Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD as it is commonly referred to, is an anxiety disorder that develops following the experience or the witnessing of a traumatic life-threatening event. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, “the defining characteristic of a traumatic event is, it’s capacity to provoke fear, helplessness, or horror in response to the threat of injury or death.” (Yehuda, 2002) This event could be living through military combat in wartime, surviving a natural disaster, serious accidents, witnessing terrorist attacks, or suffering from some kind of physical or sexual assault sometime in the past either as a child or as an adult. People that suffer from this condition, develop common symptoms despite the different
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Those suffering from hyper arousal may change the victim’s worldview and may make them remain constantly paranoid. This constant state of readiness affects the victim in many ways. It may be expressed by the victim suffering from sleep deprivation or over consumption of sleep, increased sense of irritability in otherwise calm settings, high levels of anger, outbursts, an extreme difficulty when trying to concentrate, or being unreasonably startled when unexpectedly approached by someone. I chose to write on the condition known as PTSD because the prevalence of this disorder has been on the rise. With soldiers returning from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan many soldiers have to deal with this condition on a daily basis. I think that is important that the general population understand how this disorder affects members of the United States Military and that Americans understand the true cost of our freedom. I have family members that served two or more terms in the middle east during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. Both of my family members in question struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and upon their return had a hard time fitting back in with non-combatant members of
Those suffering from hyper arousal may change the victim’s worldview and may make them remain constantly paranoid. This constant state of readiness affects the victim in many ways. It may be expressed by the victim suffering from sleep deprivation or over consumption of sleep, increased sense of irritability in otherwise calm settings, high levels of anger, outbursts, an extreme difficulty when trying to concentrate, or being unreasonably startled when unexpectedly approached by someone. I chose to write on the condition known as PTSD because the prevalence of this disorder has been on the rise. With soldiers returning from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan many soldiers have to deal with this condition on a daily basis. I think that is important that the general population understand how this disorder affects members of the United States Military and that Americans understand the true cost of our freedom. I have family members that served two or more terms in the middle east during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. Both of my family members in question struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and upon their return had a hard time fitting back in with non-combatant members of