New Drug Helps to Dampen Bad Memories

wile_e_wonka writes to tell us Researchers at Harvard and the Montreal-based McGill University are working on a drug that would allow psychiatrists to dampen painful memories in their patients when combined with therapy. "They treated 19 accident or rape victims for ten days, during which the patients were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event that had happened 10 years earlier. Some patients were given the drug, which is also used to treat amnesia, while others were given a placebo. A week later, they found that patients given the drug showed fewer signs of stress when recalling their trauma."

Comments

Re:You're not going to get very many good comments

[Eli Gottlieb]

Now you look here. I've been through fairly reasonable amounts of trauma -- certainly more than you and most of Slashdot, if not most of the civilized world. I won't go into details, but let's just say I've faced about 8 severely traumatic events in a life 18 years long.

I tell you, we have a drug-obsessed culture. Particularly, we have a culture that would rather treat a person's unhappiness as a medical issue and drug that person rather than attempt to provide that person with the tools to make their life happier. Why? Because many, if not most, of such people do, will, and/or would choose to live in ways that most other people wouldn't agree with.

Though that does leave out rape victims or the families of murder victims, who experience a trauma after which they cannot move forwards as a person. This drug could very well help them.

But for most people who get stuck seeing psychiatrists, drugs are the wrong answer to the simple question of "Why can't I live a life closer to the life I want?"

And no, I'm not a Scientologist; you can tell by my signature.