Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event such as war, abuse, and a brutal human encounter. If one has an emotional response to an event, the response can potentially become long-term. This long-term response is diagnosed as posttraumatic stress disorder. PTSD is thoroughly examined in soldiers after returning from combat. However, the US Army began screening soldiers for associations with PTSD during World War I prior to deployment (Jones 2003). Associations such as: family, education, personal histories, psychiatric disorder, and childhood abuse. With these screenings being performed prior to deployment, it raises the question—is PTSD in soldiers because of events prior to enlisting or because of combat and why do some people develop PTSD and others do not? In this paper, I will explain the possible answer, which is that a PTSD diagnosis in soldiers returning from deployment is because of combat.
SOLDIERS DIAGNOSED WITH PTSD:
A PTSD diagnosis can result from the possible events: exposure to death, serious injury, or threat of death, which causes feelings of extreme fear, horror or helplessness (Ozer 2004). According to Ozer and Weiss, the results of that exposure are displayed in three symptoms, which are required for diagnosis: involuntary re-experiencing of the trauma such as nightmares, avoidance of reminders and numbing responsivity such as not being able to have loving feelings, and increased arousal such as difficult sleeping or concentrating (2004). These three symptoms that are required for diagnosis are quite broad, so the definition of trauma and what constitutes a traumatic event for an individual varies widely. Therefore, there are multiple types of PTSD. Individuals can be diagnosed with partial ...

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