PTSD Awareness

I receive weekly newsletters free from the American Journal of Medicine via email. I enjoy these emails because they are actual scholarly journal articles, and having taken 6 years to earn a 4 year degree in psychology, I spent a lot of time reading journal articles. I highly suggest that you sign up for this free service as well.*Here is the link to sign up. However, if it just isn't going to happen, I would like to share a bit of a recent article on PTSD from AMJ. And here is some basic info taken from the DSM4 ~Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition~
Table 1. Diagnostic Criteria for 309.81 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:
1. The person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others.
2. The person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: In children, this may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.
B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in 1 (or more) of the following ways:
1. Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollection of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions. Note: In young children, repetitive play may occur in which themes or aspects of the trauma are expressed.
2. Recurrent distressing dreams of the event. Note: In children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content.
3. Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.
4. Intense psychologic distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
5. Physiologic reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by 3 (or more) of the following:
1. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
2. efforts to avoid activities, places, or people who arouse recollections of the trauma
3. inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
4. markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
5. feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
6. restricted range of affect (eg, unable to have loving feelings)
7. sense of a foreshortened future (eg, does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)
D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by 2 (or more) of the following:
1. difficulty falling or staying asleep
2. irritability or outbursts of anger
3. difficulty concentrating
4. hypervigilance
5. exaggerated startle response
E. Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in criteria B, C, and D) is more than 1 month.
F. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
Specify if:
Acute: if duration of symptoms is less than 3 months
Chronic: if duration of symptoms is 3 months or more
Specify if:
With delayed onset: if onset of symptoms is at least 6 months after the stressor

*I post this because I think many folks experience PTSD without even recognizing what it is. This is not just a disorder found in persons associated with military combat or affected by terrorist activity. This is a disorder that can occur within extremely dysfunctional families, abusive relationships, and many domestic situations that happen everyday in America. So, please take a few moments to think about PTSD and how it affects the people in your life. *Beth