Psychology: Psychological Trauma and Traumatic Event Essay

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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder. The symptoms can develop after an experience of an extremely traumatic stressor, an example would be death or serious injury. Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the situation through flashbacks, hallucinations, or nightmares. Uncontrollable thoughts about the event can be a symptom too. If you go through PTSD, it’s difficult adjusting back to normal and hard to cope. Traumatic reactions usually get better with time and taking care of your self. This isn’t always the case though. In some situations, the symptoms can worsen and last for months or even sometimes years. You must have the symptoms last for more than a month and cause a significant difference in social, occupation, or other areas. Some people will never be the same and will be shaken up for the rest of there life. This is when you know you may have post-traumatic stress disorder. There are causes for posttraumatic stress disorder. It’s believed that PTSD is caused by the experience of a wide range of very traumatic and severe events. People who are involved in the military, victims of a natural disaster, camps, and violent crime are at high risk for getting PTSD. The causes of the symptoms come from witnessing an event involving death, serious injury, or threat in a situation. A child could develop this disorder by experiencing bullying. Persons who have an occupation that expose them to violence or disasters are at high risk for getting PTSD. Those are ways you can get PTSD, now here are the symptoms.
Post-traumatic stress disorder will typically start within a three months span, some cases it may not appear for years after the event. There are three types of PTSD: intrusive memories, avoidance and numbing, and increased anxiety or emotional arousal. Intrusive memories include the symptoms of flash backs, you may relive the traumatic event for minutes or even days. You may have upsetting dreams about the event too. The symptoms of avoidance and emotional numbing include the feeling of being numb, avoiding activities you once enjoyed, hopelessness about the future, memory problems, trouble concentrating, and the difficulty maintaining close relationships. The symptoms of anxiety and increased emotional arousal include the irritability of anger, overwhelming guilt or shame, trouble sleeping, being easily startled or frightened, and hearing or seeing things that aren’t there. All of these symptoms may come and go. You may just get post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms when you are stressed and have a reminder of what you went through. Simple things may remind you of an event and give you a flashback. You may feel overcome by memories of your own assault. If you have some of these symptoms, should you go to a doctor?
Most people will have a wide range of feelings and emotions after a traumatic event. This does not mean you have post-traumatic stress disorder. If you still have disturbing thoughts and feelings after a month then you may need to go
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