Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Women

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PTSD and Women

Trauma can come in many forms; car crashes, rape, or abuse. Anyone can experience a trauma and it can have lasting effects on their life and their memory. Due to their traumas, people can develop PTSD. You may think of PTSD as being only for war veterans, but it goes deeper than that. Studies have shown that women are more susceptible to PTSD than men after a traumatic event. This is because studies suggest that if all categories of trauma are included, approximately 6.5 million women in United States would be struggling to live with PTSD (Brand, 2003). The symptoms of PTSD, which include nightmares and intrusive flashbacks, can begin after a rape, sexual abuse, abuse as a child, or domestic abuse. Though PTSD isn’t always diagnosed in a person who experiences something alarming, women are twice as likely to be diagnosed (Brand, 2003).
Since PTSD is so prevalent in the United States, people need to look at why these memories are long-lasting and vivid. To do that, let’s take a look at autobiographical memory(AM). Autobiographical memory is a system consisting of memories collected from an individuals life. This is based off from episodic and semantic memory. Since PTSD is a result of traumatic memories and the traumatic memories come from episodic memory, it is clear that autobiographical memory plays a large part in PTSD symptoms.
A study done by Kylie Sutherland and Richard Bryant in 2007, highlights the importance of memory in PTSD symptoms. For their study, they took 20 PTSD victims who had either been involved in a non-sexual assault or a motor vehicle accident. They had the participants look at positive and negative cue words and asked them to point out a memory for each. They took five words for e...

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...t reach, yet it can also be destructive. Further research on PTSD and memory may have the ability to help women and men find treatment that is targeted specifically for them. So much is unknown about our memory that is extremely beneficial to keep exploring.

Works Cited

Brand, B. (2003). Trauma and women. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 26, 759-776.

Bryant, R. A., & Sutherland, K. (2007). Autobiographical memory in posttraumatic stress disorder before and after treatment. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 2915-2923.

Rehnman, J., & Herlitz, A. (2008). Sex Differences In Episodic Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 52-56.

Tolin, David, and Edna Foa. Sex Differences in Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Quantitative Review of 25 Years of Research. Psychological Bulletin 132.6 (2006): 959-992.

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