...Traumatic Stress Disorder Sub Topics: Chronic PTSD in Vietnam Veterans PTSD in Iraq War Veterans SOURCE 1: What is PTSD? Retrieved on 13 Nov. 2011 http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/pages/what-is-ptsd.asp UNDERSTANDING PTSD Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event. A traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or that happens to you. During this type of event, you think that your life or others' lives are in danger. You may feel afraid or feel that you have no control over what is happening. Anyone who has gone through a life-threatening event can develop PTSD. These events can include: * Combat or military exposure * Child sexual or physical abuse * Terrorist attacks * Sexual or physical assault * Serious accidents, such as a car wreck. * Natural disasters, such as a fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, or earthquake. After the event, you may feel scared, confused, or angry. If these feelings don't go away or they get worse, you may have PTSD. These symptoms may disrupt your life, making it hard to continue with your daily activities. How does PTSD develop? All people with PTSD have lived through a traumatic event that caused them to fear for their lives, see horrible things, and feel helpless. Strong emotions caused by the event create changes in the brain that may result in PTSD. Most people who go through a traumatic event have...
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...While screening measures are invaluable when assessing for trauma, as they investigate symptoms, symptom severity, traumatic experiences, etc., it is also necessary to be aware of common symptoms, especially when working with a specific population (i.e., Vietnam veterans). Although Holloway and Ursano (1984) conducted this study to better understand the role of memory, as well as the importance of metaphors and social contextual factors in memory, the case studies presented were discussed in the current literature review because they described and clarified common symptoms within this population. The first case study featured an individual who served as a sniper during the Vietnam war, and subsequently experienced disability, secondary to dissociation, which presented itself in the form of dreams and intrusive thoughts (Holloway & Ursano, 1984). Specifically, individual dissociated and found himself playing the role of this sniper, similarly to his role in Vietnam (Holloway & Ursano, 1984). He expressed feeling an enormous amount of guilt as the result of these experiences....
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...Military Veterans From research studies, military veterans aren’t well compensated for their service in the military. Not only are they not well compensated, there were many combat soldiers coming home with anger issues, PTSD, depression, and other psychological problems. According to research, half of the homeless individuals are military veterans not just an opinion but it’s a proven fact. Veterans are often not honored, as they should be. Why aren’t they? Another question is why aren’t our veterans not well taken care of? No health insurance for veterans First, scientific studies show that working age veterans don’t have health insurance. According to Genevieve Kenney, a senior fellow with the Urban Institute and co-author of the report...
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...Should Veterans receive better health benefits? Flash backs, sleeping problems, guilt, tension, constantly stressed, and frightening thoughts are just a few symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Most veterans are diagnosed with having PTSD. According to Mayo clinic staff, PTSD is a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or seeing a terrifying event. PTSD will usually begin within 3 months of a traumatic event. PTSD symptoms are grouped into four different categories: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, and changes in emotional reactions. Simple things as hearing a car backfire can send a victims mind back to combat, and they would relive their experiences. “About 11-20 out of every...
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...Using Meditation to Treat PTSD Att Yuwana PSY/315 9 July 2015 Vivian Surwill Using Meditation to Treat PTSD It is no secret that our men and women of the military may suffer from a traumatic experience. According to the VA, the numbers are as follows: • Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Enduring Freedom (OEF): About 11-20 out of every 100 Veterans (or between 11-20%) who served in OIF or OEF have PTSD in a given year. Gulf War (Desert Storm): About 12 out of every 100 Gulf War Veterans (or 12%) have PTSD in a given year. • Vietnam War: About 15 out of every 100 Vietnam Veterans (or 15%) were currently diagnosed with PTSD at the time of the most recent study in the late 1980s, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS). It is estimated that about 30 out of every 100 (or 30%) of Vietnam Veterans have had PTSD in their lifetime. (How Common is PTSD? (n.d.) Many have tried to come up with an effective treatment to help our service members suffering through PTSD. Although there are many types of treatment therapy and medication, this article will focus on using forms of meditation like Transcendental Meditation (TM) or yoga to help veterans suffering through PTSD. Veterans with PTSD There are many forms of treatment, the most common being a combination of therapy and medication. However as in all treatments in psychology, not all people respond well and others don’t find it effective. This causes many veterans to stop seeking treatment...
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...Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Vietnam War Veterans COMM/156 4/14/2013 Professor Marsha Parker PTSD is an anxiety disorder classified as a mental illness caused by exposure to terrifying or life threatening events. During the time of war, people get exposed to devastating experiences such as sexual abuse, witnessing murder of family members or familiar people, and other horrors of war. As a result, the victims suffer from mental disorders since the horrible experiences are forever ingrained in their mind. Bearing in mind that bad memories are rarely erased, the experiences can be compared to a horror movie that is often played in the mind and constantly frightens the victim to death. On one hand the victim celebrates survival but on the other hand the experiences haunt one through night mares or flashbacks. The victim remains constantly on edge and is easily startled. Some common feelings include intense guilt and some time numbness- all signs of posttraumatic stress disorder (TMP, 2012). A research finding by Bruce Dohrenwend and colleagues from New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia’s Letter Carrier School of Public Health, shows that traumatic experiences during war predicted the onset of PTSD in Vietnam veterans (Mikulak, 2013). We will examine the PTSD in Vietnam War veterans. Human existence has been always exposed to traumatic incidences of various kinds. For instance, attacks by lions or even the twentieth century terrorist attacks to...
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...the name for the acquired mental condition that follows a psychologically distressing event. The root cause of this disorder is a traumatic event which embeds itself firmly in the mind that the person may be bounded by the pain and agony of the event, experiencing it again and again as the mind stays connected with the past rather than the present, which makes it difficult to think of the future. PTSD has different effects that manifest itself in different ways in individuals such as veterans, post-partum women, and 9/11 victims. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that develops after a traumatic event. PTSD has also been called shell shock or battle fatigue. The exact cause of PTSD is unknown; however, it is triggered by exposure to some sort of traumatic event(s). Situations in which a person feels intense fear, helplessness, or horror are considered traumatic. PTSD has been reported in people who experienced, war, rape, sexual abuse, car accident, pregnancy, and much more. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD. People with PTSD experience symptoms of anxiety. Re-experiencing symptoms, avoidance symptoms, and hyper-arousal symptoms are three types of symptoms that are observed. Re-experiencing symptoms may cause problems in a person’s everyday routine. They can start from the person’s own thoughts and feelings. Words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event can also be a factor. Things that remind a person...
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...Veterans in the United States of America face very real problems when they come back home to the lives they had before their service. Often times they will appear emotionally detached from their loved ones, they lack social behavior, and they may even act violently or out of character in some other way. This can be interpreted common actions of someone who has just been in a warzone for a prolonged period, but the strange way they act is often defined as a symptom of some sort or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder similar to what you would see in victims of rape or violent crimes. The PTSD experienced in these violent crime victims and veterans are not the same the way each of the symptoms line up side to side is enough proof that the experiences are clearly different fundamentally. The tension is that not all veterans are afraid of what they saw and reliving it over and over because they have no choice. The problem lies in them missing the war experience rather than trying forget it. Veteran’s face serious social obstacles acclimating back into the society of the U.S. and as a culture we have become increasingly infatuated with individualisms ideals which makes it harder for them to build rapport with their community. It is necessary to explore how we as a culture are responsible for what happens to our veterans not just when they’re overseas but also when they come home. We also must examine more abstract ways of examining troubled veterans because there is an egregious amounts...
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...When most Americans hear the term PTSD the think of the young soldier who has just come home from the horrors of war. Few think of what happens to these veterans as they age and become elderly men and women. Over the past 30 years treatment options and protocols for posttraumatic stress disorder have become more formalized and reliant on evidence. Many of these established PTSD protocol driven interventions were originally developed to help Vietnam veterans while they were younger men and women. The problem is that these Vietnam veterans are now in their late sixties and early seventies and there is no current established therapy for treating aging war veterans. The purpose of conducting this study is to focus on the aging war veterans and...
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...Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Necessary Improvements the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and United States Department of Defense Must Make Abstract Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental anxiety disorder, affects 13% to 20% of armed force members returning from Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) (Hoge, et. al, 2004), in addition to a large population of Vietnam Veterans. Within the past 32 years, awareness of this disorder has escalated and the realism of the severity of this disorder has been noticed. Efforts to screen and treat PTSD in military veterans have been established by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Screening is conducted once military personnel return from deployment and treatments including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Exposure Therapy, and medications are used to relieve the symptoms of PTSD. These screening and treatment methods are evaluated and s suggestion for improvement is made. Necessary Improvements the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and the United States Department of Defense Must Make With Regards to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder In current political debate, the United States is arguing where budget cuts should be made and how the U.S. should go about spending money. The U.S. military is consistently brought up in these considerations. In such considerations, topics such as downsizing the military and the...
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...ENGINEER, POST-IRAQ Transition can mean the big picture of how a warrior has to try to adjust back into society, but the short term is very critical, from when a warrior leaves the battlefield to when they hit the streets at home. If there’s one thing I learned from my experiences, it was that there was no transition at all. –VIETNAM VETERAN Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has become the major medical issue with our soldiers returning from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. For many soldiers, it is a badge of honor to have served but for most, it is a start to an endless battle of finding the courage to continue to serve or be labeled an unfit soldier for the military and useless to their family. PTSD affects not only the soldier’s way of life but the core of who the soldier is. For this reason, the government should take special care informing society what is PTSD, who gets PTSD and what types of treatments are available to them. Government must ensure there are programs in place to assist soldiers and family members in dealing with PTSD issues. The Department of Defense and Veterans Administration to encourage service members and veterans to seek help early, before problems...
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... and Vietnam, the unwanted war, all of these wars were terrible, however many innovations were invented to combat the terrible violence. Because...
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...I lined up an interview with a local Vietnam combat veteran with PTSD to discuss how being a part of a support group has improved his life, and how different life is in our community for an individual with PTSD, even while receiving treatment. However, an unforeseen family-related situation came up at the last minute, and he ended up having to cancel our meeting. To Parham 5 supplement, I watched an interview conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs with a veteran facing PTSD. The interview was with Alan, a combat veteran who served in the Navy Reserve and the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War era. Speaking about his return to the U.S. after serving, Alan explained, “I didn’t know what to expect when I got back. I had heard different things, different stories, it was just okay. You were there, you did your job, and it was over…go to work. And that’s kind of the attitude my whole family had.” Alan, upon his return, felt like he needed to talk about what he had and was experiencing related to the war. “I was married before I went to Vietnam. When I got back, she didn’t, they didn’t, my whole family didn’t ask. They didn’t want to know. I needed to talk about things, and they didn’t want to listen.” As it did on many veterans, the lack of support took a toll on Alan’s everyday life. He began to drink heavily, stopped going to work...
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...Post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, is a mental illness that affects millions of Americans. PTSD is a disorder that develops when someone experiences a dangerous or scary even occurs. These events can be something like war, assault, or disaster. These leave metal scars in the person’s mind that can be triggered and can cause flashbacks, nightmares, and anxiety. One of the most common causes of PTSD is war. This is because when you are in the military you are exposed to horrible and life-threatening experiences. 15 out of every 100 Vietnam Veterans will experience PTSD and 12 out of every 100 Gulf War Veterans will experience PTSD. This means that around 1,700,000 Vietnam veterans have experienced “clinically serious stress...
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...POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER IN WAR VETERANS SC-PNG-0000009299 Alwin Aanand Thomson American Degree Program SEGi College Penang 1.0 INTRODUCTION Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity, overwhelming the individual's ability to cope. As an effect of psychological trauma, PTSD is less frequent and more enduring than the more commonly seen acute stress response. Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the original trauma(s) through flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased arousal—such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hyper vigilance. Formal diagnostic criteria in DSM-IV-TR require that the symptoms last more than one month and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (American Psychological Association). 2.0 DIAGNOSIS Criteria The diagnostic criteria for PTSD, stipulated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (Text Revision) (DSM-IV-TR), may be summarized as: A: Exposure to a traumatic event This must have involved both (a)...
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