Veterans and Brain Disease
by Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times, April 25, 2012
He was a 27-year-old former Marine, struggling to adjust to civilian life after two tours in Iraq. Once an A student, he now found himself unable to remember conversations, dates and routine bits of daily life. He became irritable, snapped at his children and withdrew from his family. He and his wife began divorce proceedings.
This young man took to alcohol, and a drunken car crash cost him his driver’s license. The Department of Veterans Affairs diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. When his parents hadn’t heard from him in two days, they asked the police to check on him. The officers found his body; he had hanged himself with a belt.
That story is devastatingly common, but the autopsy of this young man’s brain may have been historic. It revealed something startling that may shed light on the epidemic of suicides and other troubles experienced by veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His brain had been physically changed by a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. That’s a degenerative condition best-known for affecting boxers, football players and other athletes who endure repeated blows to the head.
In people with C.T.E., an abnormal form of a protein accumulates and eventually destroys cells throughout the brain, including the frontal and temporal lobes. Those are areas that regulate impulse control, judgment, multitasking, memory and emotions.
That Marine was the first Iraq veteran found to have C.T.E., but experts have since autopsied a dozen or more other veterans’ brains and have repeatedly found C.T.E. The findings raise a critical question: Could blasts from bombs or grenades have a catastrophic impact similar to those of repeated concussions in sports, and could the rash of suicides among young veterans be a result?
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Note: Burness Britt, the Marine pictured above, survived the IED blast and is back in the United States recovering from his wounds.
Read a related story of Burness Britt’s photograph and his struggles to recover from his serious injury:
Filed under: Resources Tagged: | Afghanistan, Army, Bennet Omalu, Boston University School of Medicine, brain injury, Burness Britt, Cheryl DeBow, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Combat, CTE, Deployment, Depression, Infantry, Iraq, Marine Corps, Mental Health, Military, Military Family, Military Suicide, PTSD, Robert A. Stern, Stigma, Stress, Suicide, Suicide prevention, Veterans, Veterans Affairs, War