WASHINGTON — The majority of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder that are used on hundreds of thousands of veterans lack rigorous scientific evidence that they are effective, says a report issued Thursday by a panel of the federal government’s top scientists.
The report by the National Academies emphasizes that the therapies might not be useless. Rather, it says, the evidence is weak when it comes to drawing any kind of conclusion about most of them. The report does find strong evidence that one particular treatment known as exposure therapy was effective; the technique asks patients to repeatedly reimagine traumatic events as a way to make the events lose their potency. In a statement, the Department of Veterans Affairs said it was ramping up its ability to provide this therapy to patients.
But the panel failed to find evidence that any medication was effective in treating PTSD – this included the drugs Paxil and Zoloft.
Storm kills two in Missouri
PARIS, MO. — Storms that raked the Plains and Southeast on Thursday tossed a mobile home in Missouri, killing both people inside, and spawned a tornado in Florida.
In rural northeastern Missouri, the state Highway Patrol said the bodies of two people in Monroe County were found about 400 feet from where their mobile home had been.
A tornado late Thursday morning in Pensacola, Fla., damaged the city’s major shopping mall, while an Escambia County sheriff’s spokesman said the Greater Little Rock Baptist Church and day-care center were damaged, but the children had all been moved to safety.
The severe weather continued into the night in parts of the South. Thunderstorms injured four people in a trailer west of Louisville, Ky., and possible tornadoes were reported in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.
In the West, a separate system brought the season’s first big storm to coastal Washington, where a falling tree injured a woman and more than 50,000 customers lost power.
Top Latino editor resigns
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — The Sacramento Bee’s top editor resigned Thursday in a dispute over the long-term direction of the newspaper. Executive editor Rick Rodriguez, 53, led the newspaper for nine years and was one of the highest-ranking Latino newspaper executives in the country.
Bee publisher and president Janis Heaphy said the two had agreed to part ways and that their disagreement was not about the paper’s staffing.
In a separate news release distributed by the Bee, Rodriguez said he was proud of the reputation the McClatchy Co.’s flagship newspaper had built during his tenure.
Verdict reached in Islamic charity trial
DALLAS — A jury reached a decision Thursday after deliberating for nearly three weeks in the trial of former leaders of a Muslim charity accused of funneling millions of dollars in illegal aid to Middle Eastern terrorists.
However, the decision will not be read until Monday, a magistrate said. Jurors deliberated for 19 days in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based group that prosecutors said funneled $12.4 million to the Palestinian group Hamas after it was declared a terrorist group.
Lawyers for Holy Land said it was a legitimate charity that helped children and families left homeless or poor by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
