Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
I have recently started to notice the emerging dominance of this most recent awareness campaign on social media. The campaign aims to raise awareness of veteran suicide and mental health conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The campaign draws our attention to the fact that an average 22 veterans commit suicide each day in the US, according to a report from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Additionally, one active military member commits suicide daily, as well.
Data about suicide in the UK armed forces seems harder to come by. When looking for information, it appears that there is a lack of data detailing the picture here in the UK. Although it is suggested that more British soldiers commit suicide than die in battle.
Data from the MOD suggests that 754 UK Army personnel had at least one episode of care related to PTSD from 2011 – 2013, provided either in the community or via psychiatric inpatient stay.
To help this campaign this blog will focus on PTSD.
So what is PTSD?
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can result from exposure to trauma. PTSD involves four main types of symptoms:
- Re-experiencing (repeatedly reliving) the trauma. This can be in the form of nightmares, memories that push their way into your mind or images, flashbacks, or intense emotional or physical reactions to reminders of the trauma. These symptoms frequently leave you feeling scared, anxious and concerned that you are going mad.
- Hyper arousal. This includes sleep problems, anger/irritability, and concentration problems, always feeling on edge or on guard, jumpiness, and being easily startled. Increased arousal could also include physical symptoms, such as pounding heartbeat, sweating, dizziness, and rapid breathing. These symptoms keep you stressed and eventually exhausted.
- Avoidance of trauma reminders. This may include trying not to think or talk about the trauma, or trying not to have feelings about it. It may also include staying away from activities, people, places, and situations that bring up trauma memories. These symptoms leave you feeling apart from the people and surroundings in your life.
- Emotional numbing. This includes losing interest in activities that used to be important to you, feeling detached or estranged from important people in your life, feeling unable to have normal emotions, and losing a sense that you have a long-term future. These symptoms diminish your relationships with those closest to you.
Some facts about PTSD
The symptoms of PTSD are often accompanied by other problems, such as depression/hopelessness, drug/alcohol abuse, relationship problems, pain and other physical symptoms (e.g., headaches, stomach upset). Symptoms may not emerge immediately after the traumatic event. Sometimes it is weeks, months, or even years before the symptoms develop. Not everyone develops PTSD.
We do not know all the reasons why some people develop PTSD and others do not, but some of the factors involved include genetic vulnerability to anxiety, previous experience with trauma, and presence of other life stressors, lack of coping skills and/or social support. In the UK, about 8% of the population will have PTSD symptoms at some point in their lives.
PTSD is treatable. There are a number of interventions available that have been shown to markedly reduce or even eliminate the symptoms of PTSD (Karlin, et al., 2010). This is not a condition you need to live with forever. Although you cannot change history, you can change the way your history affects your life now.
You can recover from trauma!
PTSD and the Brain
Prefrontal Cortex – is the part of our brain that allows us to think, plan and make decisions.
Two brain structures that play an important role in PTSD are the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala activates the body’s alarm system (the fight or flight response). When the brain perceives a threat, the amygdala becomes active and sends messages to the rest of the body to prepare for danger. The amygdala also processes emotional memories.
The hippocampus is responsible for processing information about your life and experiences and storing it away in long term memory for later use. Under normal circumstances, these regions communicate with one another and with the rest of the brain in a smooth fashion. However, traumatic stress disrupts the communication between these different areas. The logical, rational parts of your brain cannot get the message through to the amygdala that the danger is over and it’s okay to relax. The hippocampus cannot take the emotional information processed by the amygdala and store it away as a long term memory. So your memories of trauma stay with you all the time, and you continue to feel as if you are in constant danger.
For more information:
Kind Minds Blog 