More information on PTSD.

/ Lori

What is PTSD??

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an emotional illness that develops as a result of a terribly frightening, life-threatening, or otherwise highly unsafe experience. PTSD sufferers re-experience the traumatic event or events in some way, tend to avoid places, people, or other things that remind them of the event (avoidance), and are exquisitely sensitive to normal life experiences (hyperarousal). Although this condition has likely existed since human beings have endured trauma, PTSD has only been recognized as a formal diagnosis since 1980. However, it was called by different names as early as the American Civil War, when combat veterans were referred to as suffering from “soldier’s heart.” In World War I, symptoms that were generally consistent with PTSD were referred to as “combat fatigue.” Soldiers who developed such symptoms in World War II were said to be suffering from “gross stress reaction,” and many who fought in Vietnam who had symptoms of what is now called PTSD were assessed as having “post-Vietnam syndrome.” PTSD has also been called “battle fatigue” and “shell shock.” Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) usually results from prolonged exposure to a traumatic event or series thereof and is characterized by long-lasting problems with many aspects of emotional and social functioning.

Approximately 7%-8% of people in the United States will likely develop PTSD in their lifetime, with the lifetime occurrence (prevalence) in combat veterans and rape victims ranging from 10% to as high as 30%. Somewhat higher rates of this disorder have been found to occur in African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans compared to Caucasians in the United States. Some of that difference is thought to be due to higher rates of dissociation soon before and after the traumatic event (peritraumatic); a tendency for individuals from minority ethnic groups to blame themselves, have less social support, and an increased perception of racism for those ethnic groups; as well as differences between how ethnic groups may express distress. Other important facts about PTSD include the estimate of 5 million people who suffer from PTSD at any one time in the United States and the fact that women are twice as likely to develop PTSD as men

Almost half of individuals who use outpatient mental-health services have been found to suffer from PTSD. As evidenced by the occurrence of stress in many individuals in the United States in the days following the 2001 terrorist attacks, not being physically present at a traumatic event does not guarantee that one cannot suffer from traumatic stress that can lead to the development of PTSD

PTSD statistics in children and teens reveal that up to more than 40% have endured at least one traumatic event, resulting in the development of PTSD in up to 15% of girls and 6% of boys. On average, 3%-6% of high school students in the United States and as many as 30%-60% of children who have survived specific disasters have PTSD. Up to 100% of children who have seen a parent killed or endured sexual assault or abuse tend to develop PTSD, and more than one-third of youths who are exposed to community violence will suffer from the disorder.

AUTHORS NOTE:

I suffer from PTSD, I was in a POW type camp in Iran for 6 weeks. I went to Iran in 1998 with my Iranian husband and once there he refused to let me come home to the USA. The day after 9-11, anyone with TIES to Americans; that is friends or family were put into these camps, and were beat and raped. After I escaped I was flown to the American embassy in Dubai, UAE, since there is no American embassy in Iran. I walked off the plane into Detroit metro airport weighing 70 pounds and missing most of my teeth and had many closed head injuries. I have published a book and have a website dedicated to cause of womens rights in these countries…the reasoning behind this is included in my online version of my book at:

http://www.loris-song.com/

I hope you this information helps!

22 thoughts on “More information on PTSD.”

  1. This is a person with a serious mental illness,the only reason I allowed it at first was freedom of speech. Now she is trying to make my blog a joke. please don’t reply to this post this person has been blocked from all further post. Thank you.

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  2. This is a person with a serious mental illness,the only reason I allowed it at first was freedom of speech. Now she is trying to make my blog a joke. please don’t reply to this post this person has been blocked from all further post. Thank you.

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  3. Cynthia,
    You hit the nail on the head. Only someone who is either so traumatized that in their mind they think the right thing to do is “MAN UP” and get over it. OR they are jealous over someone around them getting disability while they have to actually WORK in life….usually due to laziness. I think resentment is born out of a mind that doesn’t have much to think about anyway. This person obviously gets pleasure out of trying to make others feel bad, but she has come to the wrong place. You have every right to claim the title of PTSD. Your trauma was horrible. I truly think this woman has severe problems, I mean look at her avitar of “911”. She isn’t right in the head.
    As I said resentment is born out of laziness when your mind has nothing to do, and is jealous of people trying to take control of their lives and heal. She is NOWHERE near that. Thank you for choosing the right words to say Cynthia, I knew if I couldn’t you would. Take care, God Bless and luv ya.

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  4. Jan/911 obviously you didn’t read my in depth post on PTSD let me reiterate

    Although this condition has likely existed since human beings have endured trauma, PTSD has only been recognized as a formal diagnosis since 1980. However, it was called by different names as early as the American Civil War, when combat veterans were referred to as suffering from “soldier’s heart.” In World War I, symptoms that were generally consistent with PTSD were referred to as “combat fatigue.” Soldiers who developed such symptoms in World War II were said to be suffering from “gross stress reaction,” and many who fought in Vietnam who had symptoms of what is now called PTSD were assessed as having “post-Vietnam syndrome.” PTSD has also been called “battle fatigue” and “shell shock.” Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) usually results from prolonged exposure to a traumatic event or series thereof and is characterized by long-lasting problems with many aspects of emotional and social functioning.
    SO YOU SEE IT HAS BEEN AROUND FOR A LONNNNNNGGGGG TIME.
    Cynthia and Trenton aren’t the only ones who have it, I HAVE IT AS well if you know about my book then you would know why, I was held captive in a torture camp in IRAN during 911. Cynthia has a PTSD that not only meets the criteria but flies off the chart. So keep your mouth shut when you don’t know facts, like I said PTSD has been around forever!
    Cynthia why do we let this person get to us, you said yourself today that I don’t need stress in my life, and how do I really know this isn’t my sister, or one of her friends.
    I would rather just get rid of her/him/it. Need a majority vote, Cynthia, Trenton, I say ay.

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    • This should be about PTSD and how to handle the issues that come with it. The nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety. The pain from the trauma is hard to deal with. I was five years old when I was beaten and with growing bones it has caused major health issues. I also have Mitochondrial Myopathy which is a muscle/ skeleton disease so my pain is very bad. I went for treatment and I had good health insurance. I was treated by a psychologist and psychiatrist and it was paid by them and I paid the copay. I had non epiletic seizures from the trauma and I because I still have them I can’t drive. The health issues that come from this are terrible indeed. We pay for prisoners in jail and yet we are talking about a little help from our government for those of us who have suffered deeply. Why? I have seen PTSD from war heroes. They gave so much so I could sleep at night and not worry about being attacked. God bless them and the taxes I pay can go right to them. I am no longer commenting on anything except how we can help PTSD victims become survivors and learn to thrive in this world.

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      • Cynthia and Phoenix,
        There is no talking to this person anymore you can’t explain anything to her. She clearly has mental health issues way beyond our scope to help. She is just trying to make us miserable because she is miserable in her own life…you know misery loves company. After today I’m going to block and delete her. She is commenting to the point that she makes no sense whatsoever. I appreciate you guys giving your opinions, but I don’t want my blog to become one big fight between people. Thanks guys. Lori

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      • Cynthia, I am going thru and trying to weed out the conversation from that 911 person, and trash them, people have told me that just allows her to control my blog by using it as her own personal battlefield.

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  5. To our poster “911” who is hellbent on stopping the cash payments for PTSD. Let me give you a little more information on UNTREATED PTSD

    In 2010, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes labeled Fort Lewis-McChord, a joint Army and Air Force base in Washington state, “the most troubled base in the military” due to its inability to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or address mental health problems. Fort Lewis-McChord has one of the highest suicide rates of army bases across the country, and last year had the highest number of total suicides with 16. It was where Sergeant Robert Bales was stationed right before he was shipped to Afghanistan and massacred 16 Afghan civilians–including nine children–last March. And it was where the soldiers who formed a “kill team” that murdered civilians in Afghanistan in 2010 had previously been stationed.

    The murders of Afghan civilians and high rates of suicide among the soldiers stationed there are believed to stem from the failure of Lewis-McChord’s doctors to adequately treat mental health problems. In the past five years, approximately 300 soldiers saw their PTSD diagnoses reversed by doctors at the base. The Army is currently investigating whether doctors at Lewis-McChord reversed the diagnoses in order to save money.
    You can read the remainder of this at : http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13901/ptsd_counselors_forced_to_attend_anti-union_meetings_on_troubled_army_base/

    SUICIDE, MASS KILLINGS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE, is this what we should do with PTSD, just don’t treat it since you think it’s a “ghost” diagnosis, only used to obtain money. I thought it over and continued to allow you to post, only because you repeat your “crap” regularly, and as we all know here PTSD is real. If we allow people with severe PTSD to obtain jobs they might suffer seizures, or worse flashbacks where they think they are at war again and try to kill those around them. There are more govt. funds (PIG FUNDING) that should be eliminated such as studies on animals still for how cancer affects the body….WE GOT A PRETTY GOOD IDEA NOW! Lazy govt employees apply for these stupid grants so they don’t have to do REAL WORK. There are so many I can’t even begin to mention.
    This is just a sample of some of their spending:

    #1 The U.S. government is spending $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

    #2 The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars helping students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.

    #3 If you can believe it, the U.S. government has spent $175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.

    #4 The U.S. government spent $200,000 on “a tattoo removal program” in Mission Hills, California.

    #5 The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft. Wouldn’t we all love to have a “research job” like that?

    #6 The Department of Health and Human Services plans to spend $500 million on a program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.

    #7 Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it.

    #8 The federal government once spent 30 million dollars on a program that was designed to help Pakistani farmers produce more mangos.

    #9 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

    #10 According to USA Today, 13 different government agencies “fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs — and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program.”
    These ARE THE PROGRAMS you should get involved with to QUIT SPENDING, not our war vets etal. I will not continue trying to make you see your ignorance. Your facts are propaganda either you’ve made up on the spot or found some link where you can intrepet things as facts. You are a pathetic man/woman/it that desires attention, and you can’t get it with intellectual conversation so you make posts that piss people off, because you know you will get a response that way.
    I recognize your kind. Now tell me, which govt. funded program did you get denied money for? Because your post reek of resentment towards those that did get funding for their illness.
    Good-bye, I choose to ignore your comments from now on. I will eventually immediately archive your comments (which isn’t limiting freedom of speech, it’s just weeding out the garbage that people don’t find interesting). Good Luck in life and when you get this chip off your shoulder and see the REALITY in the world then come back, we’d love to talk then. Lori

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  6. Trenton or anyone else don’t keep feeding this ignorant individual. If you’d like I won’t approve anymore comments from her/him/it. There is no teaching an entity hell bent on destroying the feelings of other people. She has an ax to grind, he/she/it probably got denied disability when it was trying to apply which it probably was scamming someone with the application, I’m guessing, it probably has some problem with authority as well. Either way you can’t change a mind that has no open paths. Don’t continue to satisfy it with replying to it,
    Thanks Lori
    No more approvals on conversation from 911. Now it will probably try to come back as someone else. People like this are so ignorant that they get caught up thinking other people think like them. It’s a lost cause. Good-bye 911 we will pray for your redemption. It’s probably my sister Teresa, she is a sick individual.

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    • Cynthia you have a very valid point. And we don’t always know we have PTSD or need help for it. It took me nearly 3 years after I got out of the Corps to believe I actually did have PTSD and could see some of it… but long before I even got out of the Corps, I had loved ones and friends telling me I had PTSD and I need to do as much as I can to get help in any way I can the first was my then Wife, now ex wife. But having said that, largely I feel very much like you described. Good days, and bad days. Good moments and bad moments. And i start to blur the line between what it PTSD and what is me. THAT becomes very difficult to handle, in my life at least – so I am sure in other’s lives as well.

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  7. Trenton,
    I will add you to my prayer list and mean that with all respect. My father a veteran of WWII Battle of the Bulge suffered from PTSD. He came home (I was born in 55) and reenlisted in the Air Force. He served until 1949 and was Lieutenant they lost his bags and medals and never answered his calls to replace them. He would have terrible nightmares and flashbacks about about being surrounded in the castle in Belgium by the Germans while the men died day every day. He said we threw the bodies out the windows and put dog tags in our bags to keep to give to families. Wondering when ours would added next. He drank to forget them. They didn’t have a name for it or didn’t want to they put all PTSD soldiers in the VA Hospital in Detroit. They have since torn them down. Vietnam yes I know many it was terrible the PTSD happened while they stood in kitchens and the flashbacks we didn’t know how to handle them and neither did the VA, they just handed them bottles of pills. I know 2 Iraq Vets with PTSD they can’t work and drink and the flashback are the same as the other wars. You suffer and you should not, you already did to keep us safe at night. I thank you for that and now I would like to try to give a few things to perhaps aid you when you suffer.

    1) The flashbacks ARE REAL when you have one ride threw it and when you come to real time write down everything you remember.
    2) Get a relaxation tape … not a music tape but a relaxation tape and listen to it every day

    I know Men don’t write things down but a journal has been a blessing to me, I have over 12 of them and soon I will have to burn them because you see although my PTSD is not from Combat I do suffer::

    I was five years old, taken by a stranger dragged down a flight of stairs to the basement, he beat me and did terrible things. Then he tried to bury me alive.I layed in that dirt with a slab of cement over my body it and thought nothing. I think I tried to pray and I cried as he walked over it and it moved and broke my jaw. He changed his mind removed it and I was terrifed but he took me back up the stairs and threw me at some woman and spoke in Polish as she cleaned me up in the bathroom, I was at a club with my Grandmother. When I got home my family ignored it. I repressed it for 40 years. It took 10 years of therapy to get threw it but I am better, NOT OVER IT but I am better. So never let anyone tell you to get over it, never let anyone tell you to forget and never forget how grateful we are that you served. I hope in some way this helps. We can’t be silent about PTSD any longer. God bless Cynthia

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    • Cynthia, Thank you very much I appreciate that! And I am so terribly sorry to hear this. It is difficult for me to understand and articulate how it must feel to be someone who has been a victim of another extremely depraving and abusive behavior. I am dearly sorry.

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  8. I know what your saying Jan but when someone says something about treating PTSD with the tax payers money, that really irks me. These soldiers put their life up for their country so if they get hurt in some way then WE SHOULD PAY FOR IT, it’s a small price for maintaining our freedom. My disability isn’t due to PTSD it’s due to a combination of problems I suffered in Iran. Have you read my book yet. http://www.loris-song.com

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  9. Pingback: Great article about PTSD – A great ignorant comment about how to CURE PTSD. Do read. « "Warfighter"

  10. Thank you for your input on this subject, it is nice to see some one who is personally qualified to speak about it do so in such a neutral and factual basis, there is a lot of very useful information from a study standpoint here. I am so deeply sorry for the events in your life that have brought you here.

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  13. I have a cure for PTSD for soldiers. First and foremost, continue to treat those claiming PTSD and continue to prescribe all those medications for them at tax-payers expense if that helps them out. But, the cure for PTSD is to completely eliminate any and all funding in cash through monthly checks to these soldiers claiming such a disorder, and that will soon dry up the fictitious and ludicrous waste of our tax-payers dollars. Amazing that PTSD never existed before the Gulf war when soldiers started to receive monthly cash payments for a claim, how did all our soldiers in history ever function without a monthly check based upon their PTSD-claim? Eliminate the money and we’ll eliminate the signs and symptoms. Easy-peasy.

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    • I am allowing this post just so people can see that there are STILL people as IGNORANT as you existing in society today. All those soldiers of PAST WARS DID HAVE PTSD, the only difference was we didn’t know exactly what it was or how to treat it, so we kept allowing those soldiers commit suicide and get addicted to drugs, or worst case scenario kill other people during a flashback. Now that we’ve had research done on it, we can put a name on it and learn how to treat it so the soldiers won’t feel like their abandoned, and maybe prevent all those other behaviors which usually follow suit with PTSD.
      And PTSD isn’t just limited to soldiers it exists in rape victims, childhood abuse victims and just about any heinous crime a person witnessed or had done to them.
      After all we didn’t know how to treat certain cancers until we researched it and did trial and errors, so how different is that from PTSD.
      You need to get a life and educate yourself before you start bitching about monthly checks. Sounds to me like you applied for welfare and was turned down that is why you have a bad taste in your mouth towards anyone that recieves money from the govt. I’ve known a lot of people like you and sadly they just continue to be idiots and remain ignorant to subjects like this their entire life, thus just remaining as “Aquaintances” and NOT FRIENDS!

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      • I bet it’s my sister who can’t work cuz she’s lazy, and thinks my PTSD is all shit. Don’t take people like this seriously, can’t you feel the desperation to destroy others because they can’t get what they want from the govt. Probably was denied food stamps or something.

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