PTSD Awareness Month: Groundhog Days Redux
PRESS RELEASE
Monday, 15 June 2026, TreatNOW.org, Washington, DC
The TreatNOW Coalition today released a Report to coincide with PTSD Awareness Month. The Case for HBOT (Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy) as a VA Standard of Care Indication for TBI and PTSD, together with a companion piece on VA/DOD Interventions for TBI/PTSD, lay out specifics about the two decade medical doldrums in the VA/DOD.
The FDA last approved a drug for PTSD in 2001 â the same year as 9/11. None have been approved for TBI. In the 24 years since, while the VA has treated over 500,000 veterans with TBI and millions with PTSD, not a single new pharmacological treatment has been approved for the condition. Every drug the VA prescribes beyond sertraline and paroxetine is off-label. Both approved drugs carry FDA black box warnings for suicidal ideation and work only modestly better than placebo â and not at all reliably in combat veterans.
The VA's Booklet on PTSD continues the illusion that PTSD is a Mental Health problem alone, with no mention of the physical damage that may underlie PTSD symptoms. Thus, the Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) in place for co-occurring Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) emphasize better screening, careful medication management, and the use of trauma-focused psychotherapies. On the issue of a brain wound, the CPGs are silent.
As of June 2026, the VA library contains more than 30 active CPGs spanning mental health, rehabilitation, pain management, and chronic disease â none of which mention brain wounding, none include HBOT as a standard-of-care recommendation for TBI or PTSD, and none identify any FDA-approved pharmacological treatment for TBI; there aren't any. And, characteristically, both DoD and the VA hang on to woeful formularies and practices that cost more and fail to dent the suicide rate's upward trend. Something has to change.
Here is a quick Summary of what the TreatNOW Coalition recommends in this 12th year recognition of PTSD Awareness Month, a period that saw total suicides increase from 88,229 to over 160,000, an average of over 6,387 Veteran suicides every year.
Every day, between 17 and 22 American veterans die by suicide. That number has barely moved in twenty years â despite billions spent on VA mental health programming. We are here today to tell you why, and to tell you what will change it.
TBI and PTSD are not primarily psychiatric conditions. They can be and generally are brain wounds â physical injuries to living tissue that can be seen on MRI, measured on PET scan, and, critically, healed. The VA's current treatment model â pharmaceuticals, psychotherapy, coping strategies â cannot heal a physical wound. No antidepressant restores a shredded axon. No benzodiazepine rebuilds a hypoperfused hippocampus. The suicide rate will probably not move until we treat the wound itself.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy does exactly that. Under pressure, oxygen dissolves directly into plasma and reaches metabolically starved neurons that red blood cells can no longer reach. It triggers angiogenesis â the growth of new blood vessels into damaged tissue â documented in human brains on perfusion MRI. It regenerates white matter fiber tracts, confirmed by DTI imaging. It mobilizes stem cells from bone marrow. It reduces neuroinflammation. These are not theories. They are peer-reviewed findings, in randomized controlled trials, in veterans â published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, PLOS ONE, and Frontiers in Neuroscience.
The Israeli government â whose military sees the same blast injuries, the same PTSD, the same suicide risk â has recognized this evidence. Israel's Ministry of Defense now funds HBOT for veterans. The Sagol Center in Be'er Ya'akov treats 350 patients daily, with documented 68% significant improvement rates and PTSD remission lasting two years and beyond. Congressman Greg Murphy, himself a physician, asked the obvious question when he saw these results: "Why the hell are we not doing this in the United States? . . . . I believe it is medical malpractice not to offer this to our Veterans."
The VA's answer has been inertia. But here is the cost of that inertia â in numbers this Congress controls.
Our Brain Drain analysis quantifies the annual burden of untreated TBI and PTSD veterans at $118 billion per year â across disability compensation, VA healthcare, pharmaceutical costs, lost productivity, homelessness, incarceration, suicide, and ten other categories. There are 877,450 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans languishing in this condition right now.
The one-time cost to treat every one of them with a full HBOT course: $19.7 billion â less than one-half of one percent of the forty-year lifetime burden of doing nothing. The VA recoups that investment in under seven years at even the most conservative outcome assumptions. Dr. Paul Harch's clinical data shows 50% reduction in psychoactive medication use following treatment. Ten of twelve veterans with active suicidal ideation in his trial resolved that ideation entirely.
Here is the legal absurdity the Congress should understand: the VA already reimburses HBOT â for carbon monoxide poisoning (and 14 other conditions). The mechanism is identical. CO poisoning starves neurons of oxygen by blocking hemoglobin and mitochondrial enzyme function. Blast TBI does the same thing through different means. We treat one. We deny the other. That distinction is not medicine. It is policy inertia with a body count.
The TreatNOW Coalition has already returned more than 33,000 patients to work, school, and active duty â pro bono â using this therapy. Among them: over 12,500 veterans, including more than 700 Special Operations Warriors. We know it works. The peer-reviewed science shows it works. The only institution that has not acted is the U.S. Government.
The ask is straightforward: Pay for HBOT treatments in TreatNOW Coalition clinics and hospitals. Authorize pilot programs at Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence under the PATH Caucus framework. Amend CMS NCD 20.29 to include chronic TBI with documented metabolic dysfunction. Mandate neuroimaging-based outcome tracking. The evidence is there. The precedent is there. The fiscal case is unambiguous.
Too many veterans will die by suicide today. The question before this Congress is whether the number will be different tomorrow.
The answer, of course, is to do the right thing: TreatNOW
Our knowledge of brain wounds and how to heal them has âexplodedâ in the last decade. The medical universe is mired in old notions about the brain and how to heal brain wounds. We can help in their education by allowing and funding State hospitals and clinics to use HBOT to heal TBI/PTSD while Congress and the VA and DoD catch up.
HBOT Heals Brains, Stops Suicides, Restores Lives. TreatNOW
Information provided by TreatNOW.org does not constitute a medical recommendation. It is intended for informational purposes only, and no claims, either real or implied, are being made.
