Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on War

PTSD

Post=traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious psychiatric disorder caused by extreme stress under dangerous or potentially dangerous situations. People with PTSD may have been raped, or abused, sexually or otherwise in childhood, have witnessed or experienced some disaster, such as earthquake, fire or flood, or it may be acquired from wartime experiences. Although PTSD was first entered into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1980 (Harbert, 2002), its effects on soldiers returning from war have been noted for many centuries before, often called "battle fatigue" or "shell shock." (Roswell, 2004)

Any traumatic event (wartime experience, a natural disaster, an accident, a life-threatening illness -- or an act of terrorism) can present a clear threat to the existing conceptual framework one relies on to understand the world. While the condition is a psychiatric one, often the person with PTSD responds with physical signs. They can include increased or irregular heart rate and blood pressure, headache, dizziness, and severe anxiety, along with feelings of fear or panic, emotional responses that range from guilt to uncertainty to anger, and cognitive problems including poor concentration, difficulty making decisions, forgetfulness, hypervigilance, inability to stop thinking about the traumatic events, exaggerated startle response, withdrawal, and tendency toward antisocial behavior (Harbert, 2002). Clearly such a collection of symptoms can be incapacitating, and many people with PTSD have marked difficulty holding a job or maintaining comfortable relationships with loved ones and friends.

PTSD represents a war wound that does not leave visible marks on the person's body and that cannot be treated with surgery or antibiotics. The numbers of soldiers who have suffered PTSD from recent wars are alarming:

Robert M. Roswell, M.D., Undersecretary for the Health Department, reported to Congress in March of 2004 that over 15% of veterans from the Viet Nam war met the clinical diagnosis for PTSD immediately on their return and that 30% had met the diagnostic criteria at some time since their return (Roswell, 2004). Experts are now seeing the emergence of PTSD in soldiers returning from Iraq and see this as a serious concern, since symptoms may emerge even years after the causative events. In July of 2004 a major newspaper reported that 20% of soldiers who returned from Iraq showed signs of significant mental illness, most often PTSD (Elias, 2004). The researchers in this study note that the number may rise, because they do not include the many soldiers still receiving extended treatment for the physical injuries received in that war. It should be noted that researchers have also noted high levels of acute anxiety order and depression in returning soldiers, but PTSD remains the most common psychiatric diagnosis in this group (Roswell, 2004).

According to Harbert (2002), the events that lead to PTSD have the power they do because they threaten the person's basic understanding of how the world works (Harbert, 2002). Experts aren't sure how many soldiers are likely to develop PTSD as a result of serving in either Afghanistan or Iraq because so many factors contribute to how well a person copes under extreme stress. Generally speaking, older soldiers deal with war-related events than younger ones do. With that as the guideline, we might see less PTSD among those who served in Iraq or Afghanistan since we have relied so heavily on National Guard members, who tend to be older (Elias, 2004). On the other hand, the men and women who joined the National Guard may not have expected to ever actually go to war, and may have a different mindset regarding war events than those who actively signed up for combat-oriented services such as the Army and Marines.

Because of the devastating effect of PTSD on a person's ability to function, it should be treated as soon as possible. A person's first reaction to the stressful events that lead to PTSD will be acute stress. Within six months, 80% of those people will be diagnosable as having PTSD, and 75% of them will still have those symptoms two years later. PTSD is a disorder that can persist for years and worsen over time (Harbert, 2002). Because of its complex nature, treatment should be multidimensional in nature as well as prompt. A holistic approach to treatment, taking into consideration the person's history, life style, behavior and cognitive thinking may be most effective. Particular emphasis can be put on cognitive thought processes. The therapist can map out interventions that can help the client control how he or she thinks about the traumatic events, which can bring immediate and often long-term benefit.