PTSD Awareness Day 2024 is on Thursday, June 27, 2024: Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

Thursday, June 27, 2024 is PTSD Awareness Day 2024. National PTSD Awareness Day - Give An Hour Connected PTSD Awareness Day image

Again, I am not sure if you meant to ask about PTSD in general or about PTSD among victims of abusive relationships. I assume the latter.

(I use "she" throughout this article but it applies to male victims as well)

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Acute Stress Disorder (or Reaction) are not typical responses to prolonged abuse. They are the outcomes of sudden exposure to severe or extreme stressors (stressful events). Some victims whose life or body have been directly and unequivocally threatened by an abuser react by developing these syndromes. PTSD is, therefore, typically associated with the aftermath of physical and sexual abuse in both children and adults.

One's (or someone else's) looming death, violation, personal injury, or powerful pain are sufficient to provoke the behaviours, cognitions, and emotions that together are known as PTSD. Even learning about such mishaps may be enough to trigger massive anxiety responses.

The first phase of PTSD involves incapacitating and overwhelming fear. The victim feels like she has been thrust into a nightmare or a horror movie. She is rendered helpless by her own terror. She keeps re-living the experience through recurrent and intrusive visual and auditory hallucinations ("flashbacks") or dreams. In some flashbacks, the victim completely lapses into a dissociative state and physically re-enacts the event while being thoroughly oblivious to her whereabouts.

In an attempt to suppress this constant playback and the attendant exaggerated startle response (jumpiness), the victim tries to avoid all stimuli associated, however indirectly, with the traumatic event. Many develop full-scale phobias (agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear of heights, aversion to specific animals, objects, modes of transportation, neighbourhoods, buildings, occupations, weather, and so on).

Most PTSD victims are especially vulnerable on the anniversaries of their abuse. They try to avoid thoughts, feelings, conversations, activities, situations, or people who remind them of the traumatic occurrence ("triggers").

This constant hypervigilance and arousal, sleep disorders (mainly insomnia), the irritability ("short fuse"), and the inability to concentrate and complete even relatively simple tasks erode the victim's resilience. Utterly fatigued, most patients manifest protracted periods of numbness, automatism, and, in radical cases, near-catatonic posture. Response times to verbal cues increase dramatically. Awareness of the environment decreases, sometimes dangerously so. The victims are described by their nearest and dearest as "zombies", "machines", or "automata".

The victims appear to be sleepwalking, depressed, dysphoric, anhedonic (not interested in anything and find pleasure in nothing). They report feeling detached, emotionally absent, estranged, and alienated. Many victims say that their "life is over" and expect to have no career, family, or otherwise meaningful future.

The victim's family and friends complain that she is no longer capable of showing intimacy, tenderness, compassion, empathy, and of having sex (due to her post-traumatic "frigidity"). Many victims become paranoid, impulsive, reckless, and self-destructive. Others somatise their mental problems and complain of numerous physical ailments. They all feel guilty, shameful, humiliated, desperate, hopeless, and hostile.

PTSD need not appear immediately after the harrowing experience. It can – and often is – delayed by days or even months. It lasts more than one month (usually much longer). Sufferers of PTSD report subjective distress (the manifestations of PTSD are ego-dystonic). Their functioning in various settings – job performance, grades at school, sociability – deteriorates markedly.

The DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) criteria for diagnosing PTSD are far too restrictive. PTSD seems to also develop in the wake of verbal and emotional abuse and in the aftermath of drawn out traumatic situations (such a nasty divorce). Hopefully, the text will be adapted to reflect this sad reality.

I'm a Vietnam vet. How would I know if I have ptsd?

From the source:

"Symptoms

Symptoms of PTSD fall into three main categories:

1. Repeated "reliving" of the event, which disturbs day-to-day activity

Flashback episodes, where the event seems to be happening again and again

Recurrent distressing memories of the event

Repeated dreams of the event

Physical reactions to situations that remind you of the traumatic event

2. Avoidance

Emotional "numbing," or feeling as though you don’t care about anything

Feelings of detachment

Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma

Lack of interest in normal activities

Less expression of moods

Staying away from places, people, or objects that remind you of the event

Sense of having no future

3. Arousal

Difficulty concentrating

Exaggerated response to things that startle you

Excess awareness (hypervigilance)

Irritability or outbursts of anger

Sleeping difficulties

You also might feel a sense of guilt about the event (including "survivor guilt"), and the following symptoms, which are typical of anxiety, stress, and tension:

Agitation, or excitability

Dizziness

Fainting

Feeling your heart beat in your chest (palpitations)

Fever

Headache

Paleness"

Contact the VA (US Department of Veterans Affairs) for diagnosis/help.

Stereotypes of mental health issues? (OCD, PTSD, anxiety disorder, depression)?

I don't have OCD but thanks to my parents being alcoholics I did have depression for years, suffered a bit of anxiety and possibly (although I'm not sure) some PTSD.

My sister suffers from anxiety to this day.

I think the thing I'd like people to be aware of most for depression is 1. You can fight it yourself, you don't need anti depressants (which I believe only numb the emotions, they don't help the problem itself) you don't NEED counseling as it's often useless when it comes to deep routed problems. I fought it myself without help because I didn't think even a counselor would get it, and I believed in myself. I know a couple of people, my mum included, who just don't believe they can do it, therefore they don't, not even with help. I had motivation - I didn't want to end up like my mum. I still have some minor problems - sometimes I lose touch of reality and things start seeming like mountains when they're mole hills kinda thing, but I don't want to die, I have goals and ambition and generally have a much better quality of life now.

2. Depression and anxiety overtake your personality, something I found incredibly difficult when I broke out of my depression. Suddenly, I didn't have a freaking idea who I was. For years I was this messed up girl with all these problems, alcoholic parents, I was somewhat distanced from my sisters, no self belief ect. I had no interest in anything then bam, broke out of my depression, had to figure myself out again. When I was younger, I was convinced I'd die when I was 16, I couldn't see anything past high school. I never thought of having an actual career or the future at all. Then everything was a possibility. It sounds good but it was so hard to re-establish myself. I had to backtrack to when I was about 5 to figure out what I used to enjoy - animals, art, sports. It's a whole personality change. I will never know my real mum because I will never know her without depression because she doesn't believe she can do anything about it, and at this point, (40 years on antidepressants) she probably can't.

The third thing I'd want people to know is there isn't one type of alcoholic. (a lot of this probably counts for drug addicts too, depending on the severity of the drug, as alcohol is a drug.)

So, both of my parents are alcoholics, but they are totally different people.

So you have my Dad - He's always been a young at heart kinda person but when he's sober, he's craz shy. I've always found it fairly difficult to talk to him about anything in detail, unless he's had a couple of drinks. Then he becomes animated. He'll talk for ages about the things he enjoys. He basically turns from this professional quiet man into this 20-something year old. He isn''t the stereotypical "my life is run by alcohol" kinda guy, it's "I'm young, if I'm gonna die, it's going to be having fun" sorta thing. I don't think he's ever seen it as an addiction, just someway to liven things up. He had a successful career in computer programming until the last couple of years, where as a 56 year old, his age is heavily working against him but even now, despite drinking every night until like 5am and waking up at 1 or 2 pm, he's started a hypnotherapist course and is working on a couple of websites and various other things.

Then you have my mum. She is useless. She has no willpower, nothing really to live for, she can't drive, use a computer, she hasn't had a job in about 12 years, she rarely gets dressed, she rarely goes out, it sounds really harsh but she's basically a waste. When I was younger she'd do anything to cause some drama. We had the social services heavily involved in our lives because she'd do things like go out in the back yard in her underwear (thankfully only the backyard, but my neighbors didn't appreciate thing.) She once got done for drink driving with me and my sister in the car, I've seen her try to kill herself (this one probably should have caused PTSD, but by this point I actually hated her and honestly, didn't really care. I was very depressed.) She once took me and my sister to a refuge with claims my dad was being violent and looking back at how frantic mum used to be, I couldn't blame my dad if he was at all, though if he was, there was nothing to show for it. It must have been extremely stressful for him, holding down full time jobs and trying to look after me and my sister. The only memory of violence I have is actually from my mum.

Things have calmed down a lot now, I'm pretty sure they were cries for help and now she's given up, especially since me and my sisters don't depend on her anymore.

Sorry about the life story, I wanted to do something similar to you but as you've beaten me to it, I may as well give you all I can! I hope it helps :)