Tossing in the latest headlines serves no one with PTSD

How Trauma Is Impacting Our Culture and What We Can Do to Help
Posted: 08/06/2012
Lisa Firestone

Psychology expert on relationships, parenting, self-destructive thoughts and suicide; author, 'Conquer Your Critical Voice'

Here's a place to start. Understand what you are writing about first. I keep reading something like this hoping to discover something new but again and again, it turned out to be a lot of what has been reported on to death. And yes, I do mean death.


Firestone quotes old studies but even they are rehashed from what has been learned over the last 40 years. Nowhere in the article does she point out "what we can do to help" that would really help. So here are just a few suggestions.

Train more people in Crisis Intervention or Critical Incident Stress Management or DEEP Disaster and Extreme Event Preparedness just for a start. Average people can assist others. As a matter of fact they are better at it as average citizens since survivors open up more easily when they are talking to a peer and not a "professional" thus opening the door for them to seek professional help if needed. Next actually tell the difference between the initial "stress reaction" most people go through and the 30 day rule of a time when they need to seek out professional help because it could develop into PTSD.

My certifications including DEEP are hanging on my wall. I spent two years taking training in Crisis Intervention because I've seen the flip side of it when no one was there to talk to veterans right after combat. I'm just an average person and know the differences between survivors and participants but they keep getting lumped in together as if they are all the same.

I am not just a responder. I am a survivor of multiple traumatic events. Natural disasters, (Hurricanes Charlie, Francis and Jeanne) car accident, domestic abuse, (my Dad was a violent alcoholic. He liked to beat one of my brothers up) domestic violence (my ex-husband tried to kill me) and three medial emergency trips to the hospital no one thought I'd survive, with one of them caused by a stranger assault when I was 4 years old. I have also spent the last 30 years of my life with a Vietnam Veteran with Combat PTSD, yet I do not have Secondary PTSD, something else experts do not talk much about.

For all of these reasons my life has been dedicated to researching PTSD. I wanted to help my husband as much as I wanted to understand why I didn't have it. Then I wanted to make sure that I would be there to help someone else after trauma.

Anyway, that's just a start on how to help civilians. The next part is how to help participants.


When we lump combat veterans and police officers in the same category as survivors of crime, accidents or natural disasters, we fail them. When we do not take into account the fact that military life in times of combat exposes them to extreme violent events over and over again coupled with the fact they have to respond with weapons and violence, we fail them. If we do not take into account police officers are of the same participants group, we fail them as well.

It is just as bad as when we treat firefighters the same as the people they save. For the life saved, it is one time but for the firefighters they risk their lives over and over again. The type of PTSD they have is much different than "survivor" PTSD. But again, experts don't address this either.

Next step is to stop writing an article like the one in the above link. Tossing in the latest headlines getting attention serves no one with PTSD.

When you look up Firestone's bio, you know she is no dummy. She's a lot smarter than I am and has had a lot more education,

Education
Firestone received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from California School of Professional Psychology in 1991.[1] She is involved in clinical training and research related to the assessment of suicide and violence potential.[2]

Career
Firestone works as a clinical psychologist in private practice and with The Glendon Association as the Director of Research and Education.[3] She is a former adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara Gevirtz Graduate School of Education.[4] Firestone partnered with her father, Robert W. Firestone, and developed the Firestone Assessment of Self-destructive Thoughts (FAST), a scale that assesses suicide potential [5] and the Firestone Assessment of Violent Thoughts (FAVT), a scale that assesses potential for violence.[6] Firestone is also a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and www.PsychAlive.org.

So how is it she doesn't know what other trauma experts have separated a long time ago? There is a huge difference in what the event was.

First paragraph she has the two headlines lumped together, Colorado mass murder and military suicides.

In some ways it seems that to grasp the prevalence of trauma experienced in our society, one need only look as far as the past few weeks' headlines. The devastating shooting in Aurora, Colo. marked an extreme act of violence that truly shocked our nation. Time magazine's painful cover story "One a Day" brought attention to the high rate of military suicides in 2012, which have exceeded the number of U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan this year by about 50 percent. The rate of military personnel and veterans who suffer from PTSD after prolonged and repeated tours of duty in dangerous, violent conditions have mental health professionals asking how we can get traumatized individuals the help they so greatly need.

Why? What was the point? It would be great if Firestone at least mentioned the fact that while crisis intervention responders showed up right away in Colorado to help the survivors, they don't do it when soldiers are going back to their bases and outposts in combat, but no where was this addressed.

Then in the next paragraph Firestone wrote about child abuse.

Yet, events that spark psychological symptoms of trauma don't always take place in the public eye. Child abuse and domestic abuses occur behind closed doors and at rates that are startling, to say the least. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, in 2010 there were 3.3 million reports of child abuse made in the United States involving the maltreatment of nearly 6 million children. A July report from the journal Pediatrics showed an increase in child abuse may be linked with the recent recession. With events that could lead to "simple" to "complex" trauma taking place every day, it is invaluable for us to gain a better understanding of trauma and how we can recognize and treat those affected.

Again, what was the point of putting this in? This is a totally different type of trauma.

Again here Firestone lumps Colorado mass murder with military suicides.

It's clear from our emotional reactions to events like the Colorado shootings or the high rate of military suicide that we are all impacted by even hearing about trauma, let alone experiencing it directly.

But this is not what got to me the most. Finally she managed to write this,

It is important to note that different types of trauma require different types of treatment.

Then reverted back to lumping them all together again.

Compared to someone like Firestone, I am nothing and I'm sure if she read this that is exactly what she'd think but what she'd miss is the fact that people like me turn to "experts" all the time so that we can figure out what they know as well as what other experts know. So while they get headlines, we are on the front lines trying to figure out how all of this got so bad and wondering when the day will come when all the experts all know the same thing at the same time? By the way, Combat PTSD has been studied since the 70's. One more thing she got wrong on top of missing the fact that trauma was only begun to be studied because Vietnam veterans pushed for combat trauma to be studied.

I could have just let this article go, made my life easier by moving onto something else but considering the families of the "suicides" she mentioned are blaming themselves for all of this, an article like this served no one.