Post Trauma In Veterans

In my own definition a trauma can be described as an event that upsets the individual’s normal causing psychological, physical, and emotional harm. A trauma has different meanings to each individual however, anyone can experience a trauma. Bessel A. van der Kolk an expert in the field of traumatic stress states that, “experiencing trauma is an essential part of being human; history is written in blood” (Van der Kolk, McFlarlane, &Weisaeth, 2007). Some examples of a trauma include rape, physical abuse, violence, war, and injury. A trauma does not always require the victim to be to be the one experiencing the initial threat in fact; the victim may simply be a witness or a person offering help during the traumatic event. A DSM-IV criterion
However, the vast majority of people fail to understand the long-term effects of trauma; therefore, they do not understand why the victim cannot move forward. When attempting to understand the question we must first consider people who dealt with similar situations such as Iraq war veterans. Why does one of the veterans return to normal functioning while the other one develops Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? Though there is no clear-cut reason the “physiological phenomena persist, traumatized people cannot tune out the repetitive stimuli that other people who find merely annoying; rather they respond to each repetition as though it were new and dangerous” (Lewin,1992). Although the answer is far more complicated than the statement above, it offers you a small glimpse as to how the victim’s brain functions afterwards. There are also three major psychological components of trauma: terror, helplessness and powerless, and abandonment and social isolation (Lewin, 1992). Essentially, the victims of trauma loss the ability trust in those around them because they may feel as if they were failed. The human capacity for cruelty and evil painfully challenges our desire to believe in a just world (Lewin,
Childhood trauma, including abuse and neglect, is probably the single most important public health challenge in the United States, a challenge that has the potential to be largely resolved by appropnate prevention and intervention (van der Kolk, 2005). Trauma as a child can affect the child’s entire life unknowingly especially if they go untreated. However, this is often the case in today’s society. The results of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV), 2* Field Trial suggested that trauma has its most pervasive impact during the first decade of life and becomes more circumscribed (i.e., more like "pure" PTSD) with age (van der Kolk, 2005). Most psychologists agree that the DSM criterion does not effectively describe the trauma and the effects on the developing child. One of the problems the DSM criteria faces is the fact that the complex reaction is based strictly on military soldiers. As a result, the reactions of those involved in combat were likely significantly different from those of immature individuals whose exposure to traumatic stress was ongoing and related to family life (Courtois, 2004). Another difficulty facing clinicians during the assessment process of the child victim is the child’s inability to properly express their emotions. This may be due to their age or it can be the impact of the trauma.