June 7, 2005
Israeli researchers speculated that people who can recall a traumatic event may be at greater risk for PTSD than those with no recall of the event. Traffic accidents can cause head injuries, and they can also cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While nobody wants to be in a traffic accident, they give researchers an opportunity to explore complex relationships between PTSD and memory. The researchers studied 120 persons who had been in a serious car accident. 55 subjects (45%) remembered accident, and 65 (55%) did not remember it (likely due to a head injury that occurred in the accident). Subjects were assessed within 24 hours of the injury with the Memory of Traumatic Event Questionnaire, and assessed for PTSD-like symptoms one week, four weeks, and six months after the accident.
Subjects who remembered the car accident were significantly more likely to develop PTSD-like symptoms than those who did not recall it. Only four of the 65 subjects who had no memory of the event developed PTSD, compared with 13 of the 55 subjects who remembered the accident.
The authors concluded that "memory of a traumatic event is positively associated with the risk for development of PTSD, while lack of memory of a traumatic event decreases the risk and might, in fact, play a protective role. Thus, along with other factors, such as history of previous trauma, previous psychiatric morbidity, and physical injury, memory of a traumatic event appears to be another risk factor for PTSD."
This certainly makes some sense. People with PTSD often re-experience the past trauma through nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive recollections. If the trauma (such as a head injury) disrupted the process of storing a memory then these symptoms would be likely to occur.
The authors take things a step farther, however. They state that "’deliberate' disruption of the memory of the traumatic event might prove therapeutically beneficial." A Psychiatric News article describing the research stated that the research team is now investigating whether it is possible to “facilitate abolition of troubling memories by pharmacological means.” The article quotes one of the authors as stating that "we will then study the potential therapeutic benefit of such interventions."
They are studying drugs to induce amnesia for traumatic events? While this initial study is fascinating and adds to our understanding of trauma, I for one believe that drug-induced amnesia is not the direction that this research should take.
Reference: "Does Memory of a Traumatic Event Increase the Risk for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Patients With Traumatic Brain Injury? A Prospective Study" American Journal of Psychiatry, V162, #5 pp963-969. Sharon Gil, Ph.D., Yael Caspi, Ph.D., Irit Zilberman Ben-Ari, Ph.D., Danny Koren, Ph.D., and Ehud Klein, M.D.
Last edited 11/05/05
