A pioneering researcher and one of the world's foremost experts on traumatic stress offers a bold new paradigm for healing Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Such experiences inevitably leave traces on minds, emotions, and even on biology. Sadly, trauma sufferers...

A psychiatric disorder, PTSD generally follows life-threatening events like natural disasters, terrorist incidents, and military combat. Unfortunately, many PTSD victims don't realize what afflicts them. This program expands awareness and knowledge of the disorder and explores the latest treatment options available today. In an illuminating case study, a Vietnam veteran who developed PTSD after his tour of duty explains how the condition destroyed...

Schizoaffective disorder is a form of psychosis and a mental illness in which a person experiences a combination of schizophrenia symptoms. People affected often have hallucinations or delusions, as well as mood disorder symptoms such as mania or depression. We meet Lynne Fisher, whose life was turned upside down by the onset of this illness, as she battled through five years of symptoms to find a treatment plan that enables her to live a constructive...

This collection of 54 video clips (1 minute to 2 minutes 30 seconds each) takes a close look at infectious diseases and medical disorders, spotlighting AIDS, ALS, Alzheimer's disease, aneurysms, asthma, autism, avian flu, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, food allergies, heart attack, Huntington's disease, macular degeneration, malaria, Marburg virus, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease, Spanish influenza, spinal cord injury, stroke, and West Nile virus....

Every year in North America, chronic compulsive gambling shatters the lives of millions. In this program, psychologists Claude Boutin and Robert Ladouceur talk with recovering gamblers who share their stories of exhilaration and despair as they rode the roller coaster to ruin-what it felt like to win and lose, to spend every dollar they had, to lie and steal in order to finance their addiction, to contemplate suicide, and, fortunately, to enter group...

Virtual-reality treatment for patients with post-traumatic stress.

Tests and papers. Routine homework. Reading assignments. Athletics. Clubs. Social life. Keeping up with all of these aspects of typical teen life in the 21st century can be hard. Life moves fast, and the temptation to find short cuts is strong. Some teens have turned to using so-called study drugs to give them the boost they think they need to keep up. Study drugs, such as Adderall or Ritalin, typically prescribed for people suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity...

We often think of memory as a record of facts, but it is also a web of sensations and emotions-and a vehicle for traveling, so to speak, through time. This program explores the mechanisms of human recollection, presenting new case studies and medical findings that reveal the complexity of the brain's memory center. Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Randy Buckner explains his research into memory functions and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Faraneh Vargha-Khadem...

Virtual reality treatment has achieved a remarkable 85% success rate for soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder. In this video segment, see how it may also help with more mild brain injury, the signature injury of the Iraq War. Combat soldiers suffering from PTSD experience a variety of symptoms including high anxiety, depression, memory loss, and heightened aggression. Unable to resume normal life after their return from war, many of them cannot...

The vast majority of drug addicts are not criminals; tobacco and alcohol, both perfectly legal in most societies, are used and abused in staggering abundance. This program details the ways smoking and drinking chemically take hold of the brain. Explaining the many reasons-besides nicotine-for tobacco's stealthy effects, the program describes the existence of thousands of other addictive chemicals in the plant. It also studies properties in alcohol,...