Hayley President
Mrs. Kyger
Honors English I
23 March 2012
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Many people do not know this but 20 percent of soldiers who have been deployed in the past 6 years have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which are over 300,000 soldiers. But do they also know that 17 percent of combat troops are women; 71 percent of female military personnel develop PTSD due to sexual assault within the ranks. One of the primary problems in the U.S. Army is dealing with is soldiers coming home and suffering with PTSD.
Have the long nights ever been invaded by a nightmare or a scary dream that’s always reoccurring? Or has it been hard trying to avoid a certain place due to the seeing or involvement in a traumatic event? This is part of the basics for having PTSD. PTSD is a mental health care issue, which happens to anyone for every reason. People who suffer PTSD go through lot weird or extreme changes. They suffer with certain symptoms that they have no clue what they are. The PTSD symptoms include Intrusive symptoms, Avoidance symptoms, and Increased Arousal symptoms. Intrusive symptoms are typically having dreams of the traumatic event over and over again. These dreams can be here one day and not come back around for days, weeks, or even months. The extreme parts are that a lot of people act out while they are asleep. They can thrash around, slap, hit, and do many other things that could harm the people they are sleeping with or around. Some wives of soldiers have reportedly woken up, due to the fact that their husbands have thought they were back in Iraq fighting, and are attacking their wives. Some have even been woken to fight their partner’s hands tightly around their neck. Due to the dreams it may make it hard for solders to fall asleep or stay asleep. This can cause their spouses to have PTSD as well. But during the day, soldiers are haunted by memories of being in war. But soldiers are not the only ones who suffer with this. Some drivers, who have been in a fatal car accident, replay the accident over and over again, trying to figure out things that could have been done differently to avoid the whole accident. Rescue workers, also, get plagued with the images of dead bodies that, without warning, enter their mind. See now, soldiers have a difficult time with this because they can never fully get rid of the images, that have burrowed themselves into their mind. Often times they get an overwhelming feeling of anger, guilty, and/or fear. The emotions get brought out by the actual memories and these emotions include fear, guilt, disgust, and/or anger. The memories are brought on by trigger. These triggers can be anything. But most times it has to be something to due with the traumatic event. Triggers include noise, smell, words, and even the anniversary of the traumatic event. The walking memories and triggered emotions can cause a person so much pain that they get disassociates and can have flashbacks. People who do not lose their consciousness, or touch with reality, still believe that the traumatic event is still happening. But then they also get these very vivid, wild, reality-like flashbacks that can be very realistic. The flashbacks can last for hours on end or they can come and go rapidly for as few as a couple minutes. Avoiding something seems like the way to go sometimes but it is not always the best way. If someone is avoiding things that are everyday things or certain places, they may have a case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. These symptoms are called Avoidance symptoms. Avoidance is avoiding anything that triggers memories of the event/trauma; this includes things that are associated with the trauma and/or certain feelings. Thinking about what has happened to a person can be extremely painful and while Intrusive symptoms can be quite depressing, Avoidance is a simple thing to do to help try and forget the traumatic event. Someone, who shows Avoidance symptoms, refuse to talk