Anaesthetic jab can relieve veterans’ PTSD, study suggests

AN ANAESTHETIC injection could curb the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and offer hope to thousands of service personnel, a study has found.

Research carried out on people with PTSD showed the jab can bring rapid relief to soldiers for around eight weeks and it is believed the positive effects will be long-lasting.

Recent studies have shown that rates of PTSD among veterans who served in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan vary between 5 to 9 per cent and can be up to 17 per cent in those who experienced frontline combat.

Current psychiatric drug treatments are no more than 30 per cent effective and can have significant side effects.

Dr Walter Busuttil, medical director of Combat Stress, the veterans’ charity, said: “This is a very positive study. We need better treatment for the mental health of former servicemen and this research, which appears to work on the ‘fight or flight’ nervous mechanism in the body, will bring relief for some veterans where no other treatment has worked.” The Stellate Ganglion Block jab research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was led by Col Sean Mulvaney, a retired US military doctor, and commando who served in Iraq and Syria.

It is a long-acting anaesthetic that Col Mulvaney says resets “flight or fight” into the neutral mode. Sgt Maj Uriah Popp, a PTSD sufferer, said: “If I hadn’t been treated with those injections, I don’t think I would be here now.”