The U-C-S-D School of Medicine will spearhead a nationwide study to look into the prevention and treatment of traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. The Department of Defense is funding the 60-million dollar research program. KPBS Reporter Kenny Goldberg has more.
The five-year study will take place at ten sites in the U.S. The goal is to better understand what happens in the brain when it suffers a traumatic injury.
U-C-S-D's Dr. Murray Stein will head up the research. He says there are very few effective treatments for post traumatic stress disorder.
Dr. Murray Stein: There's some good psychological therapies that have not been widely disseminated. There's some medication treatments that frankly don't work very well. So in that area, we got a ton of work to do.
More than seven-and-a-half million Americans are affected by PTSD. It's believed more than one out of ten veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan develops the condition.
Kenny Goldberg, KPBS News.
