They say time heals all wounds, and new research from the University of California, Berkeley, indicates that time spent in dream sleep can help.

UC Berkeley researchers have found that during the dream phase of sleep, also known as REM sleep, our stress chemistry shuts down and the brain processes emotional experiences and takes the painful edge off difficult memories.

The findings offer a compelling explanation for why people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as war veterans, have a hard time recovering from painful experiences and suffer reoccurring nightmares.They also offer clues into why we dream.

Treating U.S. veterans with mental illness and substance use disorders is more expensive than caring for veterans with other medical conditions, costing more than $12 billion in 2007, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

The study found that while the proportion of veterans who received the care recommended for their mental illness varied widely, the overall quality of mental health care offered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was as good as or better than that reported by privately insured, Medicare or Medicaid populations. The findings are published online by the journal Health Affairs and will also will appear in its November edition.

There is some evidence about the potential value of cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CRT) for treating traumatic brain injury (TBI), but overall it is not sufficient to develop definitive guidelines on how to apply these therapies and to determine which type of CRT will work best for a particular patient, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

As soldiers return home from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, America must cope with the toll that war takes on mental health. But the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is becoming increasingly expensive, and promises to escalate as yet another generation of veterans tries to heal its psychological wounds.

New hope for preventing the development of PTSD has been uncovered by Prof. Joseph Zohar of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Sheba Medical Center, in collaboration with Prof. Hagit Cohen from Ben-Gurion University - and the key is a single dose of a common medication.

Cannabinoids (marijuana) administration after experiencing a traumatic event blocks the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-like symptoms in rats, according to a new study conducted at the University of Haifa and published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

"We found that there is a 'window of opportunity' during which administering synthetic marijuana helps deal with symptoms simulating PTSD in rats," said Dr. Irit Akirav of the University of Haifa's Department of Psychology, who led the study.

Blood flow abnormalities found in the brains of veterans with Gulf War illness have persisted 20 years after the war, and in some cases have gotten worse, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology.

"We confirmed that abnormal blood flow continued or worsened over the 11-year span since first being diagnosed, which indicates that the damage is ongoing and lasts long term," said principal investigator Robert W. Haley, M.D., chief of epidemiology in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Clinical Sciences at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "We also identified a special MRI procedure that better diagnoses and distinguishes between the three main types of Gulf War illness."

Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures may go undiagnosed for much longer in veterans compared to civilians, according to a new study published in the September 6, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. This type of seizure is different from seizures related to epilepsy and is thought to have a psychological origin.

Troops overseas often want nothing more than to get back home to loved ones - but the reunion period often can be more emotionally taxing than the deployment.

Returning service members are at a greater risk of both depressive symptoms and relationship distress, and research shows the two often go together, says University of Illinois researcher Leanne Knobloch (pronounced kuh-NO-block). That's not a good thing, since someone suffering from depressive symptoms "really needs the support of their romantic partner."