My Personal Experience With PTSD

"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Nebraska Department of Veterans' Affairs, 2007. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has severely affected the lives of countless military veterans throughout the years. Consequently, there likely are many more PTSD cases that exist and go unreported, or misdiagnosed due to misconceptions when reported (Samuelson, Bartel, Jordan, & Valadez, 2017). To this extent, I am going to discuss my views on two articles. The first article explains the patient’s perceptions of PTSD symptoms. The second article explains the effects of performing Yoga as an unconventional form of treatment for PTSD patients. Each study was conducted on the men and women veterans of our Armed Forces. As citizens of the United States of America, we owe the Armed Forces a debt of

"Not long ago, most therapists who heard a story like Albert Grow's would have thought about what his experience in Vietnam did to his relationship with his family, his community and his sense of self. Few would have given much thought to what it did to his biochemistry. That is about to change. Grow, a policeman in Salem, New Hampshire, came back from Vietnam nearly 30 years ago on a "freezer flight"--a transport plane piled with body bags. At the Boston airport, a woman called him trash and spit in his face. Not long afterward, he punched out two coworkers in a photo lab because they wore black arm bands to honor the Vietnamese dead. After a brief stay on a psychiatric ward, he burned his Marine uniform in his parents' backyard. He avoided

My girlfriend’s brother, Mary served in the Marines for four years. In those four years, he made three combat tours and four other small deployments. During his first trip to Iraq, he was severely injured in a land mine accident. He was the only one out of the other three soldiers in the tank that survived. The accident left him with a severe brain injury and partly blind in his left eye. Mary was in an Iraqi hospital for about two weeks. He then decided to continue with his duty of being of Marine.

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.

PTSD is a disease/disorder that many of our own soldiers have to live with for the rest of their lives. PTSD is a slept on thing that many people do not believe in. About 11-20 out of every 100 soldiers have to live with it. Many soldiers live with PTSD because of how life threatening and stressful war is.

America the beautiful, land of the free, but at what cost is that freedom attained? Freedom is usually attained through war and suffering. Many soldiers lose their lives fighting for their country. Even though many returned physically healthy, some of the men and women are fighting a new battle on the home front of their own minds. Living with something as mentally tormenting as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is something many veterans have to deal with on a daily basis. Not only do these men and women have to deal with the regret of their own actions, but they have to deal with the horrible treatment of those around them. They are living a life of torture knowing there is no cure; however, some people have found natural and positive ways to treat the symptoms. Even though many skeptics believe this disorder doesn’t exist, tests have been run proving the nightmare is as deep as

In August of 2010, I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick . Amongst the plethora of people milling about the meet and greet of the college circle we shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. Patrick had the face of someone who had seen more of the world than most of the 18 and 19-year-olds present and during the course of our conversation he told me that he had just returned from Afghanistan, a transfer from being a non-commissioned officer (NCM) member of the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) to a student at the Royal Military College (RMC), intent on becoming an officer.

Finley’s “From Soldier’s Heart to PTSD,” was about the evolution of how clinicians, physiatrists, and the military viewed what was happening to the men who went into war. At first, the symptoms that the soldiers were going through was referred to as “shell shock.” This lead to the debate whether the physical brain as opposed to the psychological mind could determine human behavior so “shell shock” became “war neurosis.” The increasing number of cases lead to the creating of the triage system which seem to help the soldiers. After many other war, physiatrists were still noticing the same symptoms even though the number of cases decreased. Advocates for the Vietnam war tried to make the government realized that these soldier where suffering due

There is often an expectation that someone who has survived a traumatic event would be happy for being alive. But there are those who have gone through a traumatic event and have developed a condition known as survivor’s guilt and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and are actually unhappy or depressed that they survived. This condition not only affects the survivors, but those around them as well.

Every war goes down as one of the most important moments in history, just as for the soldiers it symbolizes such a momentous event in their lives. These brave people fight for others freedom while they are incarcerating their own ego by experiencing such post traumatic events. Although the academies prepare their soldiers physically and mentally for what to expect, it is much more difficult to actually live it rather than to talk and strategize for the situations. A serviceman could develop what is referred to as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) which is a condition in which a person experiences enduring psychological symptoms after a very extreme stressful event or series of events (Hall). War can save future generations and the lives

My client is a forty-three-year-old married Caucasian female suffering from PTSD due to a traumatic event which happened twenty years ago. The patient is now happily remarried for nineteen years raising two sons, age seventeen and twenty. The twenty year old son is in college, while the patient home schools the other son, a high school junior. The patient is a teacher who does part time tutor work and runs several small boutique booths. The patient was brought to my

I woke up in a cold sweat at 3:00 in the morning to the sound of gunshots and screams, but as soon as I rose up from my bed, I knew that I couldn’t keep doing this. I can’t let my PTSD control me, it comes with horrible episodes of scenes that I have never even encountered, it scares me, and my daughter. If my life continues like this, then I won’t end up with a happy ending with her and I together, but rather with me sitting in a mental hospital and only being able to talk to her through a window. As much as I love her, I could scare her, I’m even scared. I needed to figure out what these scenes meant. I then forced myself to sleep, wanting the visions to end.

PTSD symptoms usually appear within 3 months of a traumatic event, last longer than a month, and severely affect daily life. In some cases, symptoms do not appear for years after the traumatic event. Psychological disturbances prior to cancer diagnosis, elevated psychological distress subsequent to the diagnosis, younger age, female gender, lower socioeconomic status, education level, poor social functioning and support, emotionally reactive temperament, avoidant coping style, and reduced physical functioning have been associated with PTSB in cancer patients [23–25]. Due to its nature, cancer is an inevitable trauma for patients. The trauma starts with learning the diagnosis and continues with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy and even in the every single outpatient clinic

According to a Tanielian and Jaycox (2008) study, as of September 2014 there were approximately 2.7 million American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars”. Of the 2.7 million at least 20% of the veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan wars obtained PTSD and/or depression. However, it was noted that when interviewed, the military counselors stated that they believe that the percentage rate of veterans with PTSD was much higher. The number is said to continue to increase when combined with traumatic brain injury (TBI).