Shattered: The Effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

During the American Civil War, a prisoner of war was a person who was captured and imprisoned by the enemy. Both the Union and the Confederates had to deal with such matters of prisoners of war. According to Gabor S. Boritt, both the North and the South each had approximately 30 prison camps that held about 194,000 Union soldiers and about 214,000 Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. (Boritt 1989) Andersonville was a confederate camp that had a reputation of being one of the worst prison camps of the Civil War. Its conditions were unnaturally bad

An example of what happens when prisons become overcrowded took place in Trenton, New Jersey in 1952. The small prison was made up of "sexual psychopaths, passive homosexuals, aggressive 'wolves' with long records of fights and stabbings, escape artists, agitators and incorrigibles of all ages" (Blackwell). While Trenton’s overcrowding was minimal compared to today’s standards, there was 1,312 inmates in a facility designed to hold 1,190. The cells were old and rundown, barely lit, and infested with rats that were fed better than the inmates (Blackwell). The prison began hiring tougher, more rugged correction officers to combat the rowdy inmates. The inhumane treatment of the inmates contributed to an unstable and volatile emotional state among the inmates. Around midnight on March 29, 1952, the inmates began to tear apart their cots, using the metal legs to pry open their cell doors. The inmates “chased their guards out of the wing, barricaded the entrance and wrecked everything they could lay their hands on. They smashed cell toilets, shredded beds, broke windows and set fires” (Blackwell). The guards broke the will of the inmates after 46 hours by using tear gas and water hoses. Two weeks later, a group

Four concrete walls, a steel bed, and a sink to soak the unclean clothes in as well as an insignificantly compact restroom. Welcome to solitary confinement where the lights always stay on and there’s always room for just one, you. When we think about solitary confinement we probably think of a killer or rapist getting what they deserve. What we don’t see is another human life being psychologically destroyed. Some of these prisoners have been in solitary confinement from a couple of years to decades. It is true that these are not honorable or peace keeping men, but a human life being tortured by solitude is a torture no one deserves.

Conditions inside the prison were no better. For starters, many of the prisoners were those who had committed menial crimes. Worse so, many were war heroes, back from Vietnam who couldn’t find a job and thus had to go about other illegal means to stay alive, and thus were thrown in prison. Attica prison in particular was famous at the time among prisoners for having the most horrific treatment of their inmates. Guards did whatever they could both legally and illegally to keep their prisoners in perpetual fear and discomfort. The prisoners were not just treated like children, but as animals. The one thing prisoners treasure the most is their contact with the outside world. It keeps them sane and allows them to remain in some type of contact both with their families as well as with what is going on outside the prison walls. But, guards did whatever

The treatment slaves had to involuntarily endure

Soon after undergoing procedures they found out people where going insane and even taking their own lives. These customs of confinement where retired for a long time until about the 1920’s when they made a comeback at Alcatraz off the San Francisco Bay. The jail is known for housing some of the most notorious prisoners in the country and they wanted to keep the upper hand and not have anything go wrong. They created a whole prison block called D-Block which housed dozens of prisoners in confinement.If you were to break any rules while in confinement you would get sent to the “hole” which was worse than solitary confinement because you would not receive any clothes or any food other than bread and water. (http://www.alcatraz101.com) Robert Stroud was one one of the prisoners at Alcatraz in his lifetime he served 42 years in solitary confinement. While in another jail he was confined and found a group of birds which he housed later on in his years in jail he publish a couple books one called Diseases of Canaries. He was a very intelligent man with an IQ of 134 but while being looked up he was later diagnosed a psychopath.(Robert Stroud/wikipedia.org) Many prisoners go into solitary confinement perfectly fine and come out different due to the lack of human

In Andersonville, GA, there was a 16.6 acre prison. The prison housed the Union soldiers captured by the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Reports from a man who entered the camp said the men whom were held as prisoners looked as if they were skeletons. People would ask questions such as, “Can this be hell?,” or “God protect us!” The prison was a rectangular style prison. In the center, approximately three or four acres, stood a swamp. The swamp was used as a “sink” for the prisoners. Around the edge of the swamp was excrements of the prisoners¬- the stench was suffocating. There was an area of the prison known as the “Dead Line,” a no man-zone. The prison was undersupplied with food, not only for the prisoners, but also for

The prisons we typically think of in modern American society are distinctly and majorly different from the Stalinist labor camp Ivan Denisovich Shukhov presides in the book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but all prisons have four major purposes. These purposes are retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. By rating the prison camp that Shukhov resided in for 3,653 days, a greater understanding of the negative impact placed on Shukhov can be granted. Before stating how well the specific prison camp followed each of these purposes, I will first go into further detail into what each of these purposes includes in order to provide a rubric when grading the Stalinist prison camp.

There were a few camps, such as the Salisbury Prison Camp, that had acceptable, though still not desirable, treatment of those in its residence. However, the majority of camps were unforgiving locations of torture and agony for many soldiers. An example of such a place is Point Lookout, a Union camp in Maryland. Overcrowding, as previously discussed, was one of the main reasons that this is regarded as such a terrible place. This also contributed to many other problems, such as disease and lack of shelter. Confederate prisons were not better in comparison, though. Camp Sumter was a prime example of this. Many refer to it as one of the worst camps in the war, mainly because of a very high death rate of 29% and a lack of clean drinking water for any

In a world where people had yet to learn that convicts were still human, prisons were very often no different than death row. In some states, Prisons would lease prisoners to private companies. Although the 13th amendment is widely famous for ending slavery, it did make slavery legal “as a punishment for crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Overall, these prisons were reminiscent of slave camps. There, prisoners worked 15 hours days, under deplorable living and working conditions, without pay.

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

James Neal, a prisoner in the Youngstown prison, built by the Corrections Corporation of America, (CCA) was forced to strip and parade naked in front of the female staff. He was even in his cell, accompanied by canisters of tear gas, which is supposed to be used for war. The medium security prison, which took maximum security, ended up with many escapees and deaths. More than 20 prisoners died in the first few months. Private prisons are helpful when storing prisoners and in conditions when the government is under budgets, but the prisoners are dying very fast and treated badly in the prisons (Bates).

Charles Dickens visited the United States in 1842, were he witnessed solitary confinement in Eastern State Penitentiary just outside Philadelphia. Dickens viewpoints on the prison system in America is that he “persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those who benevolent gentlemen who carry execution, do no know what it is that they are doing”. The lets the audience know what Dickens believes to be the negative part of the Prison Discipline. Dickens states that not many men are capable of enduring long period of agony and torture. The prison system to Dickens led him to be convinced that “There is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has the right to inflict upon his fellow creatures”. This lets us conclude that Dickens’s assessment toward the Prisons has a more negative aspect. To support his claims of why the prisons have a negative aspect is seen through the numerous prisoners, he visited during his tour of the American prisons. He included an individual who was about to be released after two years in solitary confinement. Dickens reaction toward the man was that he felt his “Heart bled for him; and when the tears rolled down his checks…to ask, with his trembling hands nervously clutching…whether there was hope of his dismal sentence being commuted, the spectacle was really too painful to witness”. Dickens states that “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries

After watching this video, I believe that the most difficult thing about being in this prison during the 1800-1900's would be the isolation. Simply hearing how the walls were sound proof, they were punished for making noise, and they could only come out of their cells for baths once every two weeks, sent chills up my spine. According to studies, even perceived social isolation in humans alone can predict a cognitive decline, an increased chance for Alzheimer's, a lower permanent IQ, and more (Cacioppo, Hawkley, Norman, and Berntson,2011). If that can happen from perceived social isolation then one can only imagine how terrible living in constant social isolation would be.

The writer concludes that although not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD, for those who do, the consequences can be long term and devastating. However, with a combination of the right medication and therapeutic intervention and a good social support network, a favourable outcome can be achieved.