Understanding the Disorder Called Post-traumatic Stress

When a threatening experience or life-endangering or extremely scary thing happens the post-traumatic stress from this experience becomes a disorder known as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). When this disorder manifests, the individual will relive the life experience that caused the disorder making them stop interacting with other individuals, or places or anything that is a trigger to the bad experience. This is referred to as avoidance and anything else life brings will cause this individual to be subject to hyper-arousal (being overly stimulated).

Ever since 1980 this kind of terminology has been attributed to individuals who have been traumatized. During the time of the American Civil War this term was called soldier's heart because of the trauma endured by men in combat. Combat fatigue is the term used during World War I and during World War II the term used was gross stress reaction. PTSD or post-Vietnam syndrome was used for soldiers with shell shock and battle fatigue during the time of the Vietnam War.

When there are symptoms that last for lengthy periods from experiencing trauma or a string of traumatic events the disorder is referred to as C-PTSD or complex post-traumatic stress disorder. This will paralyze the sufferer's ability to function in a social situation and cause emotional stress.
Americans who suffer from PTSD during their life experience are about 8 percent of the population. Those who suffer from this disorder are typically those who are victims of rape or veterans of combat. In the comparisons between ethnic groups, those who live in the United States and are Caucasians have a lower occurrence of this disorder as compared to Native Americans, African Americans and Hispanics. Members of these ethnic groups have a tendency to take the responsibility for the trauma on themselves which is called peri-traumatic because there is little support from peers and also because of a difference in their expression of the trauma suffered. Men are less likely to develop PTSD than women by two to one.

Teenagers and even small children are known to suffer from trauma that results in PTSD by 40 percent. The common causes of developing PTSD in children are those who have been sexually abused, seen the death of a parent or are survivors of some type of disaster. Virtually all of these children end up with this disorder while greater than one-third who are victims of violence in the community will develop PTSD.

When an individual becomes an outpatient of a facility for suffers of mental health issues, nearly half have been diagnosed with PTSD. During the post stress from the 2001 terrorist invasion, it was shown that PTSD became present even in those who were not physically at the sight of the assault.