Healthcare Assignment: Critical Discussion On Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Question

Task:
To prepare the healthcare assignment, you are required to find 1 article, book, or video that shows someone discussing his or her personal experience related to the disorder discuss the impact of symptoms on both the individual with the diagnosis and the individual's family and friends. Discuss 1 effective treatment approach for the disorder support with research. What are some of the symptoms? What would this disorder look like in person?

Answer

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder, focused in the healthcare assignment, is kind of psychiatric disorder that occurs in humans after they have survived some traumatic event like a severe accident, natural calamity, war or terror attack, serious injury, violent fight or may be because they have been threatened with something unusual and terrifying event like sexual violence or death (Bryant, 2019). Such events give a very adverse impact on the mental health of the person who has witnessed the same and generally this type of disorder lasts quite longer.

The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder might start developing within a month of the occurrence of event that causes trauma. However, it is not necessary that the symptoms out of traumatic events show up immediately after the occurrence of such events. Rather, there remains a possibility that the symptoms of such disorder appears after some years of the occurrence of event. The symptoms of PTSD are majorly of four types: intrusive memories, unpleasant thought processes and mood, avoidance and the changes in the way person react physically and emotionally (Bremner, Mishra, Campanella, Shah, Kasher, Evans, &Carmody, 2017).

The post-traumatic stress disorder may lead to different symptoms in different individuals from time to time. However, generally this disorder would look like as follows with the above mentioned symptoms.

Intrusive memories may comprise of following things:

• Repetitive occurrence of distressful memories of the event that causes trauma to the person
• Frequent flashbacks of the traumatic event making the person relive those moments (Wallace & Sweetman, 2020).
• Nightmares of the traumatic event

Avoidance includes:

• Resistance to think about the traumatic event that occurred
• Avoiding things, places or people that make the person remind of the occurred traumatic event (Hori & Kim, 2019).

Unpleasant thought processes and mood occurs as follows:

• Negative thoughts abouts the surrounding things
• Pessimistic approach about future
• Memory issues
• Feeling of detachment with friends and family numbers
• Loss of interest in the things that the same person used to enjoy before the occurrence of such traumatic event
• Emotional numbness

Changes in the way person react physically and emotionally occur as follows:

• Easily getting frightened
• Always remaining fearful of danger
• Self-destructive and aggressive behavior
• Lost concentration and irritation
• Feeling of shame and guilt

People with post-traumatic stress disorder generally tend to have intense, distressful thoughts and moods. They might have to relive those memories or flashbacks of the traumatic event and they generally resist doing as they generally become quite fearful of such events. With those recurrent memories they get frustrated, irritated and they tend to react abnormally to the things or people they are surrounded with (Lewis, Arseneault, Caspi, Fisher, Matthews, Moffitt, & Danese, 2019). In various cases, there develops a feeling of sadness within those people and they try to distant themselves from everyone around them. People with such disorders even try to avoid all such things that remind them of the traumatic event.

On YouTube, there is a video of a woman sharing her personal experience of the post-traumatic stress disorder. The woman was a victim of female molestation and she was sexually harassed by her uncle around 30 years back. The acts of her uncle were quite traumatic for her. However, she moved on leaving those memories back and got married to a decent man. She was literally enjoying her life and was working very successfully in her profession. However, she became the victim of the psychiatric disorder named as post-traumatic disorder after the 30 years of the occurrence of the event. She suddenly started feeling uncomfortable with her husband around as she could sense her uncle’s presence which made her re-experience that trauma that she had experienced in her childhood. The feeling of fear of again getting molested made the women quite frustrated and annoyed because of which she lost so many people from her family and friends. However, her husband did understand her problem and discussed with the doctor (psychiatrist). The doctor discussed with her the things that were creating troubles for her and tried to analyze her mental situation. The regular therapies did definitely help the victim woman to overcome her trauma and disorder. With time and those regular consultations, her panic attacks and the memories that used to run as flashback in her mind started reducing and she could certainly feel so light and easy to live.

The video of that woman sharing her personal experience is an evidence of the fact that although there is no time limit of occurrence of such disorder after one has suffered a traumatic event, yet this disorder is quite treatable if the people with such disorder to take help from the mental health professionals.

The PTSD victims only do not get affected with such disorders. Rather, such disorders at times do create a severe impact on the family members of the person suffering from such disorders as the problems of disorder like anger, detachment, trust issues, communication gaps in turn change the way the family treats that person. Sometimes, it becomes difficult for the family members to live with person having such disorders as that person become quite strange at times and his/her action might harm or hurt his family members. Further, a person with such disorder might not find him capable enough to look after his family as he himself does not understand his situation.

It could be seen in the video of woman sharing her personal experience fighting with PTSD that it is quite treatable. The short term and long term psychotherapies would definitely help a person overcome such disorder. The aims of such therapies are to make the patient capable to learn the skills to deal with the panic attacks arising of the flashback memories, to restore their self-confidence and to reduce their symptoms (Plexousakis, Kourkoutas, Giovazolias, Chatira, & Nikolopoulos, 2019). The cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the key therapies dealing with such disorders. It helps to change the thought processes that disturb the patient’s life.

References
Bremner, J. D., Mishra, S., Campanella, C., Shah, M., Kasher, N., Evans, S., ...&Carmody, J. (2017). A pilot study of the effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and brain response to traumatic reminders of combat in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Frontiers in psychiatry, 8, 157.

Bryant, R. A. (2019). Post?traumatic stress disorder: a state?of?the?art review of evidence and challenges. Healthcare assignment World Psychiatry, 18(3), 259-269.

Hori, H., & Kim, Y. (2019). Inflammation and post?traumatic stress disorder. Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, 73(4), 143-153.

Lewis, S. J., Arseneault, L., Caspi, A., Fisher, H. L., Matthews, T., Moffitt, T. E., ...&Danese, A. (2019). The epidemiology of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder in a representative cohort of young people in England and Wales. The Lancet Psychiatry, 6(3), 247-256.

Plexousakis, S. S., Kourkoutas, E., Giovazolias, T., Chatira, K., &Nikolopoulos, D. (2019). School bullying and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms: The role of parental bonding. Frontiers in public health, 7, 75.

Wallace, D. M., &Sweetman, A. (2020). Comorbid sleep apnea, post-traumatic stress disorder, and insomnia: underlying mechanisms and treatment implications—a commentary on El Solh et al.’s Impact of low arousal threshold on treatment of obstructive sleep apnea in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. Sleep and Breathing, 1-3.

Link to YouTube video: https://youtu.be/nZLD9z6_bFI