its regular clinical use, and with some of those images that I just discussed you wouldn't have access to some of them at most of The VA Medical Centers, simply because either they're not in line with the technology we have, right now, and really, some of these scanners are not in anything but really large academic medical centers that focus on neuroimaging, or in military-treatment facilities that have some of them for research, or VA facilities that have some of them for research, or clinical use, but it's usually in large facilities, and so, we're not quite there, yet, with respect to imaging to say that there's a definitive technology that can be used to determine whether, or not someone has a mild traumatic brain injury. For the most part, we're still relying on report of the event, and the symptoms that follow. 

Molly:Thank you for that reply. The next question for Jennifer, if the course of mild TBI should be one of gradual improvement, am I hearing that if the symptoms are worsening then, the complex of symptoms are better treated by focusing on PTSD, or the other disorders?

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling: Yes, and no. If the course of symptoms are worsening, it gives you reason to explore further. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's PTSD, and there may be reasons inherent to the TBI. I mean, there are the occasional events that happen where somebody may be for example, having a slowly developing subdural hematoma or something, and in that case the course wouldn't look typical to most TBI's, but it is reason to look further than the TBI. And so, PTSD in a whole spectrum, I mean, my topic was PTSD and TBI, but the fact is psychological trauma is associated with this whole spectrum of stress related reactions. So, it's not just PTSD. If you see psychiatric symptoms, and you're not a mental health professional, I mean, my advice is don't assume that it's PTSD. It may be PTSD. It may be generalized anxiety. It may be an acute stress reaction. It may be depression. There are all sorts of things that it could be. So, yes, you see that, it alerts you to something that's unexpected, and then, the next step is to explore further, so why is this?

Molly:Thank you very much, and for Lisa, could you speak to the issue of moral injury as it relates to suicide risk. This seems to be a fairly unaddressed issue, and it seems that it could significantly increase hopelessness.

Dr. Lisa Brenner:Yes, I agree, and I agree that it's under studied, and I would say it's not just an issue with TBI, obviously, but I think, on whole in terms of suicide trying to understand how to help people reintegrate into their new lives as they return from deployment. It's going to be a very important issue. We just completed some interviews ulterior interviews, actually quite a few for Carson where that issue came up quite frequently. And the soldiers talked about just trying to reconcile what they did when they were there, how they used humor there to cope with things that now, looking back are quite horrific, and trying to understand how to live with themselves, and their changed sense of self in their lives here. So, I agree this would be a really important area of study, and more work needs to be done. 

Molly:Thank you. We are working though the list diligently and back to Allison. Knowing that PACT providers have little training and time to care for these complex veterans, should we get update guidelines to avoid chronic opioids, and/or benzodiazepines in primary care, and to instead direct the veterans to behavioral therapy?

Dr. Alison Cernich:Wow! What a great question about PACT. So one, the PACT teams are really working really diligently with a number of the specialty leads to provide some updated guidance for the PACT teams on best approaches for some of these specific issues, and I know I've been in, and so has The Rehabilitation Prosthetic Service, and Mental-health Services we've been in touch with PACT about some ways that we can deliver that guide, either through their wiki pages, or direct guidance to providers or other venues that make it easier, but agreed that there's limited time, but we, you know, there is integration of behavioral-health impact. And so, where those resources can be brought to bear for assessment, and/or for clarification of what the best initial treatment plan might be at the PACT level, might be a really good way to optimize the way that you utilize that treatment team. 

The other thing is consultation with specialist is a great idea if you're concerned about what medications to use, or which ones you should avoid, agreed that avoiding benzodiazepines and other sedating medications is really the first line. That's still part of the CPG's as they stand, now, and it's part of The VA's pharmacy guidance, generally, and we will probably be also, updating the TBI Clinical-practice Guidelines hopefully, we'll start that process in the next year to two years, but again, that's a long process. I don't think those CPG's are going to be updated as quickly as the guidance that we can get through The PACT Leads to The Pact Teams, overall.

Molly:Thank you for that response. We are down to the last eight questions, so we'll just move right along. Jennifer, I was struck by the comment regarding not worrying about etiology. Do you think figuring out etiology and communicating that to the patient can enhance understanding and empowerment in the patient, and lead to better results?Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:Yeah, and I'm glad you asked for clarification, because I didn't intend to say, to not worry about etiology, in general. What I intended was to say that if somebody is expressing cognitive impairment to treat it as you would normally regardless of whether it's, because of the TBI, the PTSD, or both, but yeah. To the degree, really, for both PTSD and TBI the important thing, and there's a literature to suggest this in both areas, but the important thing to express to people is positive expectations of recovery. Without those expectations, it is going to adversely affect their recovery. Telling somebody that they have PTSD, or TBI, I mean, either one of those things doesn't necessarily convey that they shouldn't have a positive expectation of recovery. It helps them to know if they have PTSD whether PTSD is a factor, because say, they're being seen in a rehab setting, and they're having cognitive impairment. Well, they may address it there, but they also need to get treatment for the PTSD, so it is important in that sense, but my point is to not say, well, it's PTSD therefore, it's psychiatric. Therefore, I'm not going to do what I usually do with cognitive impairment in terms of trying to help people compensate for it. I would say to go ahead, and do that, anyway. So, I'm very glad that somebody asked for clarification. 

Molly:Thank you for that reply, and right no to Lisa. Why are such high rates of suicides, one/day, reported in the press?

Dr. Lisa Brenner:That's probably correct. Trends on the whole are at very high risk for suicide. Of the suicide deaths, 20% of them are believed to be veterans, and so, those numbers are what are being reported. They're not specific to TBI, and they're not specific necessarily to individuals who are currently serving.

Molly:Thank you for that reply. Back up to Allison. Have there been any studies on the effectiveness of mindfulness on TBI and PTSD?

Dr. Alison Cernich:I'm not as aware of the PTSD literature, so I will pass that to Dr. Vasterling. There was a recent study of mindfulness for depression in a very small sample, and they had some limited effects, but it was such a small sample that I would hate to generalize to say that mindfulness was specifically effective for depression in TBI. Dr. Vasterling do you have any further comments on PTSD?Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:Within PTSD, not necessarily comorbid PTSD and TBI, but there's certainly preliminary evidence that mindfulness can be helpful with PTSD. I wouldn't call a stage of being evidence-based in the sense of having multiple, big studies, but there's certainly indication from preliminary studies that it may be useful for PTSD, and people are studying it, now.

Unidentified Male:Molly can I chime in here?

Molly:Absolutely!

Unidentified Male:The subject of meditation and PTSD. There's been a small comparative trial that's in print, and we hope to have that as one of our cyber seminars in the spring in April, so we will have the people responsible for that work speaking in late April, so look forward to that. 

Molly:Thank you very much! And, this is the last specific question to one presenter, and then, we'll move onto the general ones. This is for Dr. Brenner. Can VA providers get access to The "Window to Hope," Protocol?

Dr. Lisa Brenner:The VA providers, The Window to Hope Protocol actually, is Grahame Simpson's protocol, so we are in the process of trying to figure out how to disseminate, how to train to actually do the protocol, and then also, to see if it works, so my hope is over time, we will be able to provide VA Providers with both training, and evidence that it works, but right now, we're not at that stage. 

Molly:Thank you for that reply. I do want to thank all of you for staying on the call. We do have a couple hundred very interested attendees still on the call, and we're almost done with the questions. So, these were not specific to any presenters, so feel free to chime in if you know the answer. Do you see any preference for prolonged exposure therapy verus cognitive-processing therapy in the treatment of PTSD and TBI?

Unidentified Female:I'll try to take that one. No. We have no evidence that would suggest that one is better than the other. 

Molly:Thank you. Is there a cumulative effect if a person sustains more than one MTBI? Is this affected by the length of time injuries may occur?

Unidentified Female:You mean the length of time between injuries?

Molly:I do believe, yeah. 

Unidentified Female:Okay. I would say at this point, that the jury is still out on that. I'm not aware of any; there is some literature that suggests that multiple-traumatic brain injuries, especially mild, can lead to longer presentation of symptoms following the injury. Also, can have worsened headache, is one of the specific publications from the civilian literature. I have not seen any recent publication of multiple-brain injury in the military setting that would suggest that there is a different outcome or prognostics. Dr. Vasterling, and Dr. Brenner please correct me if I'm incorrect on that. I've seen most of that literature from the civilian, especially athletic literature. 

Unidentified Female:You're on target. Dr. Balinger has a study about the impact, and the potential that multiple mild injuries may result in worse outcomes, so if people are interested they could look at Heather's work, but again, I totally agree that this is an emerging science. 

Molly:Thank you all. Next question. Do you know of any studies where the alpha-stem stress control system for treatment of anxiety and depression. I read several positive VA and military studies. Are you familiar with any?

Unidentified Female:I am not familiar with that one. 

Molly:Alpha-stem stress control system.

Unidentified Female:I'm not familiar with that. 

Molly:Would there be an indication that OT/sensory intervention can be beneficial for redeveloping nerve bridges in the brain?

Unidentified Female:I'm unsure what the evidence would be for, obviously there's neuroplasticity after injury, so rehabilitation the focuses on one, treating the symptoms, and two, encouraging rewiring, or rerouting, or plasticity or many things in terms of rehabilitation are useful. I don't know that many of us have the evidence, at this point, from the literature that specific techniques or treatment are actually repairing specific neural pathways. There's some evidence to suggest that exercise, generally, can do that, but in very specific ways, and some of the other treatment s that we've looked at talk about changing neurotransmitter response or neurotransmitter pathways, but I don't know that any specific therapy has been shown to have at least in mild traumatic brain injury, and even in some of the moderate to severe injuries, I don't know that there's any imaging evidence to suggest that any of them are directed specifically to that outcome.

Unidentified Female:I agree with that, and I feel the need to make the point again. It's been made several times that these are very different conditions. Mild TBI versus moderate to severe and acute versus post-acute, just really, different presentations, really different conditions, and really different indications, agree that there's no, I don't know that there's any evidence per the last question that, but just that we really need to think about most of the mild TBI's that we see in our practice here at The VA, they're long-post-acute, and people probably sustain their injuries one to two years prior while they served, and it's very important to remember what stage we're at when we're seeing people. 

Molly:Thank you for that reply. Last two questions. The first one, have you found a reason to hold audiology APD evaluation related to being cleared by mental health provider with regards to diagnosed PTSD before APD evaluation can be addressed?

Unidentified Female:If I understand that question? It's about the sequencing of care, and it is one of the questions that people ask, but I don't know of any evidence to suggest whether you should sequence, and in what order you should sequence, or rather you should treat concurrently. The idea of poly-trauma centers is for concurrent management of multiple problems, but I know of nothing that addresses that specific question.

Molly:Thank you for that reply, and the last question we have. There are many vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements know to improve cognitive functioning. What is being provided to veterans in this aspect of treatment?

Unidentified Female:Really again, I go back to what Dr. Brenner said. With respect to herbal supplement, vitamin supplements, any of the other sort of complementary and alternative methodologies, again, the jury is still out. I know that there have been small randomized control trials for traumatic brain injury in some of the cognitive deficits, and I know that there are trials out there for the specific co-occurring disorders that we've spoken about. What their utility is in a co-occurring presentation is yet to be determined, and I don't know of any specific indications for any herbals or vitamins that are out right now, specific to any of the conditions that I discussed.

Molly:Thank you for that reply. That is the final question that has come in, so at this time, I'd like allow any of you to give some concluding comments. Dr. Cernich, we start with you.

Dr. Alison Cernich:The concluding comment that I have is that when people present the best thing that we can do for them, at this point, is traumatic-brain injury can be one of the things that an individual presents with, and that we have to take into consideration the various co-occurring disorders with which our veterans present, and then, try to really address the symptoms that are most problematic, and cause the most functional distress for them using the best available guidance we have to inform our treatment, and to make sure that we're trying to meet their needs in the best evidence-based way that we can.

Molly:Thank you very much, Dr. Vasterling?

Dr. Jennifer Vasterling:The conclusion from me, is to try to avoid getting into too much of an either or situation as people try to parse out contributions from TBI and PTSD, and to look at the person in their totality, and then treat what's problematic. 

Molly:Thank you. Dr. Brenner?

Dr. Lisa Brenner:I would really encourage people to start thinking about risky behaviors on whole, and talking with their patients about different kinds of risky behaviors, including TBI and suicide-related behaviors. The other thing I would say in line with what other people have already said is, sleep, sleep, and sleep. Try to help our patients sleep. Good day to suggest that people are sleeping better. They're going to feel better. They're going to be less risk for suicide, less risk for other post-concussive symptoms, so really, can we help our veterans sleep better. 

Molly:Thank you very much. I'd like to thank all of the presenters for lending their expertise today, and remind our attendees to please join us for the nest TBI mini-series taking place in March and April of 2013, and as you exit today's webinar please wait for just a second while a survey will load on your screen. We do appreciate you feedback, and it helps us to provide presentations on the topics that interest you. Thank again, for everybody joining us, and have a wonderful day!

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