VA study on whether dogs can heal vets with PTSD has critics
Is Munger merely preventing Aguirre from confronting his demons?
Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has paid veterinary bills to veterans with guide or service dogs for physical disabilities.
[...] the agency is in the midst of a $12 million study to gauge the efficacy and costs of using dogs to help those who suffer from post-traumatic stress.
[...] they are reliant on the dog, not on their knowledge of ... whether really they are afraid of a ghost, said Dr. Edna Foa, director of the Center for Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Yet the agency is authorized to pay only for "evidence-based" therapies such as cognitive processing and prolonged exposure, which involve having veterans confront and analyze traumatic events.
The final contract was terminated in August 2012 amid allegations of lax veterinary care and placement of dogs "with known aggressive behavior," according to VA records.
Critics of the study object most strongly to the tasks the VA is requiring of the dogs — sweeping the perimeter of a room before a veteran enters, for example, or protecting the veteran by "blocking."
Olmert is chief research adviser for Warrior Canine Connection, a Maryland-based nonprofit that uses veterans to train service dogs for their fellows.
The group's leaders say dogs should be trained to pick up on cues from PTSD sufferers and then provide the appropriate support, such as learning to wake someone up during a nightmare or detecting when a veteran is anxious, and interacting in a way that helps calm him.
The VA's training protocol "reinforces the cognitive distortions that accompany PTSD," said Robert Koffman, a retired Navy psychiatrist and chief medical officer for Warrior Canine Connection.
Fallon said the only recent glitch was a vendor error that shipped out service dog vests for some support dogs, which don't have the same public access rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.