PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

¶ … PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is highly based on individualized experiences and how the subject continues to hold on to negative experiences throughout their lives as a source of anxiety. Because of the individualization of the issue, case study presents an appropriate methodology to approach researching the issue. This allows researchers to consider the highly personal elements of individual's experiences, while also allowing research to connect larger concepts that are similar in a broader perspective.

Creswell's five approaches present a variety of methodologies and elements to specifically highlight certain areas of research. Grounded theory presents a situational context where the researcher allows the data to speak specifically for itself. Raw data is collected, often through interviews which are later transcribed into textual data sources. Then, coding connects frequently used concepts as a way to allow the subject's actual speech point to the appropriate theoretical approach. Within the framework of the narrative, the researcher collects extensive personal information about the subject as a way to create an extensive image of that individual's biography. This includes understanding how that personal biography correlates with important historical and social events within the context of that person's life. Through such correlation, stories are created to understand and explore the reasoning for social phenomenon. Ethnography takes much longer and is reliant mainly on cultural anthropology. It focuses on how individual narratives are so heavily influences by social cultural systems in place. Phenomenology is often used in order to present a solid philosophical foundation. It is often used with individuals who have actually experienced the phenomenon, and thus the research explores their personal experiences specifically. Finally, the Case Study uses specific cases to illustrate certain points of an issue. Multiple cases are often stronger within this methodology based on the frequency they provide for certain concepts as a way to provide greater strength within them. Looking at the specifics of each case allows researchers to generalize larger terms that fit over a broader spectrum of individuals and similar situational contexts. Thus case studies are often used in cases of PTSD.

The first case study examined here was conducted by Mark Sichel. Here, the case study theory allows the research to explore the personal experiences of the subject, Karen, as a way to understand broader conceptions of the issue at hand, PTSD. Karen, the subject, is aloud to go into great detail of her personal experience as a way to allow the research to extrapolate particular issues that have flared her PTSD. The specifics of her experience with the police have created within her a state of anxiety and fear. The dialogue presented by the researchers allows the reader to make connections of those larger emotions associated with PTSD with her own personal experiences. Moreover, larger symptoms of the disorder are presented, heavily correlated with her own unique experiences. Overwhelming anxiety, stress, the presence of nightmares, and the constant re-living of the experience that causes the stress is presented as common symptoms of the disorder, seen especially through her own contextual experience.