Who gets PTSD?

Anyone can experience traumatic symptoms after experiencing situations where your safety or life felt endangered. Children can fall off a twenty foot tall slide at a playground and become traumatized. Car or boating accidents can also cause the scars of PTSD. Victims of crime develop PTSD.

At one time, doctors thought that only veterans could get PTSD. Over the past twenty or so years, a great deal of research has concluded that PTSD is very common. Many people who acquire PTSD don't realize they have that condition. They just know they feel "out of sorts" and want to isolate from other people.

The National Institute of Mental health statistics tell us that 7.7 million people over the age of 18 are known to have PTSD. They just don't know how many children actually have the condition since children are likly to "act out" their inability to understand what they're feeling. Men and women who were sexually asaulted as children are often retraumatized when sexually assaulted, again, as adults.

The RAND Corporation recently published an eye opening research paper on the frequency and significance of PTSD in military members. They estimated that 300,000 U.S troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from depression or PTSD and that only half of those needing help have thus far sought it. Individuals with PTSD often have coexisting depression and possibly even TBI which can lead to devastating personal consequences-suicide.

Join me, again, soon for more bullseye insight on PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
ANJYL