Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Traumatic Brain Injury affects millions of people worldwide. In the U.S. alone, “approximately 7.7 million adults have PTSD” (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d., para. 11). A great many have heard of PTSD/TBI, but how many really know what exactly it is, who suffers from it, and what it actually does to a person? These people are often the unclean, unshaven, hungry, homeless individuals begging for spare change who may have once acted as our civil servants or who risked their very lives for us during times of war, which have now been turned against by society as a whole. These people may also be a member of one’s immediate or extended family, one’s best friend, or a kindly neighbor. PTSD/TBI has no physical face for us to distinguish them from the rest of the population. This is often an invisible foe only recognized and battled by the sufferers themselves. This battle often occurs behind closed doors, alone, and with the assistance of substances both legal and illegal, which creates nearly insurmountable obstacles to recovery. In order to combat this, patients with PTSD/TBI need a three-prong approach to therapy, including therapy with experienced providers, fewer medications, and a more honest approach in regards to their eventual outcome.
The numbers of those who suffer are astounding and continually on the rise. This pattern will continue if treatment does not change promptly. Mental health professionals do not have an exact system that is able to predict who will end up with PTSD, they can only make an educated guess based on past research and reporting. This poses an enormous problem for both the sufferer and the clinicians who remain locked in a never-ending struggle with these illnesse...
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Foa, E. (2013). This Month’s Expert: Edna Foa, Ph.D., On Therapy for PTSD. The Carlat Report, 2(4). Retrieved from http://pro.psychcentral.com/2013/this-months-expert-edna-foa-ph-d-on-therapy-for-ptsd/001981.html
Grinage, B. (2003). Diagnosis and management of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. American Family Physician, 68(12), 2401-2409. Retrieved from http://www.aafp.org/afp/2003/1215/p2401.html
National Institute of Mental Health (n.d.). The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America. Retrieved from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml
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...t and seeing signs of improvement in their mental health (Edge, 2010). Ultimately, the current structure of the United States’ society under capitalism does not allow for an adequate solution to the social problem of the rise of PTSD among military members. Society is structured around individual and corporate interests, which does not leave room for the unique treatments required for PTSD. Unless capitalism is dismantled and a socialist society is created, which would dramatically change the current military structure and potentially reinstate the draft, soldiers will be forced to seek treatment from the neoconservative and liberal systems that offer inadequate treatment, if at all. As social workers, we must operate from the radical humanist perspective of structural social work and seek to help our military members from within the current system, for now.
NAMI - The National Alliance on Mental Illness. (n.d.). NAMI. Retrieved February 24, 2014, from http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=by_illness&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=61191
Boone, Katherine. "The Paradox of PTSD." Wilson Quarterly. 35.4 (2011): 18-22. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
Hunt, N.C. and McHale, S. (2010) Understanding Post Traumatic Stress. London: Sheldon Press, pp. 13-25.
With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, symptoms and cases are preventable and able to be countered if addressed properly. If the potential PTSD victims take necessary action to recover from their experience early on, suffering can be aided the best. The Vietnam War, filled with the gruesome combat due to technological advancements, fighting that still resulted in northern Vietnam’s victory and leaving many soldiers with feeling that the war was pointless, and the amount of innocents killed in the process, a heavy impact was left upon the veterans; however, it was America’s generally hostile response to the Vietnam War and lack of sympathy that contributed the most to the high numbers of PTSD victims.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD is a psychological disorder that’s brought about after encountering a traumatic experience. This disorder can vary between mild and extreme severity in symptoms and effect on the suffering patient. It’s caused by a hyper-aroused state in the brain, using a magnetoencephalography machine “We could see heightened arousal that was maintained in the PTSD-afflicted men and not in the men who don’t suffer from the illness” (The Globe and Mail, Image of PTSD). Therefore, most commonly the individual will present with suicidal tendencies, making this condition a danger to anyone who is
The lifetime prevalence of PTSD in the general population is 6-8% and increases to 20-30% for victims of severe traumatic events (Desmedt et al., 2015). PTSD resulting from combat-related trauma is a popular topic discussed throughout the media and is commonly adapted into characters in movies and television. In this paper, post-traumatic stress disorder portrayed in the movie Brothers will be critiqued and compared to the neural correlates that underlie symptoms of the disorder in neuropsychological literature.
The article under review is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the DSM-5: Controversy, Change, and Conceptual Considerations by Anushka Pai, Alina M. Suris, and Carol S. North in Behavioral Sciences. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health problem that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, like combat, a natural disaster, a car accident, or sexual assault (U.S. Department VA, 2007). PTSD can happen to anyone and many factors can increase the possibility of developing PTSD that are not under the person’s own control. Symptoms of PTSD usually will start soon after the traumatic event but may not appear for months or years later. There are four types of symptoms of PTSD but may show in different
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is defined by our book, Abnormal Psychology, as “an extreme response to a severe stressor, including increased anxiety, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and symptoms of increased arousal.” In the diagnosis of PTSD, a person must have experienced an serious trauma; including “actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violation.” In the DSM-5, symptoms for PTSD are grouped in four categories. First being intrusively reexperiencing the traumatic event. The person may have recurring memories of the event and may be intensely upset by reminders of the event. Secondly, avoidance of stimuli associated with the event, either internally or externally. Third, signs of mood and cognitive change after the trauma. This includes blaming the self or others for the event and feeling detached from others. The last category is symptoms of increased arousal and reactivity. The person may experience self-destructive behavior and sleep disturbance. The person must have 1 symptom from the first category, 1 from the second, at least 2 from the third, and at least 2 from the fourth. The symptoms began or worsened after the trauma(s) and continued for at least one
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after a traumatic event (Riley). A more in depth definition of the disorder is given by Doctor’s Nancy Piotrowski and Lillian Range, “A maladaptive condition resulting from exposure to events beyond the realm of normal human experience and characterized by persistent difficulties involving emotional numbing, intense fear, helplessness, horror, re-experiencing of trauma, avoidance, and arousal.” People who suffer from this disease have been a part of or seen an upsetting event that haunts them after the event, and sometimes the rest of their lives. There are nicknames for this disorder such as “shell shock”, “combat neurosis”, and “battle fatigue” (Piotrowski and Range). “Battle fatigue” and “combat neurosis” refer to soldiers who have been overseas and seen disturbing scenes that cause them anxiety they will continue to have when they remember their time spent in war. It is common for a lot of soldiers to be diagnosed with PTSD when returning from battle. Throughout the history of wars American soldiers have been involved in, each war had a different nickname for what is now PTSD (Pitman et al. 769). At first, PTSD was recognized and diagnosed as a personality disorder until after the Vietnam Veterans brought more attention to the disorder, and in 1980 it became a recognized anxiety disorder (Piotrowski and Range). There is not one lone cause of PTSD, and symptoms can vary from hallucinations to detachment of friends and family, making a diagnosis more difficult than normal. To treat and in hopes to prevent those who have this disorder, the doctor may suggest different types of therapy and also prescribe medication to help subside the sympt...
middle of paper ... ... Retrieved June 16, 2002, from http://nimh.nih.gov/publicat/numbers.cfm. National Mental Health Association. 2000 May 15.
There are many different causes of PTSD such as sexual abuse, sudden death of a loved one, and war. Trauma affects people in different ways, some can develop it from watching a fellow soldier being killed, and some can develop it from losing their jobs or a divorce. Being diagnosed with PTSD is a difficult process because there are many other psychological disorders whose symptoms can overlap and are very similar. An important fact to remember is that PTSD doesn’t just affect the person suffering; it can also have secondhand effects on their spouses, children, parents, friends, co-workers, and other loved ones. Although there is no direct cure, there are many treatment and alternative treatment options to assist them in moving forward after a trauma.
McGrath, E. C., McGonagle, K.A., Zhao, S., Nelson, C.B., Hughes, M., Eshleman, S., Wittchen, H-U., & Kendler, K.S.(2007).Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey. Archives of General Psychiatry, 51, 3-14.
Kessler, R., Chiu, W., Demler, O., & Walters, E. (2005, June). The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America. Retrieved Febuary 13, 2011, from National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov
Kessler, Chiu . et. al."The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America."NIMH RSS. National Institute of Mental Health , n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.