After trauma touches life

Several veterans told me that if they ever opened up with what is going on in their heads, they would be locked up in the "loony bin" for the rest of their lives. They talk about feeling as if they let everyone down. They talk about a lot of things but hope. As they try to understand what PTSD is, hope is the furthest thing from their reach. Once they understand what it is and what caused it, hope is within reach. They realize they can be happy, or at least happier again. To live out days with life being sucked out of them is a slow, torturous death. Medication and therapy bring them back to living a life again instead of just existing.


After trauma comes stress that will not let go. It is not just participants in combat.
It is when you watch someone you love die.

Improving Communication With Families Of Dying Patients Reduces ...
By admin Hospitals that use a simple strategy of enhancing communication with family members of patients dying in the intensive care unit can greatly reduce post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression after their loved one dies,

It is being a police officer with your life on the line.

The Effects of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the officer and the family
© 2003, 1998 by Hal Brown, LICSW
The following letter is from an officer who wrote it in the Guestbook and kindly gave me permission to use it in an article in the hope that his experience will help others. He describes many of the classic symptoms of police PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder. In fact, every distressing thought, feeling and behavior he relates below is a symptom of PTSD.
I am a (10 plus)-- year police veteran and (30 plus)-- years of age. I have become seriously concerned with some of the events that have been taking place in my life for the past two years. I have started having nightmares frequently and have great difficulty going to sleep at night. There is always a feeling of uneasiness at night and I have started to develop some unnatural habits associated with these uneasy feelings. At the slightest sound, I have to get out of the bed and check every room in the house.
http://www.geocities.com/stressline_com/ptsd-family.html

Arizona State Trooper WinsPrecedent-Setting Court Caseon PTSD Claim
An Arizona state trooper has won a precedent-setting court case that affects police officers, firefighters, and other emergency services workers throughout the United States.On January 20, 2000, Department of Public Safety Officer David D. Mogel killed a shotgun-toting car thief wanted for bank robbery after the suspect attempted to shoot him.Because of the trauma in taking a human life, Mr. Mogel was diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and could no longer function as a police officer. When he applied for Workers' Compensation benefits, he was denied. The Arizona Department of Public Safety and Workers' Compensation (State of Arizona, DOA Risk Management) claimed that shooting suspects was part of the job, and not an "unexpected" event as required by Arizona law.Mr. Mogel's attorney, Robert E. Wisniewski, says, "The state raised the defense that working in police work everyday was not a substantial contributing cause of my client's post traumatic stress disorder because police are exposed to such hazards everyday so that is routine."In her Findings and Award of December 19, 2002 awarding Mr. Mogel Workers' Compensation benefits, Administrative Law Judge Karen Calderon states, "I find that shooting and killing another human being in the line of duty is an extraordinary stress related to the employment."
http://www.copshock.com/lawsuit.html

Police, fireman and emergency responders

A number of research articles have looked at the rates of PTSD in high-risk occupations. They found:
Law Enforcement Officers who agreed to be in these studies had rates of PTSD ranging between 3% - 17%. A recent research study found that 45% of officers were having sleep difficulties typical of patients seen in insomnia clinics. In this study, stresses related to their work environment were strongly associated with sleep quality; sleep disturbances were associated with symptoms of PTSD. "These high rates of insomnia are particularly alarming, because sleep deprivation can drastically hinder mental and physical performance" (Thomas Neylan, MD, 2002).
In a study by Corneil, et. al., (1999), which compared 203 U.S. Fire Fighters in urban departments with 625 Canadian fire fighters, twenty-two percent of fire fighters in U.S. urban departments were experiencing PTSD compared to 17% of Canadian fire fighters. (The U.S. sample had 9% women and 13% paramedics, not found in the Canadian sample). Other researchers have found 33-41 % of fire fighters were experiencing emotional distress. Rates of PTSD in U.S. fire fighters are similar to those found in a study of German fire fighters, 18.2% and are higher than those generally found in wounded combat veterans, i.e., 20%. These researchers concluded that the high level of PTSD A suggests that this is a serious mental health problem of epidemic proportions in urban professional firefighters in the U.S."
Twenty percent of Emergency Ambulance Personnel have been found to have PTSD. Rates of symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, sleep problems and undue worry rage from 20% - 60%.
Nineteen percent of Rescue Workers serving 9-11 sites have been diagnosed with PTSD in the two years following this tragedy.
http://www.rescue-workers.com/1.html

And it is kids

Bereaved Children of 9/11 Victims Suffered High Rates of Psychiatric Illness
Children's Neurological "Stress-Response System" Also Stayed Highly Active Long After They Lost a Parent, Study Finds
White Plains, NY (Mar 19, 2007)
The rate of psychiatric illness among children who lost a parent in the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack doubled – from about 32 to nearly 73 percent – in the years following the event, according to a new study from researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
More than half (56.8 percent) of the young children studied suffered from some sort of anxiety disorder, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which affected nearly three in 10 bereaved children.

http://www.nyp.org/news/hospital/1107.html

PTSD comes at different levels. From mild cases where they are able to function or "deal with it" to the point where every part of their life is consumed by it.

Understanding, educating the public is life to them and their futures.

To put a monetary price on this we need only look at "success" stories to gauge what the outcome of early intervention would look like.

Instead of being unable to work but receiving therapy and medication, it saves workman's comp and VA disability payments. If they are able to work, even on a part-time basis, they are holding down a job, receiving pay for that job, paying taxes on that income and paying into the Social Security System.

But it does not stop there. Early intervention can prevent a lot of divorces. Living with someone who has PTSD is one of the hardest types of marriages. (I can testify to that personally.) The emotional roller-coaster ride with mood swings, isolation, ambivalence, emotional numbing, short term memory loss, irrational thinking and reactions along with the flashbacks they have and the nightmares, puts an even greater strain on a marriage than what is considered normal. Two incomes in one household contribute to the economy. If you have separation and divorce, you have two people struggling to support themselves. That leaves less extra money to spend on non-essential items.

But it does not stop there either. When you intervene early and eliminate PTSD divorces, you also have people watching over each other. They eat better, see the doctor more often for check ups and enjoy a support structure with people they trust.

It does not even stop there. Then you have the children of a PTSD parent. They grow up knowing that the PTSD parent is acting or reacting the way they are because of PTSD and not because of them. They learn to adapt to things they learn will cause a "strange" reaction from their parent. Like, as most kids do, hiding and popping out to scare their parent or sneaking up on them from behind.

With all of this, please tell me why anyone in this country or other nations, would not be doing everything possible to treat PTSD as soon as symptoms present themselves? Why would anyone not be doing everything humanly possible to educate the public on PTSD so that no one would ever say "what's that" when they hear the term? Public education made everyone aware of AIDS, cancer, ADD. So why is it people still don't know what PTSD is? They surely know what trauma is. Why isn't there a massive TV campaign about PTSD? Why isn't every news station doing documentaries on this?

As you read in the previous post today, a five year old came out with "they forget to be happy" when asked what he thought PTSD was. So why is it a five year old can come to grips with this but the adults of this country are still not understanding this?

Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington