By Deborah Ashin, Special to JTNews
Every night for almost 60 years, the man relived the same hellish nightmare: he is 16 years old and arrives in a cattle car at Auschwitz, where he helplessly watches his parents and grandparents march to the gas chamber.
It’s a chilling irony that Holocaust survivors, who suffered through a living nightmare, continue to relive these horrific experiences in their dreams. But for this 80-year-old man, the nightmares have finally stopped thanks to two local psychiatrists — Dr. Murray Raskind and Dr. Elaine Peskind — and an inexpensive drug called Prazosin.
Dr. Murray Raskind, chief of psychiatry at the University of Washington and executive director of mental health services at the Veterans Administration Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle, initially discovered that Prazosin, a blood-pressure medication, stopped chronic nightmares and sleep disturbances for combat veterans.
“Many of the veterans were on multiple medications but still had persistent nightmares,” Raskind said “They would wake up terrified and anxious, unable or afraid to go back to sleep. I didn’t have a clue as to how to help these people and tried to figure out what was going on.”
While researching the literature, Raskind had a major insight: adrenalin, which normally stops flowing during dream stages, remains present in people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“For people with PTSD, their arousal receptors are not turned off. I reasoned that if I could block the adrenalin response, perhaps it would block the nightmares,” he explained.
Adrenalin is a hormone that the body produces in response to stress. Raskind’s research eventually led him to Prazosin, a nearly obsolete blood-pressure drug, which not only decreases adrenalin but also crosses into the brain.
“It worked like a charm….I did this five years ago, and I’m still seeing the same vets who are still nightmare free, “ explained Raskind, whose initial findings were published last July in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. According to Raskind, Prazosin is 90 percent effective and eliminates nightmares, but not regular dreaming.
It was Raskind’s colleague, Dr. Elaine Peskind, who first used Prazosin to treat elderly patients. A geriatric psychiatrist on the faculty at UW and the staff at the VA hospital, Paskind was able to help a World War II combat veteran who had chronic nightmares and had slept less than two hours a night for the past 30 years.
“Amazingly, his nightmares disappeared in less than a week,” she said. “ Unlike antidepressants, Prazosin works quickly, especially on older people who need smaller doses. Equally impressive, when he finally started to sleep, the patient started improving in other areas.”
In addition to their work at UW and at the Veterans’ hospital, Peskind and Raskind also provide pro bono psychiatric services to patients at the Kline Galland Home. This is where Peskind met the man having horrendous nightmares about arriving at Auschwitz. “He would wake up crying and then be unable to go back to sleep. After trying Prazosin, his nightmares stopped,” she explained. Peskind then used Prazosin to help an elderly woman suffering from memory loss who, for 50 years, still had nightmares related to her experiences in a concentration camp.
Encouraged by Prazosin’s success, the two doctors and their research team recently met with a group of Holocaust survivors to discuss the benefits of Prazosin and asked them to consider participating in an upcoming controlled study. Raskind emphasized that volunteers receiving a placebo will be given Prazosin following the study; and if someone does not want to participate, they can still receive the drug, with the approval of their physician.
According to Peskind, at least six people expressed interested in joining the study, not only to stop their nightmares but because they felt it could help other people. “They are very altruistic,” she said, acknowledging that having all-Jewish research team was important to most of the potential participants
The Summit on First Hill, the retirement community affiliated with Kline Galland home, provides space for these participants to meet with the research team, which eliminates trips to the Veterans’ Hospital.
The study will follow 120 people suffering from either combat or civilian traumas, and is funded by the VA. Because Prazosin is so inexpensive — about $1 for a three-month supply — pharmaceutical firms have no incentive either to support research or promote the drug’s benefits. In addition to being affordable, Prazosin is safe for nightly use since it was not an effective blood pressure medication. According to Peskind, the drug’s only side effect is a stuffy nose; and it actually has a beneficial side effect — it helps men with bladder problems caused by enlarged prostates.
“This is the kind of psychiatric research that is the most rewarding and fun — we’re really able to help people,” Peskind said. Although stopping the nightmares certainly can’t eliminate any of the participants’ sadness and grief, Peskind hopes to bring these Holocaust survivors a peaceful night of sleep, something they haven’t experienced for decades. The team’s long-range goal is to relieve thousands of people around the world who are haunted by trauma-induced nightmares.