Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CBT)

Words: 1312
Pages: 6

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD is defined by the American Psychology Association as an anxiety problem that develops in some people after extremely traumatic events. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder affects many people. In fact, PTSD United states that 7-8% of people will have PTSD during their lifetime which is equivalent to the population of texas. 11-20% of current veterans develop PTSD and that is broken down where 306,000 of those veterans are from the Afghanistan/Iraq Involvement, 56,000 from the gulf war, and 830,000 from the vietnam war which is due to the gruesome guerrilla tactics used by the vietnamese people. Some of the largest signs of PTSD in people are anxiety in life, flashbacks to the point of trauma evoking hallucinations, …show more content…
Stated on the APA the most common forms of treatment for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder are medications and different forms of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. The medications are typically different forms of serotonin reuptake inhibitors to stabilize serotonin levels in the brain to lessen the hallucinogenic episodes. CBT focuses on different ways of introducing the trauma to the person and lessening reactions. Exposure therapy is a form of CBT that teaches veterans to gradually approach trauma-related memories, feelings, and situations that have been avoiding since trauma by using visuals, sounds, smells etc that correlate to the individual’s trauma. By confronting the challenges the goal is to decrease PTSD symptoms. Scents and Sensibility: A Molecular Logic of Olfactory Perception studies the strength of the olfactory system in the human body. It is by far the strongest sense in the human body and because of that it has a stronghold on perceptions of the external world for people. The article by Richard Axel even states, “our genes create only a substrate upon which experience can shape how we perceive the external world. Surely the smell of a madeleine does not elicit in all of us the ‘vast structure of recollection’ it evoked for Marcel Proust. For Proust, smell is the evocative sense, the sense that brings forth memory and associations with a richness not elicited by other sensory stimuli.” This proves the strength of the olfactory system In a study by the NeuroImage Clinic it was found that certain scents associated with war can actually lead to triggering of PTSD. This is significant because in another article on Springer by Mary P. Aiken and Mike J. Berry found that because of the fact that smells can trigger PTSD it also can be used to treat it because the purpose of exposure therapy is to expose the patient to the environments that caused their PTSD and smell plays a large role in