Google's Health Spinoff Verily Joins the Fight Against PTSD

The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include uncontrolled memories of a traumatic event, anxiety and panic--"hyperarousal" is the technical term--depression, avoiding anything that's a reminder of the event, self-destructive behavior, and more. It's the only psychiatric disorder where people are pretty sure of the cause: emotionally traumatic events, from the death of a loved one to an experience of fear or violence. By some estimates 5 to 10 percent of all US adults have PTSD, more women than men. Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places US troops are deployed put those numbers even higher among people in the military and veterans. But the biology of PTSD--neurological changes, elevated or depressed levels of something a blood test could pick up, genetic vulnerabilities--is … multifactorial.