News bits: Potential new PTSD treatment and deep immorality; More Clarence Thomas corruption

A WaPo opinion writes about one of those possibly too good to be true mental health treatments and a very dark side of the US military:

All around the conference room in Atlanta last fall, jaws were dropping. Michael Roy, a physician from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, had just revealed to the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies the preliminary results of a study comparing two treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder: Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy, long regarded as the “gold standard,” and a novel approach called Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories or RTM.

In such a study, effectiveness is indicated by a complete remission of symptoms, a loss of diagnosis. Roy’s trial was ongoing and still double-blinded, so he could report only the outcomes of the two treatments combined. But the success rate was a stunning 60 percent. Every expert present knew that PE’s known remission rate hovers at 30 to 40 percent, so the 60 percent combined figure could only mean only one thing: The new RTM treatment was tracking dramatically higher.

From the back of the room, PE researchers glowered at Roy: Way too good to be true, dude.

Except it wasn’t. 

Given the stakes, this fight is one worth picking. Roy’s final, unblinded results are expected later this year, and they will likely mirror those of four previous clinical studies. Many people in the trauma care community aren’t waiting: More than 300 therapists from private practices to local health centers to Vet Centers have already adopted the RTM protocol to treat PTSD. It’s currently in front-line use in Poland as well as in besieged Ukraine, which has a 160-person waiting list of therapists scheduled for training.

Results summary from a small 2017 RTM study

[Bourke] and several colleagues continued to hone the protocol, achieving a 90 percent remission rate for PTSD symptoms and diagnoses, surpassing even his results with the 9/11 patients. In 2010, as the U.S. military was still heavily engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bourke contacted the armed services’ top PTSD researchers to present his findings.

It did not go well. After a respectful but futile hearing at the Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick, the lead scientist followed Bourke out to the parking lot for a word. If his team supported a treatment as apparently effective as RTM, he told Bourke, they would jeopardize their own careers; the Defense Department had already invested more than $1 billion to study more conventional PTSD therapies. The message was clear: Bourke was on his own.  

Of particular interest to lawmakers should be the tremendous savings in PTSD treatment costs for military populations — over $25,000 in annual costs per individual with traditional therapies versus RTM treatment at $1,000 per individual.

This is a total hoot. Frank Bourke, one of the authors on the study shown above, was dealing with PTSD in survivors on the 9/11 attacks in New York. He designed RTM based on existing treatments for phobias. The RTM protocol consists of 89 steps that can be learned online to train therapists. 

It worked quite well. Then a series of pilot studies with military vets was conducted and RTM again worked quite well. So now, they are in the middle of a much bigger confirmatory study where the data is still double blinded. But the interim analysis strongly indicates that RTM is amazingly fast, low cost and effective. 

As indicated in the abstract of the paper shown above, the RTM treatment constituted 3 therapy sessions, each lasting 2 hours. Think about that. About 6 hours of therapy and most patients can no longer be diagnosed with PTSD. That's about as close to a miracle as mental health science can get. No wonder some experts thought this was too good to be true.

Waddabout the US Army? 

Not to stupidly restate the obvious, but is it sad and infuriating that the US military was outrageously corrupt, arrogant and incompetent in dealing with Bourke and his RTM treatment protocol. Bourke had the data in 2010. Now it's 2023 and the protocol is just starting to gain traction with the experts. The army guys didn't want to jeopardize their pisspot little careers by testing a possibly effective protocol. And, as usual, us dumbass taxpayers foot the bill for such insulting corruption, arrogance and incompetence. Those US army jackasses are responsible for all the deaths that RTM could have saved. That's thousands of lives needlessly lost. Those morally rotted army people betrayed our mentally injured veterans for their own sake.

They should be court-marshalled.

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The Hill reports finding more unreported corruption by Clarence Thomas:

A New York Times investigation revealed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was brought access to the wealthy through relationships he built with members of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.

The Times reported that just months after Thomas joined the bench in 1991, he was welcomed into the Horatio Alger Association, a nonprofit scholarship organization, where he forged relationships with a select group of largely wealthy conservatives. This organization granted him access to wealthy friends who gifted Thomas with vacation retreats and V.I.P. tickets to sporting events, as well as invited him to parties, according to The Times.

The Times noted that Thomas declined to respond to detailed questions.

Not commenting is no surprise for Thomas. The KYMS (keep your mouth shut) tactic is fun, easy and effective. By now, he's expert at it.

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The democracy and the rule of law in Israel continues to fall to authoritarianism. The NYT writes:

After a three-month hiatus, Israel’s far-right government was set on Monday to move forward with part of its plan to limit judicial influence, a project that critics say will undermine the integrity of Israel’s democracy.

The dispute is part of a wider ideological and cultural standoff between the government and its supporters, who want to create a more religious and nationalist state, and their opponents, who hold a more secular and pluralist vision.

Parliament is set to hold a nonbinding vote on a bill that would limit the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down decisions by elected officials. The bill would prevent the Supreme Court from overruling the government on grounds of “reasonableness” — a flexible and contentious legal standard that currently lets the court intervene in governance.

Another democracy is falling to corrupt, bigoted tyrants and theocrats.