Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Case Study

The term "a perfect storm" is used to describe a serendipitous confluence of events which results in something astounding and often catastrophic. Considered on their own, each of the events is not terribly remarkable, but when the events are combined, the results can be devastating.Once the storm dissipates and reveals what is remaining then you can assess the damage. PTSD and TBI together create a diagnosis of a perfect storm. PTSD and TBI are medically considered two separate mental conditions; both triggered by a traumatic event. Diagnosis of both conditions have specific factors that lead events which trigger the prognosis. Sadly common, PTSD and TBI are commonly diagnosed together; deeply intertwined, making differentiating the two almost impossible for the patient. Medically, PTSD-”Post Traumatic Stress disorder” is a physiological condition caused by a traumatic event, most commonly diagnosed in war veterans.TBI- “Traumatic Brain Injury” is a physical condition caused by an external mechanical force which causes brain dysfunction.

After being hospitalised for the summer after his best friend commits suicide, Charlie who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), is going to set out on his first year of secondary school. He fears being known as the odd child who was hospitalised for the summer and not having any friends. Charlie’s anxiety goes back to the first traumatic event in his life, the passing of his Aunt Helen. Charlie’s Aunt was killed in a car accident while she on her way to the car to get Charlie his present. He still feels that it was his fault that she was in the car. He worships his Aunt and wishes she were there to help him get through his struggles with starting secondary

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is defined by the Mayo clinic as a mental health condition that is brought on by the experience of a terrifying event, the symptom most relevant to this case is severe anxiety. Sinedu and Trang both had experiences that fell into these categories. For Trang it was the Re-education of both her parents, and turbulent escape from Vietnam. For sinedu it was growing up during the Derg rule, and the red death. If Trang suffered from PTSD she did a very good job of concealing it. She also had a much better support system with her sister Thao and the Vietnamese students union.

In this paper the therapies related to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) will be studied in order to determine the applicability thereof for the treatment (and prevention) of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD will be summarised as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders edition 4 with revisions (DSM-IV-TR). The therapy models, their theory and techniques will be discussed. The therapies this paper has in scope are, CBT, Exposure therapy and it’s different related techniques, Stress Inoculation Training (SIT), and Eye Movement Desensitisation

While conducting research on Veteran’s Resources of interest to Human Resource Professionals, I came across an interesting article put on the internet provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The main treatments for people with PTSD are psychotherapy, medications, or both (NIMH, PTSD, treatments). It’s important to find a mental health provider that is experienced with PTSD. There are different types of psychotherapy also known as “talk” therapy (NIMH, PTSD, treatments, Page 5). Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has several parts to it including Exposure therapy, Cognitive restructuring, and Stress inoculation training. Exposure therapy helps people face and control their fear. It exposes them to the trauma they experienced by using mental imagery, writing, or visits to the place where the event happened. The therapist uses these tools to help people cope with their feelings. Cognitive restructuring helps people make sense of the bad memories. This therapy helps people look at what happened in a realistic way, because sometimes people remember the event differently than how it happened (NIMH, PTSD, treatments, Page 6). People with PTSD may feel guilty for what happened, even though it was not their fault. Stress inoculation training therapy tries to reduce PTSD symptoms by teaching a person how to reduce anxiety, by helping

Jane physical health is stable at this time but as I previously implied she have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by military’s psychiatrist since her discharged from the army 3/16/91. She is experiencing psychological traumatic episode from the war. She has been an inpatient of Betterway Rehabilitation Center since 9/1/15, where she is receiving treated and being evaluated for PTSD, chronic depression, and abuse of prescribe and illicit drug use. She is required to go to group therapy, individual counseling and have her meds administrated to her by professional staff or residential nurse.

PTSD is characterized by 4 groups of symptoms that impair functioning: intrusion symptoms, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop following exposure to 1 or more traumatic events such as deliberate acts of interpersonal violence, severe accidents, disasters, or military action (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Guidelines recommend that the routine use of brief screening instruments should be considered for people who are at high risk of developing PTSD which is anyone who has suffered trauma. These guidelines also recommended the use of a brief screening instrument when it is known that a person has had a traumatic experience.

In this scholarly article the author addresses the topic of emotional numbing and how it is a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) seen as a loss of interest in usually enjoyable activities, feeling detached from others, and an inability to express a full range of feelings of love, hate, fear, etc. Emotional numbing is usually tested/evaluated through self-report, and is especially very hard to check among young children. The experimenters conducted a pilot study to explore the use of facial expression ratings in response to a comedy video clip to evaluate emotional ability or likelihood to do something in response to something else among preschool children directly exposed to the Great East Japan Earthquake. This study included 23

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychological reaction occurring after experiencing a highly stressing event (as wartime combat, physical violence, or a natural disaster) that is usually characterized by depression, anxiety, flashbacks, recurrent nightmares, and avoidance of reminders of the event —abbreviation PTSD —called also post-traumatic stress syndrome (Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary,1999). It is mostly diagnosed by the following; coinciding intrusive thoughts and nightmares, impaired cognitive functions and in most cases the tendency of the person to avoid the situations that remind them of the trauma. These symptoms are thought start from the alterations in the stress response pathways which also involve alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis’ activity. According to Justice’s et al. (2015) article: “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder-Like Induction Elevates -Amyloid Levels, Which Directly Activates Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Neurons to Exacerbate Stress Responses”, published on the Journal of Neuroscience in February 2015, it is hypothesized that individuals who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder have higher chances of experiencing dementia, in most cases alzheimer’s disease, as they age. In addition, the hypothesis was explored using mouse models. The control animals were subjected to just a

There are times where severely stressful or traumatic events can cause serious cases of anxiety. These cases are categorized as PTSD, which about about 8% of the U.S. population will have at some point in their lives according to the National Center for PTSD. This is because going through trauma is not a rare occurrence. Although experiencing a trauma does not mean that PTSD will always develop, people are more likely to develop PTSD if they were directly exposed to the trauma as a victim or a witness, felt helpless during the trauma and were not able to help themselves or a loved one, or went through a trauma that was long-lasting or very severe. Specifically in case study 3, Josh is a victim of PTSD after watching his fiancée die.

As we see more and more people dealing with and or coming into contact with traumatic experiences. It may be returning from war or having something else bad happen to you in your life. We see more and more people having to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, better known as PTSD, either directly or indirectly with someone that they know or have come into contact with in one way or another. So far there has not been much help by means of treatment for those that suffer with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder other than talking about what had happened with a counselor or someone with training in counseling or when the person with PTSD should happen to feel an attack coming on they should use breathing exercises and trying to relax.

If veterans do struggle with PTSD after they return from combat the Department of Veterans Affairs, a governmental agency that helps struggling veterans recover, offers two treatments. Studies have been done to see if one of the therapies is more effective than the other. There is not yet evidence that one therapy is better than the other. Cognitive processing therapy, CPT, helps by giving the vet a new way to deal with the maladaptive thoughts that come with PTSD. It also comforts them in gaining a new understanding of the traumatic events that happened to them. One of the other benefits of CPT is that it assists the person in learning how these disturbing events change the way they look at everything in life and helps them cope with that (“PTSD: National”). The second newer option of the two is prolonged exposure therapy, which is repeated exposure to these thoughts, feelings, and situations (“Most PTSD”). This type of therapy is now a central piece in the VA’s war on PTSD. “The problem with prolonged exposure is that it also has made a number of veterans violent, suicidal, and depressed, and it has a dropout rate that some researchers put at more than 50 percent, the highest dropout rate of any PTSD therapy that has been widely studied so far,”(“Trauma Post”). Both of the therapies are proven to reduce the symptoms but both have extremely high drop out rates and low follow through. It

The proposed research question asks whether a combined prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) approach is useful in treating veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The population of interest for this study is veterans with PTSD. The ideal study would include four groups: one to receive PE, one to receive CPT, one to receive both PE and CPT, and one that does not receive an intervention. The groups would consist of an equal 50/50 male to female ratio (half of the participants would be male, half would be female) to control for gender. The participants would be randomly selected, by a computerized program, based on information gathered about veterans with PTSD by the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs offices in each of the 23 regions of the Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISN). Once selected, the veterans will be randomly placed into one of the four aforementioned groups, and given the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory (PTCI), a scale used to measure a person’s trauma related to their thoughts and beliefs to determine if they have PTSD or PTSD symptoms. After the participants baseline PTSD symptoms are measured, each group will receive their assigned intervention once a week for 15 weeks. After the intervention is complete the participant’s PTSD symptoms will again be measured using the PTCI scale at the one week and three month mark after treatment is completed. The control group will also be offered the combined PE and CPT

An estimated 5.2 million adults will suffer from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) every year. Every PTSD victim encounters different experiences and symptoms that coincide with their trauma. Many forms of treatment and coping mechanisms have been attempted in the past decade to produce relief. There have been a few successful forms or treatment and there have also been treatment routes that have been detrimental to the success and overcoming of victims’ symptoms. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a new treatment option that is available to PTSD victims. “While the treatment has met with skepticism, meta-analyses have indicated that EMDR is superior to most other treatments and is as effective as the best alternative treatment, i.e., cognitive-behavioral therapy. EMDR is now advocated as a treatment of choice for PTSD in many Western countries” (Van den Hout 177-178). EMDR gives PTSD victims long-lasting relief from their symptoms and ensures them the best chance at regaining normalcy in their lives.