PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The cost of freedom, the ghosts of pain ...

When a person enters the military, becomes a police officer, or takes on the altruistic role of a firefighter, the reasons for them taking on such a difficult role oftentimes boils down to vocation, calling and an inner desire to serve for the common good. Along with the desire to serve in often perilous situations is the constant beating that their human psyche takes over time and exposure to traumatic situations. This psychological beating can manifest in PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

This lens will explore PTSD primarily among veterans.

PTSD Links
New Guestbook

A Brief History of PTSD

During the early 1800's military doctors began diagnosing soldiers with "exhaustion" following the stress of battle. This "exhaustion" was characterized by mental shutdown due to individual or group trauma. The only treatment for this "exhaustion" was to bring the afflicted soldiers to the rear for a while then send them back into battle. Through extreme and often repeated stress, the soldiers became fatigued as a part of their body's natural shock reaction.

During that time, in England, there was a syndrome know as "railway spine" or "railway hysteria" that bore a remarkable resemblance to what we call PTSD today, exhibited by people who had been in the catastrophic railway accidents of the period. In 1876 DR. Mendez DaCosta published a paper diagnosing Civil War combat veterans with "Soldiers Heart": The symptoms included startle responses, hyper-vigilance, and heart arrhythmia's.

During WWI overwhelming mental fatigue was diagnosed as "soldier's heart" and "the effort syndrome". An article published on a now restricted Internet web site maintained by Med. Access entitled "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" states that "...some 60,000 of the British forces were diagnosed with the problem and 44,000 of these were retired from the military because they could no longer function in combat". (www.medaccess.com/cfs/cfs_02.htm (this page is no longer accessible without a password))

The term "shell shock" emerged during WWI followed in WWII by the term "combat fatigue." These terms were used to describe those veterans who exhibited stress and anxiety as the result of combat trauma. The official designation of "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" did not come about until 1980 when the Third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was published.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This "bible", published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) provides the "official" definition of all mental illnesses. When first published in 1952 what we now know as PTSD was called "stress response syndrome" and was caused by "gross stress reaction".

In the DSM-II (1968), trauma-related disorders were lumped together in an area called "situational disorders".

New Wikipedia

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more terrifying events in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.National Institute of Mental Health, US National Institutes of Health It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma. This stressor may involve someone's actual death or a threat to the patient's or someone else's life, serious physical injury, or threat to physical and/or psychological integrity, to a degree that usual psychological defenses are incapable of coping. In some cases it can also be from profound psychological and emotional trauma, apart from any actual physical harm. Often, however, the two are combined.

PTSD is a condition distinct from traumatic stress, which is of less intensity and duration, and combat stress reaction, which is transitory. PTSD has also been recognized in the past as shell shock, traumatic war neurosis, or post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS).

read the rest of the Wikipedia article

PTSD Resources on Amazon

The list below focuses mainly on the Clinical Practitioner.

Am I missing some valuable resources? Please add them below.

Share your knowledge. Make a difference.

PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Rate this Lens

The cost of freedom, the ghosts of pain ...

Contents at a Glance

Explore related pages

A Brief History of PTSD

New Wikipedia

PTSD Resources on Amazon

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

#13

#14

#15

#16

#17

#18

#19

#20

#21

#22

#23

#24

#25

#26

#27

#28

#29

#30

#31

#32

#33

#34

#35

#36

#37

#38

#39

#40

Voila: Just copy and paste this code into your own site. Have fun!

Oopsey! Please login to Squidoo in order to add this module to your lens.

PTSD on YouTube

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

#13

#14

#15

Voila: Just copy and paste this code into your own site. Have fun!

Oopsey! Please login to Squidoo in order to add this module to your lens.

PTSD Links

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

^#1

^#2

^#3

^#4

^#5

^#6

^#7

^#8

^#9

^#10

^#11

^#12

^#13

^#14

^#15

^#16

^#17

^#18

^#19

^#20

^#21

^#22

^#23

^#24

^#25

^#26

^#27

^#28

^#29

^#30

^#31

^#32

^#33

^#34

^#35

^#36

^#37

^#38

^#39

^#40

^#1

^#2

^#3

^#4

^#5

^#6

^#7

^#8

^#9

^#10

^#11

^#12

^#13

^#14

^#15

^#1

^#2

^#3

^#4

^#5

^#6

^#7

^#8

^#9

^#10

^#11

^#12

^#13

^#14

^#15

^#16

^#17

^#18

^#19