Term Paper on "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"

Term Paper 3 pages (1426 words) Sources: 1+

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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

What exactly is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? This disorder, also known as PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur in an individual, if he has inadvertently happened to witness any sort of life threatening event such as a bombing, or an accident, or a natural disaster, or a rape or physical assault upon oneself. An individual who has been diagnosed as suffering from PTSD often suffers from sleep disorders, wherein his sleep patterns are disturbed by frequent nightmares and flashbacks, in which he is forced to re-live those particular life threatening events that pushed him into the PTSD. The person feels estranged and detached from real life events happening around him, and all these symptoms can be severe enough or long enough to force the person to live an impaired sort of life, with a large disruption of the daily routine. (What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? A National Center for PTSD Fact Sheet)

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is often more complicated by the fact that it more often than not occurs in persons along with related symptoms such as a depression, or an indulgence in substance abuse, or a loss of memory and cognition, and other related psychological complications. This person is often unable to function normally in his social life, and in his family and occupational life, and this would inevitably have the result of family discord, leading to divorce, inability to parent effectively, and occupational disability. (What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? A National Center for PTSD Fact Sheet)

In general, an individual who has been affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder will initially respond with fear, a sense of helplessness, and intense horror and shock. The PTSD is developed later on, as the patient keeps reliving the event in nightmares and flashbacks, which in turn affect his very ability to function normally in his social circle and also within his family. It must be noted that it is the amygdala, the key brain structure that is most often associated with PTSD, and researchers have discovered that an exposure to traumatic stimuli can lead to a sort of fear conditioning, which results in the activation of the amyglada, and all its associated structures, like for example, the hypothalamus, the locus ceruleus, the periaqueductal grey, and the parabrachial nucleus, and this in turn would produce the symptoms of the PTSD. Also associated with this activation is the activation of the autonomic neurotransmitters, and the activity in the endocrine glands. However, the orbitofrontal cortex exerts a hampering and a slowing down affect on the activation, and the hippocampus also has an adapting effect on the amyglada, but it has been noticed that in people who develop PTSD, the orbitofrontal cortex seems to be less capable of inhibiting the activation. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

In the United States, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder extends over the entire lifetime of the individual in about 8 to 10% of patients, and these unfortunate persons are disabled almost throughout the rest of their lives after having experienced the traumatic event that caused the onset of PTSD in them. Another study showed that the prevalence of PTSD in adolescent boys was about 3.7%, and in girls it was 6.3%. Among those people who have spent any amount of time in a war zone, the symptoms of PTSD was about 30%. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

According to another study, an estimated 70% of all adults in the United States of America, have, at some time in their lives, experienced an extremely traumatic event, and almost 20% of these individuals would develop PTSD as a direct consequence of this trauma. Almost 5% of Americans supposedly suffer from the symptoms of PTSD, that is, about 13 million Americans have PTSD at any given time, and another 8% of Americans would most probably develop the symptoms of PTSD some time during their lives. As far as women are concerned, it is estimated that almost one out of ten women in the United States would most likely develop PTSD at some time during their lives, as it is a well documented fact that women are twice as likely to suffer from PTSD than men. (What is PTSD?)

The basic reason for this may be that women are naturally more… READ MORE

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