Post-traumatic stress disorder: causes, symptoms, and treatment

Post traumatic stress disorder is given as psychological reaction which take place after one has gone through a stressful event .the characteristics of PTSD are anxiety, depression, recurrent nightmares, flashbacks and avoiding things that are a reminder of the event. There have been increased reports of mental health problems among soldiers who have been deployed in war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. The paper will look at two articles that highlight the issue of mental health problems like PTSD among soldiers who are deployed to war zones. This will include an annotated bibliography of the two articles.

Posttraumatic stress disorder and government initiatives to relieve

The article gives an insight of what happens to the men and women who go fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of these men and women end up dead but there are thousands who come back with physical injuries that leave permanent scars in their lives.it points out the increase in the mental health crisis among the soldiers that are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan which is termed as life altering and damaging to troops and veterans. The diagnoses of mental health problems mentioned are depression, abuse of substances and post traumatic stress disorder. Many men and women who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq also have a big potential of suffering from mental health problems. The wars in these zones have become so personal such that almost three quarters of the soldiers have reported that they at one point they have been in situations where they could be killed or severely injured. These reports are at a very high rate such that they knew someone who had died or was injured or a member of their team had been a casualty (Shea-porter, 2009).

A relationship between stressors of service and mental health problems is also shown. For instance a linear relationship between the level of combat and a positive screen for anxiety, acute stress, depression and other mental health problems is indicated.in a report for both depression and anxiety the likelihood of soldiers screening positive is 2.4 to 2.6 times if they are experiencing high combat as opposed to those experiencing low combat. Multiple deployments are what increase the incidences of mental health problems as those deployed more than once are more likely to screen positive for PTSD compared to first timers (Shea-porter, 2009).

Additional help in dealing with the emotional toll that the soldiers experience due to the multiple deployments is required. This is through programs that help address psychological health.

Assessment & Critique

The information from the article can be trusted since there are real examples give like the soldier who shot his comrades. From this we can see that the issue of post traumatic stress disorder is real and thus has to be dealt with. There are also real examples of ongoing initiatives to try and deal with psychological problems faced by soldiers. The author has demonstrated a high critical thinking standard by the way he is expressing the issue in the article. However, there has been a failure in some aspect of critical thinking whereby there is no indication whatsoever of whether the programs have been successful. There is no information of whether or not there has been a reduction in the number of incidences pertaining to mental health problems among those who have gone through the programs.

Reflection

The article is very useful as it brings out a real problem that is occurring today. This article is very useful in my study as I can use it to give advice to soldiers who might be going through PTSD hence find a way of overcoming this. The information in the article is in line with information from other scholarly articles as they both show an increase in cases of PTSD among soldiers deployed in war zones.

Deployment stressors and posttraumatic stress symptomatology

Summary

The article compares active duty and national guard/reserve personnel when it comes to deployment stressors and post traumatic stress symptomatology. The article highlights on the increase of deployment of National Guard and Reserve in the war zones over the last few decades. The number of soldiers deployed from NG/R has gone up by 40%.the NG/R personal are older, in comparison with active duty personnel. Some main differences between the active duty personnel and NG/R personnel are pointed out. These include training that the NG/R receive is different from active duty personnel. while the active duty personnel can build and reinforce their skills daily, the NG/R train only a weekend in every month and two weeks during summer. Maybe due to the different military roles the NG/R personnel are separated from their families a few times because of military commitments. Therefore, they are adequately prepared to deal with military separation as compared to active duty personnel.

Two types of stressors are mentioned; mission related stressors associated with warfare circumstances or interpersonal stressors that result from pressure that comes from an individual being separated from their family and working closely with other troops (Wiley, 2008).

Mission related stressors that have implications of post deployment health include; combat exposure, difficult working and living, experience of perceived threat, and lack of preparedness for their deployment. Most of these stressors are relevant for NG/R personnel .For example, they receive less training as compare to the active duty personnel thus they are likely to receive the perceived threat in response to the actual combat circumstance and they might feel they are less prepared for being deployed when compared to active duty personnel. (Wiley, 2008).

Interpersonal stressors have not been given so much attention; however findings indicate that issues related to family disruptions, sexual harassment and lack of social support that is given during deployment have an implication on the post deployment adjustment. Concerns about family disruptions and lack of social support are strongly associated with NG/R personnel.as highlighted previously, the NG/R personnel experience less family separation compared to active duty personnel thus they might experience more concerns which are related to family disruptions. All these facts highlighted were a hypothesis of a study that was to be conducted.

The study involved sampling of 495 Gulf war veterans. The measures to be taken were taken and scale consisted of; combat experience, perceived threat, difficult living and working environment, concerns of family relationship and disruptions, sexual harassment, and deployment social support this followed a calculation of deployment stressors and PTSS. From the results, the hypothesis that NG/R soldiers reported more deployment stressors compared to active duty soldiers was not supported (Wiley, 2008).The report suggested that both of them experienced the use stressors when they are deployed.

Assessment & Critique

The information in the article can be trusted since it was got from an actual study that was carried out among 495 Gulf War veterans. The data collected was critically analyzed thus we can comfortably say that the information in the article is reliable. The author demonstrates critical thinking through the way a comparison between NG/R and active duty soldiers is done. However, I think that the author missed out on critical thinking standard when it came to the research method used. The author used quantitative analysis on the data .I think if the method used was qualitative then better and clearer results would be achieved.