He says he has more than a dozen severe health problems related to his Gulf service. One key to successfully treat these types of problems might be to focus on controlling the veterans' symptoms rather than eliminating them. Addressing this approach were Steven Hunt, MD, and Ralph Richardson, PhD, who operate a Gulf War Clinic affiliated with the Veterans Administration and the University of Washington department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. After the war, the patient suffered fatigue and discomfort, as well as memory problems, all with no obvious medical cause. This type of case has caused Hunt and Richardson to shift their treatment efforts away from looking for specific physical causes which, they say, may never be fully understood.
Patients report that they liked the clinic's symptom-controlling treatments.
But the veterans' chief complaint about this type of treatments was that they were unable to find out what actually caused their problems. While the U.S. soldiers' problems have lingered long after the war, many troops from Great Britain had a far different experience, according to Col. John Graham, MD, a British liaison officer. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.