¶ … Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on one's well being can be problematic if not successfully understood and incorporated within a person's psyche. The purpose of this essay is to critically review the literature on the diagnosis, etiology, and treatment of PTSD from a "biopsychosocial" perspective. This approach is holistic in nature and is helpful in understanding that nature of disorders and their place within the medical profession. Disorders are important because they suggest a relative problem and not an objective problem. Order is subjective and the need to view PTSD from a more objective viewpoint is helpful in learning what its study can truly do for those who are suffering from the ill effects of trauma. While trauma is inherent in the human condition, successful ways of dealing with this issue of life development have not been adequately expressed in a cohesive manner. This essay attempts to bridge these gaps of misunderstanding through the examination of empirical example, thorough research and well define terms, in a summation of literature relevant to the topic at hand.
Literature Review
Haugen et al. (2013) presented a useful article on the idea of treating those with PTSD experienced through attacks of 9/11. This research article documented the treatments of first responders through three different core techniques. These techniques were highlighted as useful tools in treating PTSD in such a manner. The article was premised on the fact that there were many people traumatized on the days of the terrorist attacks and nearly 60,000 worked in the aftermath and rescue effort. The trauma imposed on this group of people was used as a basis to measure the effects of desired treatments.
The authors suggested that three interventions:
1. Meaning Making
2. Following the Affect
3. Interpreting Defenses all support an integrative means of blending successful patterns of treatment into one simple system. The authors suggested that "the interventions are components of a cohesive,...
The goal of treatment is to help the patient to "reestablish a sense of purpose and meaning in life and hope for the future, in spite of the fear and loss inspired by the trauma" (Krupnick, 2002, p. 77). Such meaning making is associated with but not equivalent to symptom reduction and is facilitated by focusing on the most affect-laden parts of the traumatic memories and helping the patient to relax implicit avoidance strategies on which they have relied."
This article is useful because it provides a useful model in treating trauma victims in a comprehensive manner. The research in the article does not provide success rates or empirical example about the long ranges success of these intervention treatments discussed in the articles. This is admitted in the article, and is listed as a limitation to the research. The article was useful in other ways because it demonstrated an holistic approach to a problem that was well reasoned and clear to understand.
Peri & Gofman (2013) presented an intervention model for patients suffering from PTSD symptoms in their research article. Their research was premised on the idea that there is a very high rate of PTSD patients who are not effectively treated and that a new approach is called for to help in this dearth of healing. The authors wrote "we propose that current psychotherapies for PTSD concentrate on extinction of conditioned fear responses and on correcting impaired cognitive networks that cause uncontrolled anxiety and fear in innocuous situations, although other emotions commonly associated with trauma -- such as guilt, shame and anger (Brewin, 2011) -- are not directly addressed by current evidence based interventions."
The authors offered a treatment called Narrative Reconstruction (NR) to help address the problems with intrusive symptoms of PTSD. They wrote "NR is a brief and focused intervention (up to 12 sessions) combining…
