Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
“Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an emotional illness that was first diagnosed in solders and war veterans caused by devastating life events.” (Roxanne Dryden-Edwards) This disorder can cause many things such as discomfort and confusion for the person with the disorder and the people surrounding them. Some of the effects involve caring less about their own well being. The major treatments for this disorder are therapy and medications; talking about it is the best thing to help. I will be talking about the symptoms, effects, and treatments to posttraumatic stress disorder in this essay and how they relate to The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich.
“The symptoms include re-experiencing the trauma, avoidance, and hyperarousal.” (Roxanne Dryden-Edwards) Re-experiencing the trauma can become very detrimental to the person that experiences the trauma as well as the people that surround them. People try to avoid anything and everything that may remind them about the event that traumatized them so that they won’t have to re-live that experience. Anything that is a normal routine before the trauma is not longer safe to do in that persons mind which is called hyperarousal. The character, Henry, shows the perfect example of the symptoms as Louise Erdrich articulates in his story, The Red Convertible, “Henry had not even looked at the car since he had gotten home” (Erdrich 109). The symptoms to this disorder can be so overwhelming to the people who have this, everyone around them are affected by it just as much.
Individuals who have this illness are more likely to struggle with relationships, everyday life, and their mental health as effects to PTSD. Relationships are very difficult to open up when you have been through a terrifying incident most because the person feels that no one else would really understand what they are going through. Everyday life is complicated for the reason that some daily task may set them off or upset them. People who have this illness are less likely to get mental help to cope with the situations than people with other emotional problems. As stated by Lyman, in The Red Convertible,”Henry was very different, and I’ll say this: the change was no good.” (Erdrich 107).
There are a plethora of medications and therapies are a plethora of therapies and medications as treatments to help deal with the illness. For most of the people that inhabit this illness it is tough to sleep, for these troubles it helps to talk about it and to get medication to sleep because when you don’t sleep your mind can’t process everything from the day before and it makes things worse. Medication can also help with mood swings and depression. Therapy makes things easier for the patient and everyone around them because it can help to discuss what they are going through. It helped Henry to go and spend time with his brother, as Louise Erdrich says in The Red Convertible, “Ha! Ha! Take good care of it” (Erdrich 113).
In The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich, it explains how Henry acted after returning home from the war. I believe that he had Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is an illness discovered in soldiers and veterans at first. He portrays all of the symptoms and effects to this illness, but the only help that he really got was when he spent time with his brother.
Works Cited
Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. 10 November 2010. 18 Feburary 2012 <http://www.medicinenet.com/posttraumatic_stress_disorder/article.htm>.
Erdrich, Louise." The Red Convertible." Love Medicine. Print. New York: Perennial, 1993. 181-193.