Soldiers Not Getting Needed Help for PTSD
National Guard Sgt. Chuck Rice shows some classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. As a veteran, he's eligible for free counseling. But he hasn't gone.Rice, 37, just doesn't want to deal with the bureaucracy and the 40-minute drive to the nearest VA counseling center. His wife, April, said he views seeking help as a sign of weakness.PTSD is one of the most common mental disorders arising from combat. With 1.5 million having served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as many as 300,000 could have some form of PTSD, health experts say.
The Observer found that the VA, the main agency responsible for treating veterans, is understaffed, underfunded and unprepared for the wave of returning service members.
Rice served on about 50 convoys as a turret gunner, one of the most exposed and dangerous duties in Iraq. Every car, dead dog, or cluster of trash could hide that bomb with his name on it. In his year in Iraq, Rice walked away from three roadside blasts. Such bombs account for 38 percent of the 3,466 U.S. casualties.
The danger "didn't bother me over there," he said, finishing a Bud Lite at Chili's in Gastonia. What bothers him now are crowds, traffic and noises -- loud, sudden noises.
Here is a list of symptoms:
Symptoms
Symptoms can include general restlessness, insomnia, aggressiveness, depression, dissociation, emotional detachment, and nightmares. A potential symptom is memory loss about an aspect of the traumatic event. Amplification of other underlying psychological conditions may also occur. Young children suffering from PTSD will often re-enact aspects of the trauma through their play and may often have nightmares that lack any recognizable content.
One patho-psychological way of explaining PTSD is by viewing the condition as secondary to deficient emotional or cognitive processing of a trauma.[13] This view also helps to explain the three symptom clusters of the disorder:[14]
Intrusion: Since the sufferers are unable to process the extreme emotions brought about by the trauma, they are plagued by recurrent nightmares or daytime flashbacks, during which they graphically re-experience the trauma. These re-experiences are characterized by high anxiety levels and make up one part of the PTSD symptom cluster triad called intrusive symptoms.
Hyperarousal: PTSD is also characterized by a state of nervousness with the patient being prepared for "fight or flight". The typical hyperactive startle reaction, characterized by "jumpiness" in connection with loud unexpected sounds or fast motions, is typical for another part of the PTSD cluster called hyperarousal symptoms and could also be secondary to an incomplete processing, similar to a reflex.
Avoidance: The hyperarousal and the intrusive symptoms are eventually so distressing that the individual strives to avoid contact with everything and everyone, even their own thoughts, which may arouse memories of the trauma and thus provoke the intrusive and hyperarousal states. The sufferers isolate themselves, becoming detached in their feelings with a restricted range of emotional response and can experience so-called emotional detachment ("numbing"). Many Veterans with PTSD may also use avoidance as a technique to avoid losing control and harming others. This avoidance behavior is the third part of the symptom triad that makes up the PTSD criteria.
Dissociation: Dissociation is another "defense" that includes a variety of symptoms including feelings of depersonalization and derealization, disconnection between memory and affect so that the person is "in another world," and in extreme forms can involve apparent multiple personalities and acting without any memory ("losing time").
Labels: PTSD, U.S. Soldiers in dager
posted by Greg @ 10:16 AM
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