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PTSD Research Paper

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PTSD is a disorder soldiers get from watching their buddies die during war, right? They have flashbacks, are afraid of large crowds, and have anxiety. This is a common misunderstanding of PTSD, but in reality, it is much more complicated. To start off, PTSD is not a military specific disorder. There are a number of ways PTSD is caused. Witnessing war, fighting in war, rape, sexual assault, car crashes, unpredicted deaths of loved ones, fatal events, and natural disasters can all be catalysts of PTSD. Victims of any of these events are susceptible to developing this disorder. There are no definite causes for PTSD. Some could go through years of war and not contract this disorder while someone else could just catch a glimpse of war and be diagnosed …show more content…
Veterans that witness the horrors of war are especially at risk of developing the disorder. When they return home from the war, some feel like they never left. “PTSD, in a nutshell, is not being able to differentiate, in your mind, between the past, present, and the future” (Rosenthal). There’s two automatic reflexes we have when faced with stressful situations. Mobilization is the state in which our bodies react to a dangerous or nerve racking situation in which our heart rate rises and our muscles tighten; giving us more strength and faster reaction times. When this dangerous situation is over, our nervous systems settle down, allowing our heart rate to slow and returning to our normal state. Immobilization is when we enter a state of mobilization but our nervous systems never calms down. This doesn’t allow our bodies to return to our normal state prior to the event. This is how PTSD works (http://lakevetsfound.org). Our bodies experience a very stressful event, our adrenaline levels rise and our nervous system is triggered, and our body doesn’t have a chance to return to normal state. Others describe it as numbness or the inability to have normal feelings and emotions due to constantly being on high alert of threats, or nervous something bad will happen

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