PTSD: Trauma & Its Psychological & Biological Reactions - Essay Sample

Introduction

Post-traumatic stress disorder develops from when someone experiences and witnesses a distressing event. It occurs when one experiences natural disasters, rape, war, serious accidents, terrorist acts, child abuse, and any activities that cause physical and mental harm. When people are exposed to or experience trauma, their psychological and biological reactions can be stiff and painful. People who have witnessed a traumatic event may have transitory difficulty coping and adjusting, though, with proper maintenance, they get better with time. In most cases, people recover naturally from the initial symptoms. Those affected tend to show reactions such as fear, guilt, anger, shock, and even nervousness. For many people, these reactions are common and go away after some time. However, for someone with PTSD, these feelings continue and increasingly become strong, keeping the person from enjoying a healthy life (Dunn et al., 2017). If a person continues to have these problems, he may be diagnosed with PTSD. Symptoms show longer than a month, thus interfering with a person's normal functioning before the occurrence of the event.

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Symptoms of Post-traumatic stress disorder may appear within a month regarding the traumatic event though symptoms may not sometimes appear until years later. PTSD signs cause vital problems in relationships and work or social situations. Further, they can hinder a person from performing typical daily responsibilities. These symptoms are categorized into four groups, which include:

Avoidance:

may include staying away from particular objects or places that remind someone of the distressing event. It can lead to isolation and detachment feelings from friends and family, more also loss of attention in accomplishments that the person adored once. However, a person may dynamically avoid a place or person that may stimulate irresistible symptoms.

Relieving:

Relieving symptoms can jolt from an individual's sensation and thoughts. They include nightmares, flashbacks, and hallucinations. People with PTSD may sense great pain when certain things remind them about the ordeal, such as the events anniversary date.

Cognitive and mood:

They refer to feelings and thoughts associated with rupture, guilt, and memories of the distressing event. In some instances, cognitive symptoms can extend in including sensitivity or out of an experience that the world is unreal.

Arousal symptoms:

They are constant symptoms and are never generated by things that hark back the traumatic event. They include difficulty falling or staying asleep, Excessive emotions, problems with others, and showing affection or feelings, anger outbursts, concentration difficulty, irritability, and being startled easily. People with PTSD may also suffer physical signs such as diarrhea, vomiting, high blood pressure, and heart rate, muscle strain, and rapid breathing.

Every person reacts differently to traumatic events. Everyone has unique ways of managing stress and fear and how to handle the danger posed by the situation. For instance, not all people who witnesses or experiences trauma develop Post-traumatic stress disorder. However, teens and children can have overwhelming responses to trauma though symptoms may differ from those of adults. Young children's symptoms may include: forgetting exactly how to talk, clingy on people, and wetting the bed.

Additionally, teenagers are expected to show alike warning sign as those experienced in grownups. They might show bad, disruptive, or impolite manners (Dunn et al., 2017). Mature children may have vengeful thoughts and the guilt feeling for not stopping deaths or these situations from happening. The type of support and help given to a PTSD person influences the severity and development. Further PTSD was initially brought into the medical community consideration by war veterans. However, PTSD can occur on any person who has experienced a distressing event that impends violence or death. Risk factors that promote resilience can surge somebody’s probability of developing PTSD.

Post-traumatic stress disorder cases are alarming, with about 60% of men and 50% of women facing at least single trauma (Kendig et al., 2018). PTSD has numerous occurrences though in most cases, people may not develop it yet the experienced injury. People living with PTSD develop traumatic feelings or thoughts long after the event has occurred. Diagnostic results positive after not less than a month since the traumatic event. At this point, doctors begin by performing a physical exam and complete medical history for evaluation by aids of several tests on physical illness as symptoms' leading cause.

The victim may be referred to mental health professionals like psychologists and psychiatrists, amongst others specialized in diagnosis and treatment. Psychiatric conditions or PTSD presence in a person involves reported symptoms, and functional problems caused evaluated through assessment tools and designed interview by the specialists. They then determine how PTSD is indicated through the degree of dysfunction symptoms. However, doctors may easily misdiagnose through this process since most patients do not disclose entirely about their symptoms, due to the fear of being diagnosed or perceived with PTSD and minimal knowledge of what causes their symptoms.

Recent interventions show that nurses have a substantial role in patients with trauma injuries aimed to access whether they are ready to discuss symptoms (Kendig et al., 2018). They allow veterans to gain control and develop empowerment sense over their symptoms since they understand how the patient feels and opens up a healing pathway by building a trust-based and communicative relationship with them. Trust and communication are mostly established on various techniques such as listening, developing confidence, refraining, and normalizing responses. A nurse should be able to relate directly to feelings caused by a traumatic event and better understand the patient by making them continue speaking out their opinions. There are also long-term interventions such as therapies performed that healthcare practitioners and mental health nurses conduct following a trauma event. Treatments aim to help patients be aware of their feelings, thoughts, or behavioral patterns and replace them with health and more positive trends. Patients are taught how unhealthy thinking leads to negative thoughts, causing things such as substance abuse and a decline in healthy social relationships thee had previously. Once they are aware of unhealth thinking in connection to negative thoughts, they are aware of their universal life symptoms and detrimental behaviors. Nurses play an integral role as frontlines in meeting and caring despite the challenges they face and lack of information in depth in the process.

Naturally, one may get afraid in a traumatic situation. Fear also causes the body to respond in a response called flight and fight action to help defend in case of danger or protection from harm and avoid it. Almost everyone who experiences a traumatic event recovers from it naturally except that others also remain to experience the difficulties, thus identified with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Eventually, this causes individuals to experience shocks and fears, even when they are not in danger. The aftermath of the events starts within the first three months of the incident and, at times, takes years to experience and not beyond six months for its consequences to end and after stressors. These responses are more intense and severe than anyone's expectations, thus resulting in withdrawing from other people, including hopeless, sad, and tense feelings and subsequent physical manifestations tremors, headaches, and palpations as earlier highlighted. Notably, it would be best if you observed the likelihood of Post Traumatic disorder in social interactions, especially in crucial areas of life like school, work, or another essential day to day life occupation. It is an anxiety disorder following a shocking event that makes it hard for one to live a healthy life. Mostly with its unpleasant and painful emotions, you might encounter memory flashbacks or total memory loss.

Medications and lengthy treatment psychotherapy can be applied effectively to end Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, Therapy is the most preferred as the best remedy in case of an escalating situation. It mainly aimed to apply the three main goals, to restore self-esteem, teach you skills to deal with it, and improve one's symptoms. These Therapies fall under the roof of cognitive-behavioral Therapy and are possible by sharing your trauma and keeping attention on where your fears are emanating (Kendig et al., 2018). Although the magnitude varies, it is always advised to take family or group therapies instead of as an individual being.

It’s noteworthy that Cognitive Processing Therapy is twelve weeks of treatment at intervals of 60-90 sessions every week (Mithoefer et al., 2018). It is also imperative to share with your therapist about the incidence of that traumatic event. Consider writing the details explaining the chronology of facts about what happened. This also helps you understand and help you think about the traumatic event and develop new mechanisms to live with it. For instance, in case someone may keep on blaming themselves, and thus a therapist can advise on taking into account all the things beyond control and how to move forward in sense and understanding by accepting that it was no one's fault from how things happened.

To ease tension and anxiety, a therapist advises and teaches the patient on breathing techniques so that they may not think about what happened. Another may recommend someone to go home and listen to a recording of your voice. Therapy may also entail an Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing in which it is unnecessary to have a therapist. Instead, you focus on it when listening or watching what they are doing by flashing a light, moving a hand, or making a sound. It may take an estimated three months in weekly self-therapy sessions. Also included in Cognitive Behavior Therapy is Stress Inoculation Training (SIT), which is also done by a group or yourself involves getting a massage and breathing techniques with the aim of stopping negative thoughts and subsequent relaxing the mind and body.

Medications are an effective way of treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder such that it helps you from thinking or reacting about the whole ordeal also improves on a more positive and feeling a healthy way of life. There are, in turn, several recommended medications to alter anxiety and brain generated fear. Physicians focus on first administering medications that reach neurotransmitters Serotonin or norepinephrine (SSRIs and SNRIs) like Paroxetine, Sertraline, Venlafaxine, and Fluoxetine (Mithoefer et al., 2018). The one already approved by the FDA is Sertraline and paroxetine because people don't respond the same on drugs the type or presentation of PTSD. These drugs are "Prescribed Only Medicine." Benzodiazepines, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, or second-generation antipsychotics Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are also remedying to PTSD but taken only as per the doctor's advice.