Thaindian News

Washignton DC, July 19 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Averagely, one out of every six soldiers who return from the war in Afghanistan or Iraq come home with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These affected soldiers have been treated with many different types of medical treatment in the past.

PTSD has always been treated in the past with eye movement desensitization, cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, etc. Even animal therapy with horses and dogs has increasingly being used by the Pentagon.

Ecstasy, which is an illegal drug, has been reportedly used by Michael Mithoefer and a group of other psychiatrists to treat the medical condition, according to the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The FDA gave permission to the group of psychiatrists to test the drug on 20 patients with an average age of 40 years. The patients had suffered from the medical condition for 20 years and previous psychotherapy treatments have failed.

In the study the patients were placed into two groups. The first group which consisted of 12 patients was treated with a complete dosage of the drug and the second group of eight patients were assigned to placebo.

At the end of the experiment, the first group had a reduction to the tune of 30 percent while the second group had a reduction of only 25 percent.

“The MDMA was not a ‘magic bullet’ that removed their PTSD. It seemed to act as a catalyst to therapy, and, as in any therapy for PTSD, the therapeutic process was often challenging,” according to Mithoefer.