Okay, let me see if I can unravel at least for myself some of what is being espoused here.......

In regards to Doctors publishing their work, Anthony you replied to Waif:
I disagree with this Waif, in that many actually do write and publish their findings. You only need subscribe to the medical journals of mental health to see these very findings.

Statistically, I would have to say Waif is correct in this. All you need to do is to look at the numbers. Look at the medical journals published in the course of a month, count the number of articles they contain. That number is a hell of a lot smaller than the number of practicing health professionals. Or even the number of individuals published in the course of a year, or two, or 5. It's still a lot smaller. If you narrow the scope of comparison to articles about mental health, in specific articles about PTSD, and then compare the number to the number of mental health professionals working with trauma victims, the ratio gets even more skewed. Some of them have reached a point where they can publish, or are in a situation where they are required to publish, but so many of them tend to invest their time in working with their patients, and have little time to publish.

Then we move on to the magic cure for PTSD...the quick fix....when this was mentioned Anthony, you responded:
by definition a cure means: the successful treatment of a disease or illness to the preformed state. That means, like it never existed. Unfortunately that is not so with PTSD

Like it never existed? If that's the definition that you're working from, then by that definition, no disease or illness has ever been cured in the history of medicine. Every disease, every illness leaves it's mark on the body (or mind in some cases). A case of the flu can leave microscopic scars in the lungs. they may not cause pain, but they're there. Appendicitis, the cure alone for that one leaves a hell of a mark on the body. It's an interesting thought that in medical terms, the idea of a cure can quite often involve doing nearly as much damage to the body as the illness itself. You can cure a lot of things by surgery, but surgery is in and of itself a trauma inflicted on the human body under carefully controlled circumstances. An illness or disease will never disappear as though it never existed. Though by that definition....there already is a quick fix, a fairly simple procedure. I believe they call it a lobotomy. That would make it as though it never existed. If we open up our handy dictionary.com and have a look at the actual definition of the word:

CURE:

1. a means of healing or restoring to health; remedy.
2. a method or course of remedial treatment, as for disease.
3. successful remedial treatment; restoration to health.
4. a means of correcting or relieving anything that is troublesome or detrimental: to seek a cure for inflation.
5. the act or a method of preserving meat, fish, etc., by smoking, salting, or the like.
6. spiritual or religious charge of the people in a certain district.
7. the office or district of a curate or parish priest.
–verb (used with object)
8. to restore to health.
9. to relieve or rid of something detrimental, as an illness or a bad habit.
10. to prepare (meat, fish, etc.) for preservation by salting, drying, etc.
11. to promote hardening of (fresh concrete or mortar), as by keeping it damp.
12. to process (rubber, tobacco, etc.) as by fermentation or aging.
–verb (used without object)
13. to effect a cure.
14. to become cured.

Okay we'll ignore the whole preserving meat since that's not a part of this conversation, but I don't see anything about causing symptoms to be "as though they never were". I see restoration to health. But there we are back to that little problem of semantics. Health is not a constant. Health is not your weight, you can weight yourself and say, great, I'm 250 now, I want to be 210....and work towards it. You can't do that with health. Health is an individual determination based on a general feeling of well being measured on an individual basis.....To relieve or rid of something detrimental.....taking away that which is detrimental, I don't read into that making it as though it was never there. Removing the detriment is not the same thing as erasing all evidence of it's existence. The things which cause the health problems are gone, but the scars remain. As it is with PTSD, the trauma can be healed, and the health detriments can be removed. But the scars; the memories, remain, they no longer cause the same pain, or the same health detriments, but they will always be there. Memories are integral, irremovable, but I would say that in the end they are similar to the scars of an illness.

On the whole I agree with Waif that western society has gotten lazy. We are looking for a quick fix to everything, and mental health is no exception (everyone on the Atkins diet raise your hands!) Everybody wants one treatment, or one quick little therapy that will solve all their problems, and they could have it (see lobotomy comment above) but the cure might be worse than the problem. It's a combination of factors. It's the human mind, and no two think alike. A cure for 100 people with PTSD will be 100 different cocktails of therapy, medication, mindfulness and hard work.

This goes right back to my problem with all of the studies you can quote. They're all crap. Especially when it comes to PTSD. A medical study look at a treatment under very carefully controlled circumstances. There is a regiment that must be followed in order to ensure the validity of the data. It's a process with inviolable rules if you want to get it published. Studies are rigid and unbending. How can anyone who has ever lived with PTSD place any faith whatsoever, or believe for a second that any study done under such controlled circumstances can ever produce a valid finding for something as varied, and as individual as this illness? You have already agreed with Waif that treatment must be varied, must contain a number of different approaches, and must be modified as that treatment progresses......and it's going to be different for each and every person. Medical studies are incredibly biased against illnesses of the mind. In reading through what Waif has said, I don't see how this is getting misinterpreted.

Regarding Waif saying that every doctor she has dealt with has told her this was how to cure PTSD, a reply was made:
"Every doctor you encountered was wrong then, if that is what they have stated to you, because the facts are; no cure currently exists for PTSD. The only thing that exists is known methods to reduce the symptoms, control them, medicate them, but nothing to actually reverse the brain damage that PTSD causes which makes it the incurable mental illness it is. I would rather people know the truth, to learn to be honest with themselves, than to live in the clouds of disbelief that a cure for this exists, which factually does not."

First off.....wow. For a forum based on support and open exchange in a comfortable and non judgmental environment.....that was.....that was just so....not.
In an earlier post Waif has already noted that the brain, in particular the hipocampus can regrow, it doesn't even need medication to do it, just a proper lifestyle. The brain can reverse it's damage. You're asking for medical strictures to be applied to an illness that treads into the philosophical and the spiritual. They are diametric opposites.

Speaking of the more philosophical....Waif noted that if you were to espouse such an opinion in a sexual abuse survivors forum, there would be an outroar, and Anthony replied: "That may be what other forums do... they may feed one another bullshit, fictional statements, but this forum does not. This forum deals in facts only, and it will remain that way."

I read this, and I have to wonder, "How healthy is that?" Of course as the board administrator you're the boss here, and as such, you're perfectly correct to hold to your own ideals about how information on this board is presented. Although I find it to be a bit of a mystery. Let's step back from mental illness for a moment and look at medicine in general. One of the things that any doctor will agree to is that beating any illness is the work of the patient. Medicine and drugs, treatment regimens and surgery can only go so far. The patient has to want to get better. They tell cancer patients that the most important thing they can do is to fight to heal, to believe it. Your mind can aid the healing process, or it can impair it. My thing is....essentially this board is telling someone not to bother believing they will ever get better. While I may understand the semantical differences, and accept the premise that you believe, a confused and scared person entering the world of PTSD is going to read all of this and think, "well damn, I'm stuck in this forever". Right off the bat, the first thing that happens is that they lose their hope. It's crushed beneath the boots of facts derived from a medical environment that has been applying the rules for cutting up apples to oranges. This is simply a philosophical thought, a hypothetical question if you will, but if you have two people, lets call them Jack and Jill......both have PTSD, both are looking for how to proceed. Jack wanders in and reads there is no cure, you'll never get any better, deal with it, you're stuck here the rest of your life. And poor old Jack believes that, and now, right off the bat, Jack is working at a disadvantage. Considering that with PTSD he is already in pain mentally, and prone to negative thinking, that thought has now taken hold and sabotaged him. Then we have Jill, who hears for the first thing, "You can get through it, you can come out the other side, this can be beaten, this can be overcome". Who is going to be in a better position to actually benefit from help? From a philosophical point of view, what you call truthfulness, I see as fostering a hopeless outlook. Anthony, you mentioned several times that fiction is not welcome. I would contend that letting people live without hope is the worst kind of fiction.