Essay on What Does Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Truly Means?

I was never a huge fan of children. I was never the girl to babysit all of the kids on my block. I was never the girl to spark up a conversation with a little girl or boy. I am the younger sibling and I have no younger cousins; I was the baby of the family, so I never really had to deal with children growing up. I never know what to say when I am talking to children because they do not understand the world the same way I do. Up until now, I never thought of that as a good thing. Seymour, a character from A Perfect Day for a Bananafish, is in a similar situation after returning from war with a severe case of PTSD. He talks to the children because they do not understand all of the tragedies of the world. Seymour has an easier time communicating

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a relatively new diagnosis that was associated with survivors of war when it was first introduced. Its diagnosis was met largely with skepticism and dismissal by the public of the validity of the illness. PTSD was only widely accepted when it was included as a diagnosis in 1980 in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association. PTSD is a complex mental disorder that develops in response to exposure to a severe traumatic event that stems a cluster of symptoms. Being afflicted with the disorder is debilitating, disrupting an individual’s ability to function and perform the most basic tasks.

With the recent release of the popular movie and book American Sniper, much attention has been drawn to the effects of the disease of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on its victims. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a mental illness from going through a traumatic experience, is more prevalent in veterans and men currently serving in the military, and it is important that effective treatment be sought.

PTSD is not easily treated. Sometimes people can not only suffer mentally but have physical impairments from the event as well. This can make it hard for them to obtain the treatment they need. A combination of medications and psychotherapy is usually recommended and is the most effect form of treatment for PTSD. The earlier a person seeks treatment for this disorder the better the outcome will be. The medications are used to help people cope with their emotions while the psychotherapy will help

A Perfect Day for Bananafish follows the events leading up to the eventual suicide of Seymour Glass. In the story, Seymour is described as a lost spirit who sees himself as being fundamentally different from his social environment following his wartime experience; he leaves the war “seeing-more” and as a result, awakens to find that he has lost touch with the material world. Salinger uses the story’s dialog as the medium for conveying Seymour’s struggle; he establishes the shallow nature of the environment Seymour is exposed to using the dialog between Muriel and her Mother while simultaneously giving clues about Seymour’s character from the perspectives of the two women in his life. Seymour’s character is built upon further in the second

Among those who served in the Vietnam War, 84.8% of those diagnosed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder still show moderate impairment of symptoms, even 30 plus years after the war (Glover 2014). As of today, the Unites States has 2.8 million veterans who served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, of those it is estimated that 11 to 20% currently suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. As of 2013, a total of 12,632 veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are currently diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Glover 2014). Of course it is to be taken into account that these numbers are based on those who admit to experiencing symptoms and seek treatment.

A Perfect Day For Bananafish was written in 1948 by the American writer Jerome David Salinger. This was just three years after the ending of World War II, where Salinger was stationed in Berlin, Germany. From further analysis of the short-story I have come to the conclusion that Seymour is Salinger’s role model. Seymour has just returned from World War II, as well as Salinger had when he wrote the story. Seymour returns to his native country very confused, dysfunctional and with some psychic issues.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”(Bailey, Eileen) While this is often the case, certain tragedies are simply too overwhelming for the body and mind to recover from. Instead of making one stronger, some things leave the human body weakened both emotionally and physically. When faced with gargantuan amounts of stress, some people have mental or emotional breakdowns resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder.

care leads to not only veterans that suffer from PTSD but anyone that has had symptoms the thought of there is no way to escape that trauma unless they turn to alcoholism, drugs or anti-socialism to allow aid in the suppression the night terrors. What are the numbers like when you consider the massive amount of current military and veterans that have suffered or are currently suffering from the effects of PTSD? The NVVRS or National Veterans’ Readjustment Study, over one thousand Vietnam veterans in the year nineteen eighty-eight were reporting fifteen-point four percent currently having post-traumatic stress disorder. Now this was then put into as a percentage of who was suffering which came to thirty-one percent, this number to me seems

At least 50% of all adults and children are exposed to a psychologically traumatic event (such as a life-threatening assault or accident, humanmade or natural disaster, or war). As many as 67% of trauma survivors experience lasting psychosocial impairment, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); panic, phobic, or generalized anxiety disorders; depression; or substance abuse.(Van der Kolk, et al, 1994) Symptoms of PTSD include persistent involuntary re-experiencing of traumatic distress, emotional numbing and detachment from other people, and hyperarousal (irritability, insomnia, fearfulness, nervous agitation). PTSD is linked to structural neurochemical changes in the central nervous system which may have a direct

Posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD is a form of mental and emotional stress that has been brought on by traumatic events that have taken place in a person’s life. PTSD comes with many kinds of effects some including high-risk behaviors, aggression and shame, sleep disturbances, and attachment(Barr, Kintzle, Sullivan, Castro, 2017; Martindale, Morissette, Rowland, Dolan, 2017; Haller, Norman, Angkaw, 2016; Renaud, 2008). These all are causes of behavioral effects from PTSD that do or may occur in veterans. PTSD can cause bad health risks, but it also has been tested and found that it can also cause bad and unsafe risk behaviors (Barr, Kintzle, Sullivan, Castro 2017). Sleep disturbances are

A moment is defined as a brief period of time. (Merriam Webster) The average lifespan of a person consists of 27,375 days, that is 39,420,000 minutes. Within those hundreds of thousands of minutes humans have the opportunity to experience a moment. These experiences can be either good, bad or neutral. A significant moment in my life was the moment I was sexually assaulted. For a long period of time that experience held a negative impact in my life but also taught me that there are too many ongoing experiences to let one moment define the rest.

Seymour has become an outsider in a world that is directed by materialism, gluttonous, and unimportance , has no real outlet for the complicated emotions he carries around inside him. He has been damaged psychologically by the war and is clearly not receiving the medical care he needs. Muriel, along with her family live in a world he can no longer understand, and his behavior in that world is unsuitable, disturbing, and dangerous. Seymour in the story displays classic signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder “PTSD”, and at that time no one knew exactly what PTSD was and back then it was called shell shock and was at an all time high and “during the early years of World War II, psychiatric casualties had increased some 300 percent when compared with World War I, even though the pre-induction psychiatric rejection rate was three to four times higher than World War I. At one point in the war, the number of men being discharged from the service for psychiatric reasons exceeded the total number of men being newly drafted.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects 7.7 million American adults and can also occur during childhood. PTSD is an anxiety disorder that stems from a recent emotional threat such as a natural, disaster, war, and car accidents. PTSD usually occurs from an injury or coming close death. A person who has experienced a past traumatic event has a heightened chance of being diagnosed with PTSD after a current trauma. PTSD can also be determined by looking at one’s genes, different emotions, and current or past family setting. Normally, when a person without PTSD goes through a traumatic event the body releases stress hormones, which in time returns back to normal; However, a person with PTSD releases stress hormones that do not return

The Possible Effects of Post Traumatic Stress Post traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder associated with serious traumatic events and characterized by such symptoms as survivor guilt, reliving the trauma in dreams, numbness and lack of involvement with reality, or recurrent thoughts and images. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can develop at any age, including in childhood. Symptoms typically begin within 3 months of a traumatic event, although occasionally they do not begin until years later. Once PTSD occurs, the severity and duration of the illness varies. Some people recover within 6 months, while others suffer much longer.