Question:
Haven’t been here in a while cause computer is very slow and hard to get on to the web. (Took over an hour just to get here tonight) Anyway today we got an e-mail from a friend that we wanted to share. It came from The New York Times and was an article by Felicia R. Lee, called "Is Trauma Being Trivialized?" We wrote a response to the times and also pasted it below. At the end is the origional article from the Times. We’d appreciate your thinking on this as well. For those of you who don’t know me we are a multiple and run a consumer operated center in Florida for Trauma Survivors. We also network with other parts of Florida and other places in the US. It is o.k. to write me RESPONSE: by Anita L. Cape Trauma parallels depression in it’s prevalence. Almost every person can admit to having had a feeling of sadness or even depression at one time or another in their lives, particularly after the loss of something meaningful to them. But does every person suffer from Major Depression? No. The important thing though is that any person who experiences depression deserves a chance to heal that depression whether it’s from a lifelong chemical imbalance or from the loss of a love one. And people heal depression in different ways. Some just go to church and pray about it. Others work harder in the work place. Others attend support groups. Often people who experience depression need medication to help balance their chemistry. Likewise almost every person at some time or another in their lives has something really overwhelming and life-threatening happen to them. People with a single instance of trauma deserve to heal just as much as anyone and to be in control of that healing process. And just like Major Depression there are individuals who’ve experienced severe profound trauma and are severely affected by it. People who grew up being abused and neglected for the first 18 years of their lives are most likely to suffer from PTSD. People who experienced prolonged life-threat in a war are also likely to suffer from PTSD. What we need are some new terms for sorting out the needs and most appropriate ways to help people heal from trauma. For one we now know that depression is not caused by a person’s laziness but by a chemical change that occurs within the mind ~ anyone with that altered chemistry would most likely experience it. Likewise, Post Traumatic Stress is a resulting response, not a disorder. It’s PTSR ~ Post Traumatic Stress Response. And we need several different classifications for PTSR; Acute PTSR for a single instance of PTSR that has recently occurred. Military PTSR for those returning from combat. I’ve advocated for Familial PTSR for individuals who’ve been victimized long term by someone they’ve known ~ usually a caregiver. And Judith Herman has long argued for the term "Complex" PTSD for a similar constellation. But Familial/Complex PTSR would also be accompanied with an array of symptoms, for instance, with Dissociation, with anxiety, anger, and/or depression, with a Poly-Identity Framework (i.e. having a variable identity in one’s identity set), etc. And certainly how people appraise their trauma and heal varies. I remember seeing a story of one of the fireofficers who threw himself into very hard work almost aound the clock with his fellow fireofficers after 911 and who seemed to feel that he had no effects from the trauma. An interview with his wife showed a different picture ~ that of a person suffering from many of the classic signs of PTSR including sleep disturbances and relationship problems without any awareness of it. No one would have said to any of the victims of 911 "oh, just get over it". Indeed an army of people from across the country would have gladly gone there to help people struck by a single instance of trauma on 911 if they’d wanted it. Yet that is often what we tell people who did experience prolonged life-threatening torture. One thing we know is that a support system is a key ingredient in helping people to heal from trauma. Being able to control the things we will do to return to a "normal" (for that particular individual) way of life is another. And not having to hide the trauma because of stigma or being called a liar for talking about the trauma is another. Certainly there are people who lie about having depression or a heart attack or a drug addictiction or trauma but anyone wanting to heal trauma deserves to be evaluated for it, to be told about options available in their community, and supported appropriately for their work in overcoming the challenges that cripple their lives. Anita L. Cape, Coordinator Family Trauma Survivors’ Network http://familyptsdnet.tripod.com/ Is Trauma Being Trivialized? By FELICIA R. LEE Flashbacks. Nightmares. Feeling disconnected from your body. Whether it is the anniversary of Sept. 11, the continuing threat of terrorism, sexual abuse by the clergy, school shootings or any one of many other causes of angst, Americans have been inundated with the language of trauma and information about how to cope. But as mental health experts continue to fine-tune our understanding of how the body responds to catastrophic events, some skeptics have been questioning whether terms like "trauma" and "post-traumatic stress disorder" (known as PTSD) are being misused by victims, lawyers and health professionals. "We’ve dumbed down PTSD," said Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. There is a false assumption, she added, that "if something bad happens, people are damaged unless they talk about it." In a society that glorifies confession and victimization, experts are sticking medical labels on people coping with ordinary stresses or misusing them for compensation in lawsuits, said Dr. Satel, who is also the author of "PC, MD.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine." As examples, Dr. Satel cites Paula Jones’s claim that she suffered PTSD as a result of her encounters with Bill Clinton and a recent campaign by some therapists, reported in The Boston Globe, for recognition of a new diagnosis – post-traumatic slavery disorder. And after Sept. 11, Dr. Satel added, New York City was overwhelmed with therapists urging people to talk about their feelings when in fact most people did not need therapy and were not suffering from PTSD. Such claims have incensed many experts in the field. If anything, they argue, rape, child abuse and shootings are not properly diagnosed while the victims are denigrated and not treated for PTSD. "Post-traumatic stress disorder is a good diagnosis," said Bessel van der Kolk, director of the Trauma Center in Boston, which is affiliated with the Boston University School of Medicine. "I see a lot of kids molested by priests, people tortured, people beginning to come back from Iraq. Maybe in some circles it’s used for political reasons or misused, but it’s a useful diagnosis." "We may not all agree with all the criteria in the diagnosis, but I think in the current debate we’re dealing with backlash," he continued. "There was backlash against Vietnam veterans when PTSD was first used. In the late 80’s and early 90’s there was backlash against research on sexual abuse, and in the 90’s there was controversy about false memory. There are cycles of trauma and then cycles of denial." Mental health experts like Dr. van der Kolk say the term post-traumatic stress disorder is narrowly and conservatively defined, at least by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the bible for psychologists and psychiatrists that officially lists mental disorders. The diagnosis and its treatments are supported by decades of thorough research, they add, even though clinicians can rightly debate just what constitutes trauma. PTSD was first officially diagnosed by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 after trauma symptoms were seen in returning Vietnam War veterans. Before that, terms like shell shock and battle fatigue were used. The acceptance of that diagnosis – like many others – reflected broader social concerns. Homosexuality, for instance, was once officially considered a disorder. And only recently have the severe mood swings associated with some women’s menstrual cycles received an official diagnosis. Yet Richard J. McNally, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of "Remembering Trauma" (Harvard University Press, 2003), argues that the definition of trauma is still being molded by "political and social forces." "One unintended consequence of peace and prosperity is a liberalized definition of what counts as a traumatic stressor," Mr. McNally writes. "The threshold for classifying an experience as traumatic is lower when times are good. In the absence of catastrophic stressors such as war, specialists in traumatic stress turn their attention elsewhere, discovering new sources of victims or hitherto unrecognized trauma." "Remembering Trauma" cites studies that sound alarms about the use of the PTSD diagnosis in civil litigation, with lawyers coaching clients on symptoms and people going to court claiming PTSD from fender benders, being fired from a job or living within a few miles of an explosion, even though they were unaware that the explosion took place. And in an interview, Mr. McNally said that while 30.9 percent of Vietnam veterans met the criteria for PTSD, only 15 percent of the men who served in Vietnam were in combat units. As for Sept. 11, he derides a RAND Corporation survey that concluded that 44 percent of Americans had "substantial symptoms of stress" in response to the terror attacks. He says other clinicians have rightly argued that such surveys medicalize "expectable human reactions by failing to discriminate between … read more »
Response:
I am sooo sorry Ravensong. Thanks for the reminder. Anita
Response:
woulda been nice if some of the stuff had been splatted. In black, there are all colors, Where darkness, always the light, Iridescent the raven’s wing in sunlight. – Brooke Medicine Eagle
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