PostTraumatic Stress Disorder essays

PostTraumatic Stress Disorder essays Have you ever witnessed someone being badly injured or even killed? Have you ever been involved in a fire, flood, or any other natural disaster? The estimated lifetime prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among adult Americans is 7.8%, with men calculating at 5% and women at 10.4%, twice as likely as men to have PTSD at some point in their lives. This represents a small proportion of those who have experienced at least one traumatic event, for 60.7% of men and 51.2% of women reported at least one traumatic event. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur in victims who experience or witness life-threatening events, and this disorder can be familiarized with through knowing how it was discovered, the symptoms, and the treatment of PTSD. To begin with, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is an extremely weakening condition that affects the body's normal conscience. Reports have shown the traumatic events most often associated with PTSD in men were rape, war combat exposure, childhood neglect, and childhood physical abuse. The most common events for women were rape, sexual molestation, physical attack, being threatened with a weapon, and childhood physical abuse. However, none of these events consistently produced PTSD in those exposed to it. A particular type of traumatic event does not necessarily affect different sectors of the population in the same way. Some studies show that debriefing people very soon after a catastrophic event may reduce some of the symptoms of PTSD. A study of 12,000 school children who lived through a hurricane in Hawaii found that those who received counseling early on were doing much better two years later than those who did not. People with PTSD tend to have abnormal levels of important hormones involved in response to stress. When people are in danger, they produce high levels of natural opiates, which can temporarily block pain. Scientists have ...