80. Dr Alex Lim - On veterans’ mental health: the good, the bad and the promising

2022-12-23

This a reminder that The Voices Of War will adopt a subscription model. You can hear the explainer here. You can subscribe to the new channel here. -- My guest today is Dr Alexander YC Lim, who is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine with the Queensland Brain Institute. He is a Psychiatrist in private practice, and now almost exclusively looks after members of the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police, and the veteran community more broadly. In 2019, Dr Lim set up Australia’s first i...

This a reminder that The Voices Of War will adopt a subscription model. You can hear the explainer here.

You can subscribe to the new channel here.

My guest today is Dr Alexander YC Lim, who is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine with the Queensland Brain Institute. He is a Psychiatrist in private practice, and now almost exclusively looks after members of the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police, and the veteran community more broadly.

In 2019, Dr Lim set up Australia’s first integrated ketamine program for veterans, known as the ReVive Ketamine Program. Starting in February 2023, this program will become the subject of an ethics-approved clinical study into the long-term effectiveness and safety of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression and treatment-resistant PTSD.

Dr Lim joined me today to discuss some of the mental health challenges faced by our veteran community and to shed light on some emerging treatments that could aid them on their path to wellness.

Some of the topics we covered are:

Dr Lim’s entry into psychiatry and veteran mental health
The current state of veteran mental health support
Difference between civilian and military/emergency services stressors
Understanding the impact of stress, trauma, and PTSD
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a multi-system dysfunction
Total and Permanent Impairment and associated challenges
Moral injury and what causes it
How stress affects our physiology, decision-making ability, and ethical frameworks
The need to indoctrinate appropriate ethical frameworks as early as possible
Importance of developing trust between the patient and their clinician
Treating suicidality
Drop-out rates in traditional psychotherapy treatment
Why medications are not the ‘silver bullet’ for mental health concerns
Synaptic Disconnection Syndrome and the effect of PTSD on the structure of the brain
The issue of treatment-resistant illness and the promise of ketamine
Preliminary findings and prospects of ketamine for treatment-resistant illness
How to access the ketamine program for those with treatment-resistant illness