What Is Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

[Saint_Michael 3]

On Monday May 5th I will be giving one of the biggest, and hardest speeches of my life, and I thought I would give everyone a better that soldiers are not the cruel and EVIL people that some of these idiots out there talk about. Also since I am giving my story for the first time, I except a little respect on this topic. I don't care where you live or what your views are but attack me personally and expect to be severally punished for this is about inform people not so people can be judgmental.

 

 

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is a soldier?s worse nightmare. We have to live with the images of death, the sounds of gunfire and always being constantly aware of those around us.

 

Throughout my presentation, I will be referring to Post-traumatic Stress as PTSD. I will give you my story about how and why I have PTSD, and once I finish my story everyone here today will have an idea what we soldiers go through on an everyday basis as I present to everyone with this time line perspective. Which includes defining what PTSD is, types of PTSD, and some of the symptoms of PTSD, and once you understand what PTSD is, I will give a historical evolution on PTSD that covers three eras of PTSD: Pre-Vietnam, Vietnam and Post Vietnam, and then I will finally give my concluding statement for my presentation today.

 

My Story

 

As many of you know, I am a veteran of the Iraq War. I went into the war zone in November of 2003 until October of 2004, and what I came back with was a bad back and many bad memories. I will not be giving a speech so everyone can feel sorry me. I am giving this presentation to give you an idea of what happens to a human mind once they enter a war zone. In a war zone, the main priority is survival, followed by living with the fact you might have to kill another human being. During specific points in my time in Iraq my PTSD would begin to formulate and get ready to explode when it was ready to.

 

These hands have seen death, but not in the way that I pulled the trigger of my weapon and killed someone, but in the way that I was asked to help deliver bodies of dead soldiers to the morgue so they could go home to their families. I did this duty twice, and that is all it took to lead me into a dark path of reality that included a lot of pain, and very serious thoughts of suicide. The first time I did this detail I was completely fine, even knowing the fact I was carrying a dead body in my hands. The second time I did this duty it became the longest 5 minute ride in my life as I had to sit in the back of the vehicle with the bodies of people who were killed earlier that day from an ambush. To say the least that was when I suffered one of my biggest emotional breakdowns ever, and it took me nearly an hour to calm myself down and try my best to not think about it.

 

I talked to a Chaplin just to get it off my chest; it helped somewhat, but regardless of talking to him, it led me to an even darker path that I thought I would never go to. I was alone in my sleeping quarters, and knowing quite well what I was thinking about at the time, I took an empty M16A2 rifle and I put the barrel in my mouth. Then I waited a few seconds before I pulled the trigger, and when I heard and felt that click course through my body; I shocked myself back into reality, promising myself never to do that again.

 

There were many other events such as losing a roommate, nearly losing our Chaplin, and having the burden that an Iraqi that was working with us was killed because of his association with us. After getting out of Iraq and soon out of the Army, I thought I could be somewhat normal again, but I was wrong as my PTSD slowly developed during that time when I had my back problems, and then my PTSD kicked in during 2006. I have been able to keep control of my PTSD these last two years, especially in public. Sometimes my PTSD likes to appear when I am in public, and you wouldn?t even know something is wrong with me because of how I completely shut out the world and let this occurrence run its course.

 

My family does not even know that I go through this, but I would guess they have some idea, although, they don?t say anything about it if they do. Although the events were tragic enough to give me PTSD, it is small compared to soldiers who patrol the streets every day trying to keep the peace and trying to stay alive. Now that you know my story, you now realize there is a much bigger casualty rate than just the dead and wounded.

 

PTSD BACKGROUND

 

With my story in mind, the information that I will be talking about will give you a better understanding as to why we suffer the way we do when we come home from combat. PTSD is defined as an anxiety disorder that develops in reaction to physical injury or severe mental or emotional distress, such as military combat, violent assault, natural disaster, or other life-threatening events.

 

 

There are three types of PTSD that a person could develop based on the severity of the event: Acute, Chronic, Delayed-Onset PTSD.

 

Acute PTSD is usually the shortest of the three types of PTSD, as acute PTSD usually lasts up to three months and the symptoms are either completely gone, or the PTSD goes into recession.

 

Chronic PTSD is one of the most common forms of PTSD for a soldier depending on what their job was while serving a tour in a combat zone. It is worth mentioning that this is the longest of the three types because chronic PTSD can usually last for years with no end in sight, regardless of the treatment that a solider might get.

 

The last type of PTSD is called Delayed-Onset PTSD, which basically means that symptoms of PTSD do not appear in a person until after a certain period of time, usually six months after the traumatic event.

 

Although I don't fall under one category of these three types of PTSD, you could say I am somewhere in the middle of acute, and chronic with a small dose of Delayed-Onset

Symptoms. Because of how different the three types of PTSD are, the symptoms can be numerous or maybe a person can get by with just a couple. But because of how many symptoms there are they are placed into three groups: intrusive, avoidant, and hyperarousal.

 

Intrusive symptoms are emotions and feelings that come unexpected or force themselves on to a person. This includes fear, terror, despair, anxiety.

 

Avoidant symptoms are when a person is trying to avoid anything related to that traumatic event, such as avoiding feelings, thoughts, and emotions. In some extreme cases a person could emotionally shut down and depending how long it takes them to break this type of symptom all emotional feeling will cease to exist.

 

Hyperarousal symptoms can be easily described as heighten sense of aware of one?s surrounding to the point they develop symptoms such as anxiety attacks, insomnia and even paranoia.

 

War Origins

 

With that in mind I will now talk about the war Origins of PTSD which covers about 2000+ years of history, but I will sum it up very shortly due to lack of time it will take to cover every single war in that time period.

 

Historical View

 

In the research I was conducting for another assignment related to PTSD, I came through some interesting facts about PTSD. The first of which was PTSD was not called PTSD until 1980, but it had various other names or a description of how soldiers returning from war have changed. It is worth mentioning that PTSD has ancient origins that go as far back as the Mythical Trojan War and the American Civil War.

 

 

World War I

 

World War I saw many changes on how wars would be fought, with the introduction of tanks, airplanes and bio warfare. PTSD would begin the process here as it was slowly beginning to develop into the disorder that it is today. The first name that PTSD took was called shell shock and was coined by C.S. Myers in 1915, this was due to the exposure of soldiers being exposed to shells exploding near them. The symptoms of shell shock that soldiers suffered consisted of insomnia, anxiety, trembling, sweating and uncontrolled emotions.

 

As for treatment, you could say they were very barbaric. Because of how unknown shell shock was and that many military leaders saw shell shock as a form of cowardice, many soldiers were executed, some were given shock therapy, physical re-education, and even spending time in military prison.

 

However, one Army Major had a humane treatment that was very affective. Arthur Hurst used occupational therapy to help soldiers "cure" their shell shock. He made them do activities such as farming, writing a magazine, and in some cases reenact battles, and through all of these many soldiers were becoming cured of this shell shock. So the origins of Humane treatments of PTSD would begin with Arthur Hurst.

 

 

Vietnam

 

Let us jump now to about 50 years, when PTSD would begin its true origins, in which many soldiers were coming home psychology destroyed from fighting in Vietnam and developing extreme forms of the symptoms I described earlier. With the help of many doctors such as Doctors Jay Lifton, John Talbott, and Chaim Shatan, Vietnam vets would talk in group therapy sessions about the emotions they were experiencing, due to images and sounds that reminded them that they were back in Vietnam. These three doctors were able to compile enough research to introduce PTSD in 1980, in the 3rd Ed. of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

 

As for the treatments it was very trial and error, as there were not many effective ways that I could find that helped soldiers get rid of this unknown emotional pain they felt. The only thing that helped most soldiers was time. As mentioned in a 1990 survey about Vietnam and PTSD, Thirty percent of the three million soldiers were coming home with PTSD. When that survey was conducted again in 2006 on Vietnam Vet, the percentage had drop to 19%. Of course it is worth noting that treatment of PTSD has changed over the last 30 years, and so many soldiers were outright cured, or in complete control of the PTSD that was now a part of their lives.

 

Another interesting thing to note, is that some argue that only 15% of those soldiers saw actual combat, and that many might have been misdiagnosed with just stress related symptoms. Especially those who have jobs in the Quartermaster Corp that had develop PTSD.

 

Iraq

 

As we enter the 5th year in the Iraq war, the casualties are building up to over 4000 U.S. soldiers dead, and hundreds of thousands wounded or permanently disabled. Out of the survivors of the Iraq war it was noted that in 2006 that 16% of the soldiers in Iraq have been diagnosed with PTSD. Out of the 16% diagnosed with PTSD, the most susceptible are the soldiers between the ages of 18 and 24. While the older generation of soldiers who are in their 30 and 40?s as they are the least likely to develop PTSD because of experience of being a soldier.

 

This is due to many factors, one of those factors is moral judgment, in which a person between ages of 18-24 are still developing a sense of moral judgment of right or wrong, and that it could be easily twisted if under the right circumstances. One of those circumstances would be going to war and being able to kill someone and live with this fact. This one of many moral judgments that a soldier on the front line has to make when in a firefight with the enemy, and being to mentally turn off that hesitation before pulling the trigger.

 

The symptoms have not changed all that much since Vietnam, but more of the common symptoms from soldiers in Iraq include loss of appetite, flashbacks, and nightmares. However, thanks to many years of research and studies, being able to treat PTSD has become more effective with the help of various therapies.

 

 

Therapy

 

There are three types of therapy that can be used to treat someone with PTSD; Psychodynamic Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Pharmacotherapy.

 

When a therapist uses Psychodynamic Therapy to help a soldier with PTSD, they are making him or her focus on the memories of that traumatic event. By doing this, the soldier will be able to bring out their intense emotions, almost reaching the breaking point. Afterward, the therapist and the solider will talk about what triggered those emotions, and find a way to prevent those memories and emotions from going further then they need to. Almost like being able to force your mind to switch off before it reaches the breaking point, and then be able to move on each time those memories are triggered.

 

Cognitive-behavior therapy is considered the longer of the treatments, because of the extensive training one must take in order to control their PTSD through specific techniques and training. Some techniques a therapist would use are ?relaxation techniques, stress inoculation training, cognitive restructuring, breathing retraining, biofeedback, social skills training, and distraction techniques?. By using these techniques, one would assume that a soldier would be able to calm him or herself after a brief time after a PTSD occurrence.

 

While it is not a therapy per say, Pharmacotherapy is using drug treatments to help with various aspects of PTSD. Depending on how severe a soldiers PTSD is, they will go through a trial and error process to see which drugs effectively target specific symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Then once these drugs take effect, a soldier will either go through a short-term or a long-term drug therapy usage depending on how well their bodies are accepting the drugs. As for the drugs that have been given to soldiers who are diagnosed with PTSD, anti-depressants have the most effectiveness because of how they chemically alter a person?s mind. The most common anti-depressants that are prescribed to soldiers are Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil because of how optimistic the results were after an extensive study into what these drugs would do for a soldier.

 

 

Conclusion

 

For soldiers with PTSD, Plato?s words ?Only the dead have seen the end of the war.?, does bring some truth to the fact that the only way to stop the suffering from severe PTSD, would be to end one?s life. For soldiers, like me, who were not in the front lines and suffer small doses of PTSD, being able to overcome the pain and suffering has been my greatest challenge. As soldiers of the three eras of PTSD try to live on with the horrors that they have seen, being able to help them should be the goal for the government, which has not seen PTSD through their eyes.

[Watermonkey 0]

Severely punished? That seems a tad over the top... I'd ask you to consider inserting more accurate data. The propaganda machine in the Department Of Defense (Offense) wants Americans to think the occupations (Only Congress can declare a war. Every conflict since WWII was a illegal unauthorized conflict -not that that makes the casualties any less real but terminology is important.) aren't really killing that many troops, so they only count the ones who actually die in theater. If they're one minute out of the airspace of Iraq or Afghanistan and die, they're not counted. The actual number of Coalition forces dead due to these conflicts is many time higher than the DOD is telling the Main Stream Media to report. I've seen reports of permanently disabled combat veterans (U.S.) numbering higher than 250,000. And what about the Iraqis? Over 1.25M dead and counting. Then there's always the deadly Depleted Uranium that's being sprayed everywhere that'll take billions of years to break down no one even bothers to mention. That fact makes it a nuclear war. And don't bother taking the intellectually dishonest route accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about. I'm a vet too. I joined the armed forces of the United States of America in June of 1987. When this was all being staged and the board was being set up. USS Cole was in the news at that time. I was aboard one of the ships that escorted her back to the states. Otherwise, I'm glad you decided to give a speech on this topic that's so personal to you and I hope that in doing so you find some healing and therapy. I hope you don't dismiss, out of hand, that there are evil people in the world and some of them are wearing U.S. Army (and all the others) uniforms killing innocent people in foreign lands. Of this, there can be no dispute. Let's just hope that they remain the minority and pay for their crimes.

[Tenshi 0]

Wow and I thought my depression was bad!! I have had depression ever since I was little because of the environment I was brought up so I can understand the life you might have gone through. I too have lost important people in my life, my grandfather and Uncle being the most heart breaking. After my grandfather died I became more introverted though my family and friends saw me as this happy, bubbly teen. But when my Uncle died I almost died and also considered suicide. I was always alone even though I live with my family, they either do not care or do not know how to handle my depression so I never did get any support from them. All that I can say is that, slowly step by step you need to keep walking towards letting go off the past. That is how I could start walking, by stopping the blame game & helplessness. If you ever need an ear, please feel free to contact me. I would though love to hear about how you are doing now :lol:Best of Luck

[fermin25 3]

The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not limted to the Wars. A Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be develop in people who had suffer car accidents, Assaults, until domestic agression.The people who suffer this disorder develop a extremely fair and is this fair to the experience lived which cause the stress disorder. In my psycology classes my teacher teach me that until the most mental strong man can develop this disorder.Almost ever the people who suffer this disorder don?t go to the psicologist, they get cure with the time.The psicologist recommend that the people who had suffer a traumatism(Shock, accidents car, assaults, other types of agression) treat to focus their attention in other activities like the job, school, sports, etc... This will help them to recovery.

[Fractured.Logic 0]

Amazing information, SM. You've taken so much time to compile this report, and I really appreciate the educational value of it. You've also laid bare some very sensitive information. That took a lot of guts, hon, and I have a wealth of respect for you.

 

You seemed to play down the severity of what you experienced, but that is (by far) no easy task that you endured. You don't go into details, either, about what battle and front-line experiences you may have had which would piled on the mental equivalent of Atlas' great burden (which no mortal should ever endure). Also, the knowledge of what happened to kill those men is just as heavy a knowledge. It is curious, indeed, how certain events connect together to affect the mind.

 

I would like to mention that PTSD can also be inspired by non-militant stressors. My step-father has suffered from PTSD for almost 9 years now. It's a long story why, and I would never have his permission to share the details (unfortunately), but certain individuals (who were running an illicit-gains business through where he used to work) pushed him to the point of having a greatly-debilitating mental breakdown. He was, thankfully, never actually involved in any of the illegal activities. However, one does not need to be involved to inadvertantly (and involuntarily) be mixed up in it.

 

He has struggled to establish his Disability, and recently was denied yet again (and the stress of being repeatedly denied has not helped his condition whatsoever).

 

There are times that I wish I could do something to help him. Unfortunately, he will always be missing a part of himself, no matter how much my mother and I are there for him. Still, we remain by his side, as true family ought to (in my opinion).

 

I am saddened that you have not felt you could share your burden with your family. Although, I wish you an eventually-restored health and happiness, and I truly hope that you will not always be missing a part of yourself.

[webishqiptar 0]

Wow, that is an impressive story, but should I ask, if you studied medicine or just know all this information because of you suffering such a bad disease( that mostly got soldiers returning from Iraq). You have such an accurate information about the disease etiology, pathology and case studies. All of this is so feeling sorry, or bad because you see people used from their countries for oil purposes and they submitted nightmares and unbelievable stress during their war days. I have written some stories about soldiers in the Arabia, during the period of beginnings of the Islamic culture. Soldiers were promised to receive or to go to heaven if they felt martyrs and this motivated them a lot. And no one of the soldiers had such problems, that nowadays soldiers have. But I know that Islamic believers think this world is something that is not permanent so they believe in other eternity life. This belief motivated them to be martyrs and not to be afraid of death.

[Saint_Michael 3]

The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not limted to the Wars. A Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be develop in people who had suffer car accidents, Assaults, until domestic agression.

 

The people who suffer this disorder develop a extremely fair and is this fair to the experience lived which cause the stress disorder. In my psycology classes my teacher teach me that until the most mental strong man can develop this disorder.

 

Almost ever the people who suffer this disorder don´t go to the psicologist, they get cure with the time.

 

The psicologist recommend that the people who had suffer a traumatism(Shock, accidents car, assaults, other types of agression) treat to focus their attention in other activities like the job, school, sports, etc... This will help them to recovery.

That is true, but the information I provided was based on a paper I did and the aforementioned speech I gave that same week. While I knew that there were other ways to get PTSD my topic was specific to PTSD suffered from soldiers.

 

 

Amazing information, SM. You've taken so much time to compile this report, and I really appreciate the educational value of it. You've also laid bare some very sensitive information. That took a lot of guts, hon, and I have a wealth of respect for you.

 

You seemed to play down the severity of what you experienced, but that is (by far) no easy task that you endured. You don't go into details, either, about what battle and front-line experiences you may have had which would piled on the mental equivalent of Atlas' great burden (which no mortal should ever endure). Also, the knowledge of what happened to kill those men is just as heavy a knowledge. It is curious, indeed, how certain events connect together to affect the mind.

 

I would like to mention that PTSD can also be inspired by non-militant stressors. My step-father has suffered from PTSD for almost 9 years now. It's a long story why, and I would never have his permission to share the details (unfortunately), but certain individuals (who were running an illicit-gains business through where he used to work) pushed him to the point of having a greatly-debilitating mental breakdown. He was, thankfully, never actually involved in any of the illegal activities. However, one does not need to be involved to inadvertantly (and involuntarily) be mixed up in it.

 

He has struggled to establish his Disability, and recently was denied yet again (and the stress of being repeatedly denied has not helped his condition whatsoever).

 

There are times that I wish I could do something to help him. Unfortunately, he will always be missing a part of himself, no matter how much my mother and I are there for him. Still, we remain by his side, as true family ought to (in my opinion).

 

I am saddened that you have not felt you could share your burden with your family. Although, I wish you an eventually-restored health and happiness, and I truly hope that you will not always be missing a part of yourself.

Gathering the information was the easy part for me and of course letting others know that there are reasons why some soldiers act the way they do, either from the current wars or past wars, especially Vietnam. As for telling my story, posting it and eventually blogging it was the easy part, telling about 30-40 people which included my family was the hard part. I down play it now, just because it has been almost 6 years since I went and of course getting support from various people outside of the medical profession I have been able to get by for the most part.

 

That is true about that missing part, depending on the severity of the break down it could be next to impossible. However, just being able to talk about is just as good, luckily for me I never had to worry about pumping drugs or eve alcohol to forget what I ahd to deal with. Granted not every situation is the same like you mention FracLog, usually it is the talking to strangers that has help me the most, could never talk to my family about it. Of course, they never brought it up and I saw no need to either, and that is what he might be going through, but it is all about support and once a person accept the support they are on a road to recovery.

 

 

Wow, that is an impressive story, but should I ask, if you studied medicine or just know all this information because of you suffering such a bad disease( that mostly got soldiers returning from Iraq). You have such an accurate information about the disease etiology, pathology and case studies. All of this is so feeling sorry, or bad because you see people used from their countries for oil purposes and they submitted nightmares and unbelievable stress during their war days.

 

I have written some stories about soldiers in the Arabia, during the period of beginnings of the Islamic culture. Soldiers were promised to receive or to go to heaven if they felt martyrs and this motivated them a lot. And no one of the soldiers had such problems, that nowadays soldiers have. But I know that Islamic believers think this world is something that is not permanent so they believe in other eternity life. This belief motivated them to be martyrs and not to be afraid of death.

Research mostly, but you could say it was one giant history paper on the progression of what PTSD is today and how horrible it was back then compared to now. Of course, I never really though about disease etiology, pathology and the case studies, but obvious I knew that I was collaborating various case studies when I put the paper together and so it made the paper a bit stronger then I had realize.

[Fractured.Logic 0]

telling about 30-40 people which included my family was the hard part

That is a more common scenario than you might think, hon. It's amazing how much of a communication barrier can exist between one and their kith and kin. Though I love and admire my step-father, he and I have had numerous occasions where we absolutely do not get along, and are unable to communicate.

 

I have been able to get by for the most part.

It is very good to hear that you are regaining some of your normalcy and ability to function. People often underestimate how important it is to feel stable and secure in your actions, on a regular basis.

 

luckily for me I never had to worry about pumping drugs or eve alcohol to forget what I ahd to deal with.

My step-father had a very heavy drinking problem for a long time, including pre-breakdown. He was never a violent drunk, mind you, but it caused him to suffer pancreatitis and is irreversibly diabetic because of it.

 

Granted not every situation is the same like you mention FracLog, usually it is the talking to strangers that has help me the most, could never talk to my family about it. Of course, they never brought it up and I saw no need to either, and that is what he might be going through, but it is all about support and once a person accept the support they are on a road to recovery.

I never really know what goes on in his head... but I'd be willing to believe that you are closer to the mark on that observation than I've ever been. But, I'm a firm believer of the saying, "It takes one to know one." You have the greatest understanding of your circumstance, and the greatest ability to relate to others suffering in a similar fashion.

[Saint_Michael 3]

Yeah communication is the big part and although I never been to one of those group meetings to help deal with PTSD, you usually can tell whose been there the longest and whose getting started. Although I know the one problem is people trying to push to try and communicate, I know that will make me shut up tight and not giving them a chance to hear my response.It is amazing how quickly some soldiers take to drinking, especially after joining the military. Its the quickest way to relieve stress and forget about the day, but after going to warn and participating in the war the damage to the psyche is what makes drinking dangerous. Though he suffered from drinking the physical way at least he had the self control to restrain himself because alcohol just makes it worse for others, especially those who do have anger issues.