PTSD In America

The in depth and thorough details of PTSD that Mr. Creamer provides in this article will be very useful in my writings, it also aids in the aspect of psychological treatment being a pro

It was not until the 1980’s that the diagnosis of PTSD as we know it today came to be. However, throughout history people have recognized that exposure to combat situations can have profound negative impact on the mind s and bodies of individuals in these situations. But there are other catastrophic events that can have such profound impact on people resulting in PTSD…

PTSD is only now being recognized as a legitimate disease. When symptoms, of what is now PTSD, began showing up on the battlefields in the 1800’s, doctors of the military had “begun to diagnose soldiers with ‘exhaustion’” (Eagan,p. 360). Medicine of the time was about physical disorders. Doctors paid little to no attention to the enigmatic field of mind-body medicine. “Exhaustion” was the diagnosis of a “mental shutdown” caused by trauma (Eagan,p. 360). Diagnosing soldiers with ‘exhaustion’ was the military’s and

The government sends the military off to fight wars. The cost of these wars are growing due to the medical treatment cost of taking care of the people that were sent off to fight for our country. Five percent of soldiers are diagnosed with PTSD, but since the Iraq and Afghanistan war that number has increased to eight percent. The number of people with PTSD went from 190,000 to about a half million.

Two selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), paroxetine and sertraline, have been approved by the FDA for the treatment of PTSD. However, the results of the effectiveness of pharmacology in double-blind, placebo controlled studies were not greater than PE and CPT or they were insignificant (Peterson et al., 2011).

(Rosenthal, J. Z., Grosswald, S., Ross, R., & Rosenthal, N. 2011) Veterans presenting with symptoms of PTSD will often engage in behaviors which can be dangerous for themselves, their families and socity. Lack of effective treatment can place the veteran at increased risk for drug and alcohol abuse or dependence, suicide ideations or attemps, and bouts violence toward others. (National Center for PTSD, 2010) PTSD can occur anytime anytime one has have been through the experience of a traumatic event. PTSD has been referred to by many names in past years such as post-combat disorders, shell shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, disordered or heavy heart, and war neurosis. In DSM-I PTSD was referred to as ‘‘gross stress reaction’’ this was the name of the diagnoises given to those individuals who had suffered combat exposure, and their minds had become psychologically altered. It was very helpful to have a name to the sympotms of military or civilian individual that had been exposed to combat exposure, ex-prisoners of war, and rape victims. This term had also been helpful in diagnosing Nazi Holocaust

Moreover, individuals who develop complex PTSD first show symptoms of PTSD, an indication that PTSD arousal symptoms may predict lifetime complex PTSD while current complex PTSD is indicated by PTSD avoidance symptoms. Therefore, it is difficult to outline the nature of the complex PTSD construct since there is a lack of formally-defined set of symptoms as well as a standardized measurement tool. Having a standardized measurement tool would make complex PTSD better understood and differentiated from other disorders.

It is the goal of this paper to demonstrate that the phenomenon of PTSD, despite the fact that its multiple emotional and psychosocial effects are constantly being debated, is soundly rooted in neurobiology, and that this aspect of PTSD lends support to the notion that brain = behavior.

There are so many things in our society that can potentially trigger acute or post-traumatic stress disorder it can be hard to list them all. What is considered "traumatic" completely depends on the person, how well they cope with stress and their personality. A lot of the children that I work with suffer from PTSD due to severe physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and neglect. Combat is a big one, many people have heard of soldiers coming home and having severe flashbacks, nightmares and anxiety causing them to develop PTSD. People who are in psychiatric hospitals with PTSD also have the potential for being re-traumatized. For example, a person suffering from schizophrenia is hearing voices and becomes physically aggressive so they are put

According to Roberts, in the 19th and 20th centuries most of the theories and research have been swung back and forth between the occasion and predisposition. It is found that the occurrence of PTSD is thought to occur either because of the existence of a mental illness due to the undesired circumstances affecting the memories of the victim, or because of the occurrence of similar events frequently (Van der Kolk and McFarlane, 2012).

Research confirms that the amygdala is very important in the role of understanding emotions such as fear. A study was conducted by Adolphs, Tranel, Damasio and Damasio in order to test this. Subjects who all had damage to the amygdala were selected, these individuals where known as the target subjects. A

The amygdala is known to learn from exposure to fear and store assessment of threat–related stimuli. The prefrontal cortex is involved in extinction and the retention of fear and is connected to the amygdala. Finally, the hippocampus encodes the context during fear learning process and sends it to the amygdala. People with PTSD have hyper-activity in the amygdala, while having hypo-activity in the prefrontal cortex and there is reduction of the hippocampus volume. This reduction may limit proper evaluation and categorization of the experience. A study on Vietnam soldiers revealed that lesions in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex resulted in the absence of PTSD. To get further into the molecular level studies been done on the hormonal system. “Stress is known to contribute to the pathogenesis of a variety of disorders, including the majority of psychiatric like major depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3825244/pdf/DM30-02-343616.pdf). Research has revealed evidence that a hormonal system known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is the one that gets disrupted in people with PTSD. The hormonal system is involved in normal stress reactions, so the disruption of this system in people with PTSD creates this “false alarm”. It has been suggested by some scientist that the dysfunction of the HPA system results in hippocampal damage in people with PTSD. Damage in the hormones is caused by damage to

The two brain structures that are most frequently linked to human emotion are the amygdalas and the medial portions of the prefrontal lobes (Pinel, 2014). The amygdalas are only one section of the limbic system, it is the “almond-shaped nucleus in the anterior temporal lobe” (Pinel, 2014, pg. 70). The amygdalas have been researched more than any other section of the limbic system. The amygdalas are most commonly associated with the emotion of fear, however research is showing that the amygdalas actually play a role in “evaluating the emotional significance of situations”, whether the emotions being felt are positive or negative (Pinel, 2014, pg. 436). Even though research has shown the amygdalas play a larger role with emotions, brain imaging

This paper will explore PTSD as it is understood within the field of psychology and neuroscience beginning with a brief look its historical development in the American Psychiatric Associations’ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to the most current DSM-5th edition. The epidemiology and etiology of PTSD will focus primarily on the adult population with some attention given to the implications for children. Therapeutic goals, assessment tools, and recommended treatment approaches for the three phases of treatment will be summarized. Remarks will be offered on research findings on treatment outcomes. Observations from current data and emerging trends in PTSD will conclude this work.

While neurobiological and mental methodologies may give a record to the instruments that abandon a few people defenseless against PTSD, transformative methodologies may give clarifications concerning why these people display an especially articulated and diligent unfavorable response to calamitous