Discovering Helpful Therapies For Ptsd

Submitted By micarahimian
Words: 1982
Pages: 8

Micaela Rahimian
Professor Lani Rush
Writing 121 036
May 12, 2013
Discovering Helpful Therapies for PTSD I find many different disorders and diseases to be really interesting, so deciding on a topic to write about, meant narrowing down the disorders and diseases that I would like to learn more about. After thinking about it for a little bit, PTSD was a clear choice. PTSD is a very common disorder that people seem to just overlook. I’m interested in learning about the success rates in therapies, as well as how they work for different PTSD patients. Knowing this will help people with PTSD and their families, also known as the stakeholders, deal with their problems. Without help, PTSD patients will have to cope all on their own. Although I don’t know much about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, it is pretty close to my heart.
I am the youngest of four children, and my siblings and I are all pretty close to each other. Both of my older brothers are in the U.S Army. When my oldest brother returned from sixteen months in Iraq, we noticed that something was definitely wrong with him. After visiting a psychologist, we learned that he had been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was hard for my family to watch him go through that, but it didn’t seem to last as long as we thought it would. He was twenty seven when he found out he had it, so I questioned if his quick recovery was because of his age. For the past four years, I have been working at a camp during the summers, where I get to hang out with a bunch of kids. Two summers ago, I met a little girl named Emma, who I had grown pretty close to over the week. Emma was more reserved than the other girls, and she rarely showed an emotion other than startled. I later found out that Emma was a victim of physical and sexual abuse. Because of the hurt that her father had caused her, Emma suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Based on these two different stories, I know that PTSD can be developed from many different traumas. Knowing that, I started to wonder if age plays a part in developing, treating, and overcoming Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I found a reliable scholarly journal titled, “Children and Disaster: Age, Gender, and Parental Effects on PTSD Symptoms” within the book, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. It was about the role that age plays in PTSD patients. In November of 2001, Bonnie L. Green writes in the journal that kids experiencing the same trauma, symptoms are more evident in children a little bit older than in really young children. Green also points out that there are higher symptom levels seen in girls, rather than boys. Reading this really made me wonder if girls have higher symptoms in most cases, or just this one. After looking over this article, I asked myself, if gender plays a key role in the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to an interactive video titled, “PTSD Gender Differences” on prezi.com, the majority of men experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder because of the military, while the majority of women experience PTSD because of sexual abuse. On November 8th, 2012, Emily Vasseur shows us that this may be more common than we think, as studies show that 54% of sexual abuse is not reported. Vasseur does a good job of evaluating every side and every fact about the subject. Also, with studies involving veterans, they concluded that men are less likely to admit or report signs and symptoms of PTSD due to war related experiences. Women want to feel safe, while men feel the need to put on a brave face in order to seem tougher. Throughout this video, I learned that gender plays a very big role in how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder affects a person. Although gender plays a role, many other variables play a huge role in the symptoms and reactions from PTSD. Since we know that gender plays a role, I want to know if more children and diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder than adults.