Justin Cruz
Professor Spalter
Introduction to sociology
3/20/13
Posttraumatic stress disorders
Once you begin to endure events that place a very high level of stress, you are at risk to experience the psychological disorder called post-traumatic stress disorder.
Introduction
Posttraumatic stress disorder usually consists of very real and lifelike nightmares of increased intensity. These nightmares usually are replays of an excruciating experience in one’s life. In post-traumatic stress disorder daytime flashbacks also occur, which the victim relieves the trauma. Most victims of post-traumatic stress disorders tend to let their social lives and jobs begin to fade. They also begin to stray away from their family responsibilities (Kashdan, Julian, Merritt, &Uswatte, 2006). There is no set time for post-traumatic stress disorder to begin. It can happen as soon as the event happens or days, weeks or even months after the traumatic event took place. In some rare cases, years passed by and then the victim would begin to feel a recovery from the experience. Then the symptoms would reappear then disappear again, only just to reoccur repeatedly. (Corales, 2005)
Posttraumatic Stress amongst Soldier’s
The most common sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorders are soldiers. Experiments showed that between 18.7% & 30.9% of Vietnam War soldiers have experienced symptoms of Posttraumatic stress disorders before at some point in their lives. (Dohrenwend et al., 2007; E.J. Ozer, Best, Lipsey, Weiss, 2003). It is believed that about one –third of the Iraq war veterans are currently suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder. Also the veterans of world war two who are now of very old age and had a large gap of time since there time at war, still feel the vicious effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. The veterans that are facing this psychological disorder all have vivid nightmares of the battlefield. The veterans still see all the guns that were drawn, the bombs that were dropped and the missiles that were launched. Recently a lot of therapists have been beginning to observe a new occurrence in the veterans. They are beginning to notice how veterans that seem healthy and look well-adjusted in there postwar lives begin to develop symptoms out of the blue. Most cases of like this happen once the victim reaches their “golden years”. The golden years are the time of life after retirement from active work. Cases of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Posttraumatic does not only affect those on the battlefield. Catastrophes can strike at any given moment. A natural disaster or any traumatic experience can trigger post-traumatic stress disorder to occur. There are numerous cases of individuals dealing with the hard disorder.
Case #1
The First example of someone who is dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder is about a 54 year old male named John. He witnessed the death of his grandson. His grandson died in an automobile accident after a semi-truck trailer crashed into the car John was driving with his grandson as a passenger in the front seat. This experience Changed john’s life quite drastically. Before the accident occurred, John was working as a small business operator. He was also very close to his family. Eight months after the accident occurred, john has started to begin having a series of flashbacks, reminding him of the accident. Those flashbacks sometimes cause him to lose track of where he is at and start feeling like if he is back at the scene of the accident. He is very frightened of these flashback episodes. To avoid them, john removed any reminders of his grandson. He took down pictures, and is not even able to talk about his grandson at all to friends and family. John does not even Visit his grandson’s burial site. Another way that john tries to escape thinking about his grandson is by increasing his workload. He started to work over 10 hours a day. John also had started going in to work
