Melinda Sordino Research Paper

Melinda Sordino’s behaviors are best diagnosed as posttraumatic stress disorder with a secondary disorder of depression. Melinda’s symptoms last for a whole school year, which is consistent with the one month bench mark for most posttraumatic stress disorder patients. One of Melinda’s symptoms of her posttraumatic stress disorder is that multiple times throughout the book she bites her lips and nails to the point of pain and even sometimes until she bleeds. At one point in the story, she even says, “I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way”. This is consistent with nervous habits some posttraumatic stress patients experience when they do not speak to anyone regarding the trauma they experienced. There is recent research to suggest that speaking about trauma can actually help the brain move on from the event and heal. Since Melinda …show more content…
This may be attributed to the fact that women have an increased risk of experiencing traumatic events. However, this is unlikely and further research must be done in order to fully understand why women meet the criteria twice as often as men do. It may also be helpful to research the role that gender roles in our current society play into the diagnosing of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Melinda developed the disorder due to the fact that she was raped, which classifies as a traumatic enough experience. There is a certain threshold which must be meant for the event to be considered a trauma. A simply fender bender would not classify as traumatic, however a life threatening car crash would be. Also just because the person is distressed over the event, does not mean that they are experiencing posttraumatic stress