A terrifying event in Armenia may end up helping troops suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The Los Angeles Times reports that UCLA is studying victims of a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that shook more than 40 percent of the country and killed an estimated 25,000 Armenians in 1988. U.S. veterans looking for disability payments from the Department of Veteran Affairs may find the results interesting.
More than a dozen of the victims are being studied by the school to figure out the long-term effects of PTSD. Researchers said the Armenians who carried two genetic variations associated with depression more commonly had PTSD, the news source said. The study said the genes may be relatively small in figuring out if a person will develop PTSD.
“In gauging how severely a subject would suffer from symptoms 14 years after the earthquake, several easy-to-spot traits were far more useful predictors than were single-letter changes on certain genes,” the Los Angeles Times said. “Among them: Females were more likely than males to experience PTSD, as were older people, those who had lost family members, and those who had experienced traumatic events before the earthquake.”
The Law Offices of Harold W. Conick and Associates are very familiar with the issues involved with these cases and the evidence required to prove PTSD cases. It is important in these cases to have sufficient mental health treatment and records to convince the VA of the merits of the claim.
