THINKER
PostTraumatic Stress Disorder
BY:Ember Jones
Post traumatic stress disorder also known as PTSD started to become recognized after veterans would come back from Vietnam, but not only war veterans can have this mental illness. I myself was diagnosed with ptsd back in September of 2013,people with ptsd can experience various different types of symptoms. The first category of symptoms is called re-experiencing symptoms, that’s when people get flashbacks of a traumatic situation or situations that have occurred and this can even cause the person to sweat and/or have a racing heart, other symptoms in this category include nightmares, and frightening thoughts. The second category of symptoms are called avoidance symptoms people with avoidance symptoms will often try to stay away from events, places, or objects that remind them of a traumatic event, other avoidance symptoms are feeling emotionally numb, feeling strong guilt, worry or depression, losing interest in activities ,and even having trouble remembering traumatic events. The third category of symptoms is called hyperarousal symptoms, these symptoms consist of being easily startled, feeling tense or on edge, and having difficulty sleeping or having angry outbursts. Anyone can get this mental illness at any age , but just because you experienced a traumatic event doesn’t mean that you have ptsd, in fact most people don’t get this illness. Post traumatic stress disorder can happen due to many situations such as being in the war, being a survivor of physical and sexual assault, experiencing abuse, accidents, or disasters, and many other serious events. Anyone with ptsd will experience it differently than someone else with the same illness,its just a matter of understanding how the illness affects you and taking a good approach twards coping with it.Scientist have figured out that people with ptsd bypass the memory encoding of active short term into long term memory, by shutting down higher cognitive processing in the frontal cortex and not being able to enter flight or fight mode, by not being able to enter fight or flight mode people with ptsd will block out situations and later on have symptoms such as flashbacks because they were unable to store the event as a fear memory in their brain. People that do not have ptsd will react better in the onset of traumatic situations because they are able to enter flight or fight mode and decide how to react in those kind of situations. Post traumatic stress disorder is a very serious illness and scientist are taking various different approaches as to figuring out how to make individualized treatments to help people cope with this illness.
Post traumatic stress disorder also known as PTSD started to become recognized after veterans would come back from Vietnam, but not only war veterans can have this mental illness. I myself was diagnosed with ptsd back in September of 2013,people with ptsd can experience various different types of symptoms. The first category of symptoms is called re-experiencing symptoms, that’s when people get flashbacks of a traumatic situation or situations that have occurred and this can even cause the person to sweat and/or have a racing heart, other symptoms in this category include nightmares, and frightening thoughts. The second category of symptoms are called avoidance symptoms people with avoidance symptoms will often try to stay away from events, places, or objects that remind them of a traumatic event, other avoidance symptoms are feeling emotionally numb, feeling strong guilt, worry or depression, losing interest in activities ,and even having trouble remembering traumatic events. The third category of symptoms is called hyperarousal symptoms, these symptoms consist of being easily startled, feeling tense or on edge, and having difficulty sleeping or having angry outbursts. Anyone can get this mental illness at any age , but just because you experienced a traumatic event doesn’t mean that you have ptsd, in fact most people don’t get this illness. Post traumatic stress disorder can happen due to many situations such as being in the war, being a survivor of physical and sexual assault, experiencing abuse, accidents, or disasters, and many other serious events. Anyone with ptsd will experience it differently than someone else with the same illness,its just a matter of understanding how the illness affects you and taking a good approach twards coping with it.Scientist have figured out that people with ptsd bypass the memory encoding of active short term into long term memory, by shutting down higher cognitive processing in the frontal cortex and not being able to enter flight or fight mode, by not being able to enter fight or flight mode people with ptsd will block out situations and later on have symptoms such as flashbacks because they were unable to store the event as a fear memory in their brain. People that do not have ptsd will react better in the onset of traumatic situations because they are able to enter flight or fight mode and decide how to react in those kind of situations. Post traumatic stress disorder is a very serious illness and scientist are taking various different approaches as to figuring out how to make individualized treatments to help people cope with this illness.