Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a very serious psychological disorder many ordinary people can develop. It causes large scale depression and can severely damage relationships and lives. Its main causes are from a person experiencing or witnessing an event involving death or serious injury. A person’s response to the trauma usually involves fear, helplessness or horror. In children evidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be exhibited in disorganized or agitated behaviors.
One of the most common side effects of PTSD in adults is the recurring thoughts, images and perceptions about the specific trauma they endured. Consistent, frightening dreams of the event are also signs of developing PTSD. For children, they may also experience frightening dreams but with unrecognizable content they might not understand too well. Adults can also exhibit signs by acting as if they were reliving the events over and over again. Another sign of PTSD is the avoidance of thoughts, feelings and conversations with others about what happened, and the restricted range of affections and emotions exhibited by the individual.
Many people feel like they are unable to have loving feelings and can have a sense of a foreshortened future where they can’t picture themselves having a career, marriage, children or even a normal life span. In most cases, the symptoms of PTSD begin to surface around 3 months after the specific event, but can be seen or experienced earlier as well. The symptoms generally tend to stay around for not too long of a time but for some people it can become chronic and never go away for as long as they live. Victims can begin to feel detached from society and estranged by their peers and others, as if they were all alone with no one there for them.
Victims can also have difficulties concentrating, become hyper vigilant, which means a person has an increased state of anxiety and is constantly scanning their surroundings for threats, and exaggerated startled responses which is a side effect of all the anxiety they’re putting their minds through. Along with high states of anxiety, difficulty sleeping, extreme irritability, outbursts of anger for non-important reasons and severe depression are seen in many PTSD patients. Symptoms have been known to be worse when the trauma experienced is from intentional human actions rather than something like a natural disaster.
Also, when something involves mass casualties like war, someone who survives can experience something known as survivor’s guilt where they feel guilty for getting through it meanwhile they lost loved ones and friends. The most vivid, disturbing way to experience PTSD is through a flashback. A flashback is when a person has recurring images flash before him when looking at normal things and cause the victim to be transported back to where the trauma took place and even begin to make the person feel, see, and smell the things he might’ve on that day or time period.
This is especially common with war veterans like Vietnam War veterans. Vietnam War veterans can and have been known to be upset by war movies, hot humid weather, and even Asian cooking as it brings them back to the times when they were overseas and where they lost a lot of friends. PTSD has always been closely tied to the history of human warfare, not just the Vietnam War. PTSD is also known to soldiers and veterans as soldier’s heart, combat neurosis, and battle fatigue, meaning a soldier can lose their will to live and fight and just want to give up.
Combat veterans who have witnessed or committed violent acts are more likely to develop PTSD. The men who liberated the Nazi war camps in the 1940’s could have been Severely distressed by the things they saw were being done to people. And through to today in the prisons the United States has where they keep war criminals and suspected terrorists like Abu Ghraib. Soldiers who were stationed there had seen some horrific things done to people, and those images could stick with them for a very long time.
However, it was not until after the Vietnam War that PTSD became a well-known and serious mental health condition and captured the interest of doctors and psychiatrists. A study done on Vietnam War veterans showed that at least 1. 7 million veterans had experienced a serious case of PTSD when their tour was over or after the war. The attention received by the Vietnam War veterans also helped shed a light onto victims of other wars and events and allowed the still living Holocaust survivors to seek help if they wished.
Another study showed that 55% of women were victims of a violent crime and that one in four of these women suffered from PTSD. It can affect everyone for an unlimited amount of reason ranging from natural disasters like a hurricane or earthquake to something more recent like the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Many civilians who escaped New York City that day saw and experienced some of the worst things imaginable, and one of the largest groups of people who suffered from that event was the members of the FDNY, NYPD, and PAPD.
With the FDNY losing 343 firemen, the NYPD losing 23 police officers and the PAPD losing 7 officers, the first responders to the World Trade Center suffered heavy casualties. A lot of people lost fellow brothers and sisters going into the buildings attempting to save innocent civilians and lost their lives. A horrific event like 9/11 affects a larger amount of people and hits them harder than other things due to the severity, lives lost, and pointlessness of the attack. People who already may have underlying or prior mental health problems are more likely to develop PTSD.
Genetics also play a role in making some people susceptible to PTSD and two people who are experiencing the same trauma can have two different outcomes. One person might be able to get through it and the other might be completely mentally exhausted and suffer the worst of the symptoms. People may not even know they have PTSD until the death of a close friend or relative or a divorce or something life changing brings them to an emotional low and can make them recall what they may have gone through.
PTSD is a serious mental condition that affects more people than anyone might know. Some people are good at hiding feelings while others are not. Sadly some sufferers resort to using heavy quantities of alcohol and tranquilizers to numb their pain and make them able to cope with the disturbing recollections, nightmares and sleep problems and sadly many end up dependent on the drugs they’re using. PTSD can also lead to suicide if the victim experiences sever amounts of survivor’s guilt or feels as if they can’t take it anymore. Works Cited: . Vrana, Scott. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. ” Salem Health Psychology & Mental Health. First edition. Editor: Nancy Piotrowski. Volume 4 Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010. Print. 2. Miller, Allen, “Living With Anxiety Disorders” New York, Facts on File, 2008. Print 3. Jan Fawcett, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” The Encyclopedia of Mental Health Ada Kahn. First Edition. Volume 1 New York. Facts on File. 1993. Print. 4. nymag. com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers, New York Magazine, 11 September 2011. Web. 20 November 2011
