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:
I hope you this information helps!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.