Post Traumatic Stress Disorder My topic is about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder other wise known as PTSD. PTSD is a type of anxiety disorder. It can occur after you've seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death. (PubMEd, 2011) I chose this topic because I have heard so many things about troops coming home with PTSD and just wanted to know what causes it, and how it effects peoples everyday life’s. It just really bothers me hearing about something so extraordinary and not knowing anything about it. I hope to learn everything that there is to learn about PTSD I hope to know how it affects the everyday life. How easy or how complex it is to obtain this anxiety disorder is it only related to our war hero’s, or is the ratio leaning more towards everyday occurrences instead of just people in the military. This could be leaning more towards the military end, because they deal with more life or death situations compared to people just running their daily regiment at home, work or going out to places.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can produce emotional responses caused by the trauma endured during combat operations. It does not have to emerge immediately, but can actually happen weeks, months, or even years after the traumatic event. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was often referred to as “combat fatigue” or “shell shock”(“Trauma of Iraq War”) until 1980 when it was given the name post-traumatic stress disorder. According to William Welch of USA Today, PTSD is produced from a traumatic event that provoked intense fear, helplessness, or horror. The events are sometimes re-experienced through intrusive memories, nightmares, hallucinations, or flashbacks. Symptoms of PTSD include troubled sleep, irritability, anger, poor concentration, hyper vigilance, and exaggerated responses. Emotions felt by victims of PTSD include depression, detachment or estrangement, guilt, intense anxiety, panic, and other negative emotions (“Trauma of Iraq War”).

Persons with PTSD hold in a lot of anger. It is a free-floating anger with no real target and very subtle causes. It simmers below the surface and can jump out at any time, and if this happens they will more than likely be mad at the wrong person. Normal people get mad, then angry, then even angrier, and then they will progress to a state of rage that is not good for anyone around them. A person with PTSD can go from mad to rage in seconds, especially if he/she is an ex-soldier. Soldiers are taught to react. They are not taught to think, deliberate, or discuss. They are taught to react, because during war, the distance between life and death is measured in milliseconds, so when they get mad it immediately goes to rage and they will react. (“American Family Physician”)

Anger Management classes are usually prescribed for people who suffer from PTSD. Most of the time the sufferer still never arrives at the cause of this anger, because the original cause can no longer be remembered, making them even angrier. If they can’t find what caused them to get angry most people try to learn on how he/she can control her reactions to when he/she gets angry. (“Behavioral Sciences Librarian”)

Common to all people with PTSD are flashbacks. The longer the trauma lasted or the more powerful the trauma, the more intense the flashbacks. The most common flashbacks for a veteran are auditory flashbacks. For example they can hear engines of planes randomly and if they see a plane, or helicopter they can smell the type of fuel used for their planes or helicopters they used in war. Hallucinations are very common as well some soldiers wont just hear things from their war days. They could also see things like the flash of guns and see people differently like a normal person in a uniform he can see them as an enemy. Some people can live with their flashbacks and hallucinations but those who cant turn to alcohol or drugs and that is never good for any human being because they are