...pranks, or injuries. However, conceive of a horrific event such as a bombing, deaths, gunshots, war, etc. Soldiers who fight for our country face these traumatic events every day. For example, in the text, “Combat-Related Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD a Resource and Recovery Guide” by Cheryl Lawhorne and Don Philpott, it states, “The destructive force of war creates an atmosphere of chaos and compels service members to face the terror of unexpected injury, loss, and death. The combat environment (austere living conditions, heavy physical demands, sleep deprivation, periods of intense violence followed by unpredictable periods of relative inactivity, separation from loved ones, etc.) is itself a psychological stressor that may precipitate a wide range of emotional distress and/or psychiatric disorders.” (Lawhorne and Philpott 12)....
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...issue being examined has to do with active duty soldiers and their PTSD that they encountered while on active duty. The issue being examined also has to do with treatment during or after active duty. This is significant due to the effects of PTSD on soldiers and in order to determine if PTSD can be slowed before it reaches its peak or if soldiers should wait until they are no longer serving to seek treatment. According to Winter (2009), “Hotopf assessed a large probability sample of initial invasion troops from the UK with diverse roles in OIF 1-2 years post deployment and compared their PTSD rates with non-deployed troops. Using the PCL, they found relatively low and comparable rates of probable PTSD (4%). Subsets that subsequently deployed during the OIF insurgency war did not have higher rates. By contrast, PCL-based probable PTSD rates were appreciably lower among the non-deployed service member”. The reason behind recording this information is because it is crucial in determining whether or not soldiers should receive treatment for PTSD during or after active duty. There have been many tests done finding results of PTSD in active/non active duty soldiers. Those results rank higher when it comes to PTSD being much more of an issue for active duty servicemen. Therefore, making PTSD a point of interest when it comes to treating it promptly and not waiting until the soldiers become inactive or non-deployed. Review of Literature PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is a disorder...
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...Difficulties Of Combat Soldiers Integrating Back Into Civilian Life Authors Note: This paper was written with the intent of better understanding the difficulties that soldiers face when coming home from war. It is with personal interests that I research, write, and inform of this topic. Abstract Combat soldiers have a difficult time integrating back into civilian life (“normal” society). This starts long before they go to war. When becoming a soldier, the individual is stripped down and then rebuilt as one. Individuality and free thinking are not acceptable in the military. The group (the squad, brigade, branch of the military), is to function as one under the same rules and regulations. They are to follow and strictly abide by these. Each soldier will do as they are told by their commanding officer, and by not doing so will be punished. When a soldier is combat ready, they see things that can be unimaginable to others. War brings death, fear, anger, and aggression. Many soldiers are subject to being fired upon and/or killing others. Non-combat soldiers in combat settings see death of comrades and innocent people. In both situations, soldiers have many emotional and physical stressors that they deal with while at war. Within this paper, we will look at emotional stress in times of war and how they cause severe mental stress. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and how it affects the soldier will be discussed as the leading disorder that impedes reintegration into...
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...Introduction Being in the military is one of the most respected occupations in our entire country. Shouldn’t soldiers have the proper equipment to ensure that they don’t get injured, the proper training in boot camp so they know how to cope with war, and more pay for risking their lives every day? Our troops fight every day for our freedom even with the possibility of death in the back of their minds. U.S. soldiers encounter many physical and mental problems throughout war including traumatic experiences, injury, or even death. Even when they come home, they still encounter social issues with unemployment, homelessness, and debt. What most of these problems relate back to is inadequate training that recruits go through before becoming soldiers....
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...disorder or PTSD. This paper will show and explain what PTSD is and what may trigger the mental illness. PTSD can affect individuals from all paths of life. For this reason, I included the effects of PTSD on different groups of people. These groups are broken three categories, the general impart of PTSD on ordinary people, PTSD effect on children and PTSD effect on veterans. There many ways of treating PTSD in all three groups. This paper will go in detail of all the most effective and common used treatments of PTSD and their potential side effects. However, there is an alternative treatment or a way of life above all men kind invention. That is a Christian and living by Jesus Christ’s words. Therefore you will see the potential benefits of accepting Christ as our savior. In the final part of this paper, it includes a personal story of a hero who servers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who is not safely home but suffering from PTSD. The Lord is the only way to true happiness and fulfillment. The doors are opened to anyone who wishes to enter, even the ones who denied and betrayed our Lord. In Matthew 21:22 God said “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” Post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD is a disorder caused by anxiety. PTSD can be categorized into two types of acute and chronic PTSD: if symptoms persist for less than three months, it is termed “acute PTSD,” otherwise, it is called “chronic PTSD” (Javidi & Yadollahie, 2012). PTSD often...
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...the Military: How Soldiers are Being Better Prepared TJ Bethel College Author Note This paper was prepared for Psychology 182 and English 101, taught by Dr. Carlson and Dr. Davis. Also, for the use as an example writing for Tj. Abstract Those who risk their lives every day are bound to be under stress. From performance-based consequences such as marksmanship, firing rate, and positioning to the physiological and psychological aftermath of war-induced stress, members of the militaries around the world have suffered. With ever-changing war strategies, soldiers face foreign stressors that can only be found on the battlefield. It is now a priority to address the natural responses to these stressors by conditioning the soldiers to improve and alleviate stress’s consequences for soldiers worldwide. Stress management and coping mechanisms that are being designed now will improve soldiers’ military careers. The Effects of Stress in the Military and its Consequences: How Soldiers are Being Better Prepared Stress is inevitable. Stress is found in children struggling to make friends, in teens coping with peer pressure, and in adults providing for their families. It can be present in the life of any individual. Military personnel are no exception to this. For military personnel, risking their lives is what they do. Stress affects members of all armed forces in many ways. Immediate, short-term effects as well as lasting, long-term effects have been found to affect many troops...
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...to civilian life and a humble heart. - JUNIOR ENLISTED MARINE, POST-IRAQ After we came back, many of us were only back in body. Our souls stayed over there. – ARMY COMBAT ENGINEER, POST-IRAQ Transition can mean the big picture of how a warrior has to try to adjust back into society, but the short term is very critical, from when a warrior leaves the battlefield to when they hit the streets at home. If there’s one thing I learned from my experiences, it was that there was no transition at all. –VIETNAM VETERAN Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has become the major medical issue with our soldiers returning from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. For many soldiers, it is a badge of honor to have served but for most, it is a start to an endless battle of finding the courage to continue to serve or be labeled an unfit soldier for the military and useless to their family. PTSD affects not only the soldier’s way of life but the core of who the soldier is. For this reason, the government should take special care informing society what is PTSD, who gets PTSD and what types of treatments are available to them. Government must ensure there are programs in place to assist soldiers and family members in dealing with PTSD issues. The Department of Defense and Veterans Administration to encourage service members and veterans to seek help early, before problems...
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...of that you may find a person who overeats to compensate their depression. d. Arrangements – A person suffering from severe depression may choose to make arrangements if they are considering suicide. These arrangements can include care for their family and pets in their absence. 2. Research a disorder associated with stress or mental health. - PTSD A military deployment can take a toll on any given person. The toll can be seen in many different forms such as emotional and mental disorders. These types of disorders can destroy an individual from the inside, out. Now multiply those symptoms by the number of deployments some soldiers have endured and the chance for mental disorders like post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increase drastically. There have been many studies done to determine the correlation between the number of deployments and PTSD. One particular study was conducted with the help of the US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery under the Wounded, III, and Injured/Psychological Health/Traumatic Brain Injury Program to determine if the amount of dwell time a soldier has between deployments decreases PTSD. It has been shown by this study and several others that...
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...known as PTSD. Associated with American troops who have faced tragic experiences overseas. In this article we'll examine PTSD and discuss the preliminary issues experienced creating it. This survey will help explain specific instructions for administering, scoring, and interpreting our survey. The purpose of our survey was to examine the emotional characteristics of soldiers after deployment. Many soldiers who've experienced traumatic overseas return home facing unknown emotional symptoms. Using our survey, we try to find a few commonalities between PTSD and the effects of War time experience. The design of our survey was to use a test construction that consisted of three elements. Behavior Sampling, Standardized and scoring rules. After constructing our test, the next phrase was to draft a series of questions that would give a numerical outcome. Asking questions with a numerical outcome will help simplify our survey and place a numerical total for our final analyzes. Next find 4-5 soldiers who've been deployed overseas. These soldiers were found randomly. The only criteria soldiers had to meet, was the importance of being deployed to a hostile environment where an emanate danger presented itself. Reliability and Validity were important factors of our survey. Determining the location of the soldier isn't important. As long as the resource of deployment can be validated, using a military form DD-214. War is war, and the results of the soldiers location has...
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...children have to face while these men are MIA (missing in action). They talk about the adjustment and the adapting to the prolonged and seemingly indefinite absence of a father, and how a relationship between a father and child changes over the long period of time until the veteran returns. Moreover, they collected data from 42 families of returned prisoners of the Vietnam War and attempted to identify a combination of factors that could explain the variability in the quality of the father-child relationship subsequent to the returning from the War. This information from this book will help convey emotional lives that these children have to endure. This book will strengthen my research by pointing out how children are affected when there is a nonattendance of one of the parents for a long period of time. Bowen, L. Gary, Dennis K. Orthner. The Organization Family: WORK AND FAMILY LINKAGES IN THE U.S... New York, NY: Praeger Publishers, 1989. Print. This book depicts how marital relationships get torn apart because of soldiers that come back from the war with post traumatic stress and have the need to have an aggressive and physical attitude towards their wife. The aggression these women have to face forces them to determine if they will stick by these veterans or get a divorce because these men don’t know how to control this disorder. Bowen...
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...Reflection on Understanding and Treating PTSD Xxxxxxx xxxxxx EmpireState College I have read and am aware of the university requirements regarding academic honesty Instructor: Bernard Wakely December 21, 2012 Introduction What is now known as Posttraumatic Syndrome Disorder has a long history and list of names. It has been suggested that Homer form the Odysseus described symptoms of PTSD upon his return from the Trojan War. More recently it has been given many names. During the civil war it came to be known as Soldiers heart. During WWI it became known as “shell shock” and “war neurosis”, changing again during WWII to “battle fatigue” and ‘combat neurosis”. During this war the condition was so severe during this war psychiatric discharged soldier outnumbered new recruits. The name once again morphed during the Vietnam War to “post-Vietnam syndrome” and finally settling to its current moniker Posttraumatic syndrome disorder. Despite the many name changes one thing has remained constant and that is the condition causes suffering Over View Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is an anxiety disorder that is caused by exposure to a situation or environment that is violent or life threatening to an individual or others. Its symptoms include flashbacks, hyperarousal and avoidance. It was originally believed that PTSD represented a natural and normal response at the extreme end of a response continuum based on the severity of the trauma. This response is the flight...
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...military has fought to protect our freedom. Soldiers risk their lives every day to protect ours. To this day we still have an active presence in countries all around the world and we are known as a nation “at war.” Those soldiers who fight for our freedom overseas are now facing a problem on their own homeland. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (also known as PTSD) is something that happens to our soldiers after experiencing a traumatic event such as combat. We should be providing our soldiers with every possible treatment and option out there if it will help them. Currently it is reported that about 1 in 8 soldiers returning from war have PTSD. There are no real cures for this disorder, only some methods that may help dissolve the symptoms and hopefully over time, overcome it. The people of the United States should be doing more to help our soldiers. They are risking their lives for us overseas only to return home to receive no help for the pain they might be in. Right now, the only real treatment for PTSD is cognitive therapy. You go in, talk about what happened, and then you leave. How is that helping a serious issue? Our soldiers deserve the best treatment possible and should have access to treatments outside therapy. It was 1980 before Post-traumatic Stress Disorder was clinically recognized. That is when the American Psychiatric Association added PTSD to its third edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. When PTSD was first introduced as a diagnosis there...
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...Abstract Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental anxiety disorder, affects 13% to 20% of armed force members returning from Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) (Hoge, et. al, 2004), in addition to a large population of Vietnam Veterans. Within the past 32 years, awareness of this disorder has escalated and the realism of the severity of this disorder has been noticed. Efforts to screen and treat PTSD in military veterans have been established by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Screening is conducted once military personnel return from deployment and treatments including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Exposure Therapy, and medications are used to relieve the symptoms of PTSD. These screening and treatment methods are evaluated and s suggestion for improvement is made. Necessary Improvements the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and the United States Department of Defense Must Make With Regards to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder In current political debate, the United States is arguing where budget cuts should be made and how the U.S. should go about spending money. The U.S. military is consistently brought up in these considerations. In such considerations, topics such as downsizing the military and the military’s budget overall is discussed. The military budget comes into play when considering posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among military personnel. Mark Creamer...
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...Psychological Disorders Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs when someone has gone through or experienced a traumatic event in their life. The person suffering from PTSD experiences reoccurring episodes of the traumatic event they experienced. There are many different types of traumatic events that could trigger this disease. Some examples that may lead to PTSD are witnessing a crime, domestic abuse, and war. The most experience I have had with PTSD is learning about soldiers who have been affected by fighting in war. I’ve read several fiction novels that display a soldier dealing with PTSD. In Tim O’Brien’s fiction novel The Things They Carried, many soldiers are affected by fighting in the Vietnam War. The book takes the reader through the soldiers’ experiences while fighting, and then fast-forwards to years down the road when the veterans are much older. The reason for this is to show how the veterans are still affected by the war many years later. One particular soldier, Norman Bowker, spent his late years reflecting on his time in the war. He blamed himself for what happened to his fellow soldiers. He first handily watched one of his good friends die in combat. Bowker had the chance to save his friend, but he was unable to do so. Norman had reoccurring episodes where he found himself in the middle of combat, not knowing what to do. After these episodes occurred, he felt no purpose of living anymore. The aftermath of the war is what got to Bowker...
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...The Unseen Wound Salvador Siegel COMM/112 May 17, 2012 Rick De La Pena The Unseen Wound Many soldiers returning home from war have many obstacles to overcome both physical and mental. Most soldiers are not aware of a certain condition that they might have developed while deployed in a war zone. This condition is called Traumatic Brain Injury, also known as TBI. It is an injury that is not found on the outside of the body but rather internal, therefore it is called the Unseen Wound. Even though it’s unseen, TBI is real and affects a large percentage of veterans returning from war and test results show that an average of 46 percent of soldiers have TBI. Traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is doubly cruel: it leaves many victims emotionally shattered and cognitively crippled. But because mild and moderate brain injuries do not show up on CT or other imaging devices, doctors and even family members are often skeptical that any real damage exists. TBI is real and affects a large percentage of veterans returning from war. “Consistent with the designation of TBI as one of the signature injuries of the war theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan, 46% of the returning veterans recruited for this project screened positive for a deployment-related TBI” (Morissette, Woodward, & Kimbrel, Meyer, Kruse, 2011, p. 346). I have deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan and have sustained injuries in result of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s)...
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