The Army Is Studying a Shot That Could Help Heal PTSD

On Tuesday, the US Army approved a $2 million study aimed at looking into the effects of an injection that could alleviate the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Wall Street Journal reports.

The treatment consists of a shot of anesthesia at the back of the neck into nerves that control the body's fight-or-flight response. According to the Journal, doctors familiar with the procedure—called a "stellate ganglion block"—believe the shot "resets the system" after stress signals get trapped in a loop between the body and brain.

The procedure, which has been administered by doctors for almost a decade, has reportedly already helped victims of both military and non-military PTSD. But in 2015, a small controlled trial failed to prove it was an effective treatment. The new Army study hopes to finally pinpoint what—if anything—makes the shot work before it can endorse it.

To do that, researchers are looking for 240 people who currently suffer from PTSD, two-thirds of whom will undergo the stellate ganglion procedure. The remaining third will be injected with a saline solution as a control to make sure the results aren't just a placebo effect. Yet, according to one of the study's researchers, Kristine Rae Olmsted, it's been difficult to find subjects who haven't already heard about the positive effects of the treatment.

"The problem is word of mouth is very powerful," she told the Journal.

Currently, the main accepted treatment for PTSD is exposure therapy, which has patients repeatedly revisiting the traumatic memory to lessen its effects, sometimes with the help of virtual reality. Doctors have experimented with MDMA, weed, and even whippits as PTSD treatments, but the new injection is apparently a better target for a military study since it doesn't come with any of those fun side effects.

Even if the study shows positive results, the injection isn't a one-stop miracle cure—patients would still likely need to attend therapy and take medication to continue treatment—but it's been a big step toward recovery for those the procedure helps.

Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, a former Green Beret who suffers from PTSD after serving in Afghanistan, received his first round of shots in 2014.

"It gives you the break to deal with things," Bolduc told the Journal. "I was able to put myself on the road to recovery."