PTSD as an autoimmune process

Recent scientific evidence points to an autoimmune aspect to PTSD rather than a psychological one, with likely cellular oxidation and mitochondrial dysfunction. This would make many of the current treatments for PTSD unhelpful at best, and harmful at worst, and imply that the best solutions may not be resilience training and psychotherapy, but rather antioxidants, neuroprotective supplements, and brain training.

We've learned so much about neuropsychiatric conditions over the past decade and mitochondrial dysfunction and autoimmune processes and gained important insight into "untreatable" illnesses such as gulf war syndrome and ALS.

Clinical trials are in the works to investigate the efficacy of antioxidants in youths with mood disorders and of NAC/NAD+ administration in post TBI patients. My hopes are that these trials lead to affordable and cost effective treatments for intractable mental illness and a better understanding of the processes that cause them, for both sufferers and society.