Flashback Episodes Experienced by Vietnam

¶ … flashback episodes experienced by Vietnam Veterans who are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The proposal is for research that will investigate the triggers, length and number of flashback experienced by this population. There were five sources used to complete this proposal.

When the movie Fourth of July starring Tom Cruise hit the theaters years ago it brought an eye opening revelation to America about the problems Vietnam Veterans brought home with them. For awhile, the public was sympathetic to their plight but as with anything else that hits the public's eye, it was soon replaced by the next movie and the plight of the veterans fell by the wayside, however there are still thousands of Vietnam veterans walking around each day with problems that were caused by the war. One of the most significant but also misunderstood issues for Vietnam Veterans is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the impact it has on their lives. PTSD is a syndrome that brings many symptoms with it including the propensity to cause the sufferer to periodically enter a disassociate state, commonly referred to as a flashback. In the most public cases flashbacks have been blamed as a defense for murder trials however, most veterans who suffer from flashbacks do not murder. Instead they suffer silently making it difficult for them to perform the daily duties that many people take for granted. This proposal is for a research study that will focus on flashbacks. It will attempt to answer three main questions, (1) What if anything triggers a flashback for a Vietnam Veteran? (2) What is the average duration of such flashbacks? (3) What are the number of flashbacks when it occurs and how long is the average time between flashback episodes?

STATEMENT of PROBLEM

Flashbacks can be life altering as they create a situation in which the sufferer actually disassociates from his or her routine and normal personality and takes on the personality of an alter person. In the case of Vietnam Veterans this is often triggered by events that remind them on a subconscious level of something they experienced while in the combat zone of the Vietnam Veteran conflict. These flashbacks can interfere with a person's ability to maintain a marriage, a family, a job and can lead to substance abuse issues or thoughts of suicide as depression becomes severe. It is important to identify the key elements of a flashback so that effective treatments or management techniques can become part of the treatment plan.

LITERATURE REVIEW flashback is the layman term used to describe a person going into a disassociate state of mind. When this occurs many people refer to it has having multiple personalities.

It is a time when a person's mind leaves the normalcy that most people are grounded in and the term for that time period is called a fugue (Fuque, 2003).

While in some cases the person suffering from the flashback forgets their autobiographical information many times for the Vietnam Veteran it is not so much a forgetting who they are but an episode of forgetting where they are and that they are no longer on the battlefield of war (Fuque, 2003).

One of the problems with flashback episodes is that the person who has it does not remember its occurrence once it has passed.

Vietnam Veteran who has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and suffers from flashbacks may intimidate those around him as he carries out what he perceives to be strategic maneuvers, carries out battlefield orders and forces others to take cover as the imagined shells explode around him (Fuque, 2003).

When it is over he will not remember any of the events that occurred during the flashback and become despondent over that he is told he did during this fugue.

Flashbacks can create stressful environments as the family or co-workers try to figure out what triggers them and work to avoid having that trigger occur. It can and does destroy family relationships, marriages and can lead to alcohol and drug abuse issues as well as unemployment and homelessness (Fuque, 2003).

In a case study conducted in 1999 a Vietnam Veteran who suffered from flashbacks was found to be suffering with Post traumatic Stress Disorder. This veteran had several recurrent disassociate episodes before seeking treatment and reported that each of the flashbacks revolved around a particular event or incident that had happened during the war (Clinical and Research Reports http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/13/1/101

Dissociative Flashbacks After Right Frontal Injury in a Vietnam Veteran With Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder).

The study was actually focused on the fact the vet had suffered a brain injury that preceded the onset of flashbacks but within that case study the triggers, duration and elements of the flashback episodes were brought to light.

In this study the participant was a 49-year-old Vietnam War veteran. He reported upon admittance that he was suffering from recurring confusion related to his war experiences.

During the current hospitalization, C.G presented several flashback episodes that were witnessed by the attending nurse and neurology staff. The content of the dissociative flashbacks was extremely realistic and clearly reproduced the index incident that C.G. had lived while he was in Vietnam. He apparently experienced frightening visual and auditory hallucinations, describing the attack on the refugee village in great detail. During the dissociative episodes, he acted as if he were back in Vietnam, and on one occasion he even wrote: "I can't go into great detail for 'security reasons.' I saw men burnt alive in a vehicle and a whole village (mainly children and old people) killed with gas. I was caught and tortured...but escaped.... The bastards!!! (Clinical and Research Reports http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/13/1/101

Dissociative Flashbacks After Right Frontal Injury in a Vietnam Veteran With Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder)"

During these episode he also drew symbols and wrote words that could be associated with the negative experience of war, IE "napalm gas" (Clinical and Research Reports http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/13/1/101

Dissociative Flashbacks After Right Frontal Injury in a Vietnam Veteran With Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder).

During this research case study the observed flashbacks occurred several times per day and each episode lasted several minutes before he would come out of it and have no memory about what had just happened (Clinical and Research Reports http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/13/1/101

Dissociative Flashbacks After Right Frontal Injury in a Vietnam Veteran With Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder).

Another study examined the duration of the disorder and how long after coming home could triggers still occur. In addition the study looked at what the triggers were that caused the symptoms to come forth including flashback episodes.

The study found that the Gulf War was often a trigger for symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder including flashbacks. In addition there was a higher reported incidence of substance abuse among Vietnam Veterans during the Gulf War years (Wild, 2003).

For Vietnam veterans, the Persian Gulf War was a reminder of a time in their lives when they, voluntarily or involuntarily, went to war for their country. For some Vietnam veterans who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the conflict in the Middle East intensified their flashbacks to traumatic incidents in Vietnam and reactivated feelings of frustration, anger, and depression. Even for Vietnam veterans who are not suffering from PTSD, the conflict may have reawakened memories -- some positive, some negative, and most long-repressed -- from the Vietnam era (Kobrick, 1993)."

Research has concluded that almost 500,000 Vietnam Veterans suffer from some from of PTSD including episodic flashbacks.