Upcoming Conference: FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN PTSD: PREVENTION, DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT

[Skip Rizzo, Ph. D.]

On behalf of the organizers, I am passing on this announcement for the conference entitled:

FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN PTSD: PREVENTION, DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT

October 18-23, 2009 

The conference will be held on the campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.

Please see the attached poster and a call for poster presentations. The deadline has now been extended for poster submissions to Friday, July 31st, 2009!

Further information including the list of invited speakers, and topics is also available on the website:
 
http://www.as.huji.ac.il/workshops/isf/ptsd/

We would appreciate your help in publicizing this conference so please feel free to send the announcement to your colleagues and any electronic list you may be on.

Looking forward to seeing you in Jerusalem.
Regards,
Marilyn and Helene.

"Helene S. Wallach, PhD" <hel...@yahoo.com>
"Prof. Marilyn  Safir" <marily...@gmail.com>



***I might add that having seen the preliminary program, that this event will have 4.5 Days of very solid presentations, panels and events! They also toss in a full day tour of Jerusalem, which if you haven't been there, is a great opportunity!
Skip Rizzo

[windb...@rose.net]

Thanks for the heads up, Skip. But, I think that all of the
organizations that I am involved with, actively; Vietnam Veterans Against
The War, (the originators of the concept of PTSD re Post Vietnam Syndrome
& Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners,
3d Edition, R. Lifton, and Home To War, by Gerald Nicosia, and Still At
War, Willie Hager 1974, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85A0dJJMqHQ;
Veterans For Peace; and, Iraq Veterans Against The War, are all
concentrating our talents, resources, and efforts on our returning troops
here at home, and their social and political milieux here, as opposed to
that of Veterans from other nations. This is not to say that it is not an
issue in other nations, or that those Veterans aren't important. It just
means that stressors differ with each experience, and that we are
concerned with our American Veterans currently returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan, and those still suffering from Vietnam. This is due, in great
part to limitd economic resources, with most of our advocates, talents,
and programs operating out-of pocket, thereby limiting our options and
priorities. Our first priority is our own troops' welfare and quality of
life. Once we have a handle on that, and somehow manage to improve our
personal economics, we can outreach other nations with our solutions, and
not just our theories.

Not only are there variable impinging stressors, particular to the
interpretation of the causal matrix, but to the tx matrix, as well, taking
into consideration the nature of the conflicts, as well as cultural and
political differences in our two nations' experience. In short, Skip; we
don't believe that it's the combat experience per se, that is the
stressor, as our troops are well trained to that aspect of their mission,
and expect hardship and danger; but, the nature of that combat, and the
perception of mission, and the reality of carrying it out, are in fact
major potential stressors.

Two major stressors, common throughout all of our experiences here in the
USA, is the adjustment to coming home to a population that holds your
service to it at arms length, for political reasons, and the VA operating
on a failed paradigm, when it comes to diagnosis, tx, and service
delivery, and that uses Veterans claims as a screening out tool with
direct correlation to budget, rather than an as a tool to insure a
respectable and dignified quality of life for our current returning
Veterans, as well as those Vietnam Veterans who haven't yet made it home.

I met you at the Tallahassee PTSD Symposium, in March of 2007, but only
briefly. I have included the link to my www.VetSpeak.org piece that I
wrote, following the event;
http://vetspeakblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/still-at-war-pvsptsdcombat-stress_06.html,
for your consideration of my stated premises.

Please keep me posted on any further symposiums, etc, that are here in the
USA, and I am sure that we can mobilize contributing talent and resources,
and more readily be able to afford travel regionally, rather than
jet-setting internationally, for conferences in far away nations. We
believe that the immediate work to be done is at the grass-roots, not in
the Ivy Towers and sterile enviornments of collegiate and clinical
research, although, those are important and valuable resources, without
question.

There are activists and grass-roots programs already at work,there in your
AO. I would be happy to network you with them, if you would like.

Semper Fi...
Willie Hager
VVAW Florida Contact
www.VetSpeak.org

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[drws...@charter.net]

Well put, Willie. Especially the last several paragraphs...let us never forget that our own VN vets still need a huge amount of c*rte and understanding.
For those of you who missed Charles' WebCast yesterday, it was supremo. I have read his latest book and attended the 2007 conference, and yet he is even further along the cutting-edge path. I highly recommend future WebCasts.

It Never Ends,

Wendy Saxon PhD CT CTS
Proud wife of a VN Vet '68 and '70
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: windb...@rose.net

Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 13:31:19
To: <ari...@usc.edu>
Cc: <combatstre...@googlegroups.com>; <traumatol...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: CSR Re: Upcoming Conference: FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN PTSD: PREVENTION,

[Skip Rizzo, Ph. D.]

Hey Willie,

Thanks for your detailed reply...and I agree that this is a
multi-headed beast that we are fighting here with all of the
challenges that are due to the nature of the injury or disorder (take
yer pick there), the broken system for providing care, political
ineptitude, Govt. programs for funding novel research that while
having resources and desire, still falls short in many ways, and of
course the myriad socio-cultural issues that affect how wounded
warriors are cared for and respected upon the return home!

But I would like to note that this conference is NOT simply about how
the Israelis treat their soldiers.

Israel just happens to be the place where the organizers live who
were able to acquire the funding to stage such an event and who have
connections that allow them to bring together folks that have a good
bit of experience in this area. The conference may also have
significant appeal to folks from our NATO allies that have troops in
both Iraq and Afghanistan, who might not be able to afford to come to
events in the USA. There is a lot to learn from different
perspectives on how PTSD is addressed (outside of our own silo) and I
hope this event will be yet another one of the many such conferences
where participants can learn something new that will have generalized
benefits for all folks who suffer the aftereffects of trauma.

I have attached a preliminary speaker schedule and topics list and I
hope you will see that it reflects content about a range of trauma
relevant issues and how trauma is addressed generally, rather than
promoting the protocol of any one country's efforts to tangle with this beast!

Talk again soon!

Skip

[Skip Rizzo, Ph. D.]

Hey Willie,

Now that I have followed your link and read your blog about the
Virtual Reality exposure therapy approach that we have developed and
have been using successfully with OIF/OEF active duty military and
vets, I quite frankly find your metaphors to "locked wards",
"electric shock therapy" and "frontal lobotomys" at best, uninformed.

While I respect your service then and now to those that have
sacrificed so much for our country (and particularly with your
grassroots efforts), I cannot agree with your characterization of
this treatment and the inflammatory tone of your message. And it has
also caused me to take another look at some of your points in your
previous email in response to a simple conference announcement that I
posted. If you think that you are creating an atmosphere for positive
change by using the same code word strategies ("jet-setting", "Ivy
Towers", "sterile environments of collegiate and clinical research")
that are often employed by the type of people that you hate, then you
need to be careful that you don't become just like them.

All I can say is that sometimes it is easier to demand respect than
it is to give it. But in the end, you get what you deserve.

Best Regards,

Skip Rizzo