Post-traumatic stress disorder: overview and clinical implications

¶ … skills, and professional attributes you bring to your area of practice or specialization.

I bring several different types of skills and professional attributes into my area of practice of specialization. First, my capacity for empathy, sympathy, and understanding are all beyond reason of a doubt. I have always had the ability to converse well and calmly with individuals suffering from a variety of emotional states and recovering from different emotional capacities. In my own practice and attempts at counseling, I have been able to use my calming and comprehending personality to a therapeutic advantage. Therefore, I feel my own personality is attributed and akin to tuning into the needs of disabled veterans when counseling. Furthermore, I have had personal relationships with veterans, so I have a solid understanding of their sufferings and needs. For the most part, I realize it is incredibly difficult for them to talk about these instances, and since I am prepared for these difficulties, I feel that my easygoing, understanding personality will come into play. Furthermore, I also believe it is very important to avoid stressing individuals into situations they do not wish to be party to. So, it is my belief it may take some time for individuals suffering from these capacities and other personality and personal issues to get used to me, and I feel that my friendly and motivational personality would certainly be an asset. Furthermore, the education I am receiving myself, which is bringing about a stronger understanding of different individuals, will be a true asset and help me in my professional career.

Your theoretical orientation.

I tend to lean toward the thoughts behind behavioralism and professional personality theory. Within the concept of behavioralism, we learn that individuals respond to the concepts of reward and punishment, and this affects their psychological make-up. Individuals that have been at war for long periods of time have inevitably felt that they have been punished, and probably quite a bit. Therefore, I feel these aspects will be important to consider. The term itself, "shell shock" reveals the ingrained belief that psychiatric casualties from the horrors of the battles of the Somme, Marne, Ypres, etc. had suffered concussion (physical trauma to the head or brain) from a close call with an exploding artillery shell. Nearly a decade elapsed before a British War Office Committee realized (Military History Companion, 2004) that battle exhaustion and other varieties of war neuroses accounted for a far greater proportion of cases than concussion did. The concept of PTSD, or "shell shock," as it is also known, feels like a concept of punishment in its own. Generally, most veterans report feeling punishment from their experiences, or feel punished by losing individuals they cared about in the war. Furthermore, personality theory is going to be important to consider, since the way an individuals' personality is able to adapt to trauma plays a huge role in the way one coming home from war and suffering from PTSD could integrate back into the regular world.

The main characteristics of the culturally skilled practitioner

The most authoritative review in recent years, by researchers from Columbia University and other institutions, suggested that nearly 19% of Vietnam War veterans succumbed to PTSD as a direct result of military combat. In addition, "The more severe the exposure to war zone stresses, the greater the likelihood of developing post-traumatic stress disorder and having it persist for many years," said Bruce P. Dohrenwend, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. (McKenna, 2006).

Fast forward to the current occupation of Iraq. The Defense Department reports, based on a sample survey of over 1,600 Army soldiers and Marines, that around one-third (30%) of those who had been in "intense combat" were diagnosed with such mental health problems as PTSD and depression. Incidence appeared higher among soldiers deployed to Iraq at least twice and for more than six months at a time (Bookman, 2007). So distressing is the occupation, according to an Army study, that one in six of close 1 million soldiers "surged" to Afghanistan and Iraq will very likely be afflicted with PTSD (Allis, op. cit.).