A Look At Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)" plays an important role in providing information with regard to the disorder and thus makes it possible for readers to gain a more complex understanding of the condition. The article primarily documents the disorder's background, the prevalence with which it happens, and reasons why individuals come to suffer from the condition. By emphasizing that PTSD is practically the body's attempt to raise a person's awareness concerning the gravity of the situation that he or she has been in, the article makes it possible for readers to understand that one of the best way to fight the condition's harmful effects would be for the individual to acknowledge that he or she holds a great deal of power and that it is essential for him or her to make use of that power in order to improve his or her mental health.

PTSD, or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of a life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or physical or sexual assault in adult or childhood. Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. However, some people will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time. These individuals may develop PTSD. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person’s daily life.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric sequel to a stressful event or situation of an exceptionally threatening or catastrophic nature. It develops after a person is involved in a horrifying ordeal that involved physical maltreatment or the threat of physical harm. These events can include combat or military experience, abuse during childhood or adulthood (physical or sexual), terrorist attacks, serious accidents or natural disasters. This person may have been the one that was harmed, witnessed a harmful event or had a loved one who was harmed. It is normal for the body’s fight or flight mechanism to engage in times of danger. With a person who has PTSD, that mechanism is damaged and the person feels this even when they are not in danger. Symptoms can be categorized into four different areas – re-experiencing symptoms (flashbacks, bad dreams, frightening thoughts) , avoiding situations that remind the person of the event, negative changes in beliefs and feelings (may be fear, guilt, shame or losing interest in those activities that once were enjoyable) and hypervigilence (always feeling keyed up, trouble concentrating or sleeping). There are also feelings of hopelessness, despair, depression or anxiety, alcohol or substance abuse, physical symptoms or chronic pain and problems with employment and relationships.

PTSD is defined as an "anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event. A traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or happens to you” (United States). In these types of events one can feel that they are not in control of what is going on around them and may feel helpless or in great danger. The Department of Veterans Affairs has listed various life threatening events that can evolve into PTSD. These events include but are not limited to "Combat or Military exposure, child sexual or physical abuse, terrorist attacks, sexual or physical assault, serious accidents, such as a car wreck, natural disasters, such as a fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, or earthquake” (United States).

Trauma of any kind has a long lasting effect on individuals and it is important that PTSD (Post Trauma Stress Disorder) survivors know that there is help and to be OK with asking for help. Shame plays a large role in PTSD and many victims feel that they are weak because they can't get a handle on their lives. Then they develop survival behaviors, which in fact, do not serve them at all and a vicious circle begins.

Morris states that the worst things in the world enter the brain in an instant, though it may take the rest of someone’s life to understand what they saw (Morris 45). Monjaraz says that he saw brutal things and did not get affected by it until the night time came around. He cried in his sleep, made groaning noises, mumbled things and had night sweats (Monjaraz). Morris states that fundamentally, we do not know why some people are damaged by terror and some are not. He adds that according to the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, the

After a traumatic experience, it is typical to feel startled, restless, and disengaged. It can seem as if a person/patient can never get over what happened or feel typical again. However, by looking for treatment, connecting for help, and growing new adapting abilities, the patient can overcome PTSD and proceed onward with life. PTSD does not just come from combat experiences, this disorder can come from many things such as, serious motor vehicle crashes, natural disasters, robberies, hostage situations, and also rape, to name a few. “In the United States, physical assault is the most common stressor causing PTDS in women, while military combat is the most common PTSD stressor in men. People directly affected by the events of 9/11 or by hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi in September 2005 might develop PTSD, though fortunately most people do not” (Group, 2006). While PTSD falls greatly amongst the adult and older adult age groups, PTSD in children may trigger the onset of learning disabilities, self-mutilation or other destructive behaviors, sleep terrors, and a variety of conduct disorders. Children may also develop abnormally close attachments to their primary caretakers or other dependency behaviors in their attempts to cope with the traumatic experience (Jacqueline N. Martin, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on and

Demographic history will be gathered pertaining to the age of participants and ethnicity. Also, demographic variables known to be associated with psychological functioning will be examined such as socioeconomic status. An additional screening question regarding exposure to familial violence will also be incorporated in the questionnaire (e.g. did you ever experienced or witnessed any type of abuse throughout your life?). The Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV Axis I (First, Spitzer, Gibbon, & Williams & Benjamin, 1997) is a semistructured interview design that assesses major DSM-IV Axis I diagnosis. For the present study, SCID PTSD module will be used to measure PTSD symptoms in sexual and physical child abuse victims, as well as individuals who have experienced some other type of distress/trauma (e.g. How did you react when (trauma) happened? 1. Absent or false 2. Subthreshold 3. Threshold or true). Besides PTSD diagnosis, SCID-I will be used to assess the current and lifetime level of PTSD symptoms. Victims of physical and child abuse will be evaluated using self-report scales. The SAEQ (Rowan et al, 1994) will assess exposure to child sexual abuse in adult victims by measuring multiple aspects of child sexual abuse, including invasive social events, such as “exposure of another’s

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder also comes with a set of causes. These causes are Serious injury, Life experiences, Sexual assault, Threatened death, Combat exposure, Neglect, Domestic violence, and Childhood abuse. Serious injury such as getting into a devastating car accident that could potentially threaten your life can undoubtingly take a toll on your wellbeing. Life experiences can also affect a person's mental state such as experiencing a national disaster like tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes can make a case for unwelcomed anxiety

While as a culture, we’ve brought to light many things that were formerly kept silent, the issue of childhood trauma is one that still remains under-explored, and under-represented. The pervasiveness of childhood physical and sexual abuse is something that many remain unaware of, despite the fact that the long-term effects of mistreatment are ones that remain with the victim for years after. Post traumatic stress is a disorder that has received more attention in recent years, as researchers and citizens alike have come to recognize the reality that wars, and natural disasters are far from the only causes of post traumatic stress disorder. While the treatments and diagnostic criteria for PTSD have evolved over the years to encompass more accurate and extensive symptoms, the diagnosis itself remains one that is more relevant for those who’ve experienced singular or infrequent traumatic events in early adulthood and beyond. Those who’ve been exposed to chronic and long-term abuse, particularly in the early formative years of life when the brain and its mechanisms are still developing, experience a wide-range of symptoms that the PTSD diagnosis does not encompass. It is for this reason, that extensive research has been done on the effects of chronic and long-term abuse.

A little background: PTSD is a psychological disorder formed from traumatic experiences that involves physical harm or the threat of physical harm that make the person feel stressed or frightened when they are no longer in danger. Signs and symptoms of PTSD can be grouped into three categories: Re-experiencing symptoms, avoidance symptoms, and hyper arousal symptoms . The main treatment for this is psychotherapy or

In conclusion, trauma does not limited itself to a society class, ethnicity group nor is it limited to a particular act; instead, trauma is an experience that extends itself in the moments when the human body’s natural response to discomfort and or fear fails to save and protect. Experiencing sexual abuse during childhood development is defined as a crisis. During that stage of human development, a child is not equipped with the proper tools to combat the physical, emotional, or spiritual ramifications of the act, and their natural ability for fight or flight does not impede the reoccurrence of the event. The child then develops into an adult with maladaptive coping skills to respond to external pain and disappointments. In some, an anxiety

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger this anxiety include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.

Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was seen as a condition where people are shocked into fear of facing situations. Over the years, it was labeled as “Soldier’s Heart” in the post Civil war era and “Shell Shock” in the World War I. In a situation of ‘fight-or-flight’ an individual is triggered to escape from danger, however in PTSD this reaction is reversed in which case the individual feels a constant threat of danger even when there is no danger present.The person diagnosed with PTSD can be anyone from a child to an adult. Many causes of this disorder include traumatic events, knowing someone who is in danger, genetic factors, and more. Symptoms include

Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery provides not only greater understanding of how a traumatic event may defined but also the ways in which the effects of the experience may have a significantly repressing effect on the present and future self. Traumatic events are impressing on the self because they overwhelm the conventional emotional and physical perceptions that humanity has adjusted and modified their selves to. As traumatic events generally involve threats to the emotional and physical self, they differ from common misfortunes as they confront the victim with the feeling of extreme terror and helplessness that in result causes the individual to perceive the experience as one that was out of their control. As Herman reiterates, according to the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, “The common denominator of psychological trauma is a feeling of “intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation” (Herman 104). However, it is the response to the traumatic event in the emotional or conscious self that may differ from one another as there are three differing reactions to the terror factor of trauma: hyper-arousal, intrusion, and disconnection. Throughout this essay the work of Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery as well as Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower will be utilized to illustrated the compromising effects a traumatic experience such as childhood sexual abuse may have on the development of a young teen and the ways in