The Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress (CSTS) of the Department of Psychiatry, Uniformed Services University (USU) is pleased to present the Brain, Behavior, & Mind 2026 Spring Conference. 

This virtual event includes presentations and live, moderated panels with our featured speakers, as well as a poster session. There is no cost to attend, and the event is open to the public.

In this piece, Dr. Edmund G. Howe address two topics, both built on articles in this issue. The first involves a new, possibly more effective approach that ethics consultants may use when they want to tell the providers consulting them that they think they should treat a patient differently. These authors call this approach “curious engagement.” The second topic involves what moved the above authors to want to imagine and then propose this new approach, since what moved them may similarly move others to also want to innovate. Dr. Howe suggests that the best way to identify ethical practices needing improvement is to look to painful emotions experienced by oneself or others. Dr. Howe gives two clinical examples further illustrating how providers may do this. The first involves the provider evaluating a patient for the interests of a third party, not for this patient’s interests. The patient here feels frightened and alone. The second is taken from another article in this issue and involves a patient just waiting to die and experiencing existential angst. Both cases show how our looking to painful emotions may suggest areas in which new and better ethical practices are needed, as well as whether, once proposed, providers will adopt them or not.

Transitioning service members (TSMs) leaving military service have high risks of unemployment, homelessness, nonfatal suicide attempt (SA), and suicide death. In this paper coauthored by Drs. David M. Benedek, Vincent F. Capaldi, James A. Naifeh, and Robert J. Ursano, data from n = 7188 recently separated TSMs from the U.S. Army were used to update previously developed models for post-separation homelessness and SA based on data at the time of separation and to develop a new unemployment model. Predicted probabilities of suicide from a model developed elsewhere were imputed for comparison purposes. Cross-validated predictions were significant for the homelessness (AU-ROC = 0.68) and SA (AU-ROC = 0.78) models but not the unemployment model (AU-ROC = 0.60). Elevated cross-validated risk was found for the 10% of TSMs at the highest predicted risk of homelessness (SN = 26.6%), 20% for SA (SN = 60.9%), and 10% for suicide death (SN = 34.1%). 28% of TSMs were in the highest risk categories for at least one and 10% for more than one outcome. Findings regarding incomplete overlap highlight the complexities of risk targeting when multiple outcomes are of interest.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and multiple comorbidities. This study, coauthored by Dr. Frances H. Gabbay and colleagues, evaluated whether comorbidities, sex, or age modify PTSD-related risk of hypertension or atherosclerotic CVD (ASCVD).