Reliving the Nightmare: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Reliving the Nightmare: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, horrific images of the towers collapsing, survivors fleeing, and the rescue and recovery efforts inundated television viewers. In the weeks following the attacks, numerous news accounts reported increasing general anxiety among Americans, with many individuals reporting sleep difficulties and trouble concentrating. Additionally, much attention focused on the effects on those who directly witnessed and/or were injured the attacks, and whether they would suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD (4). I will give a brief overview of the definition of PTSD, the neurobiology behind it, and what environmental factors may put certain people at heightened risk for developing the disorder.

Post traumatic stress-disorder is an anxiety disorder which results from exposure to an event which threatens the physical safety of an individual (1). PTSD originated as a mental illness category after the Vietnam War, when veterans exhibited sets of symptoms that did not fit into any current illness categories. However, in previous wars soldiers had complained of "shell shock" or "combat fatigue," which researchers now believe were essentially the same conditions as PTSD (2). As many as thirty percent of Vietnam veterans and eight percent of Persian Gulf War veterans exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (1).

Today the definition of PTSD has broadened to include not just those in combat, but people who have experienced any man-made or natural disasters, accidents, violent crime such as rape, and abuse. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, emotional detachment, ...

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...ic events, as well as the co-occurrence of PTSD with other mental illnesses.

WWW Sources

1)National Institute of Mental Health information sheet on PTSD.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/reliving.cfm

2)About.com website , On PTSD, with definitions and links to other web resources.

http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/traumaptsd/a/trauma.htm

3) Surgeon General's Report: "Mental Health- Culture, Race, Ethnicity" . A supplement to "Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General 1999."

http://www.mentalhealth.org/cre/default.asp

4) Scientific American . Article on September 11th and PTSD.

http://www.sciam.com/missing.cfm

5) Cal State-Chico website on serotonin.

http://www.csuchico.edu/psy/BioPsych/serotonin.htm

6)Anxiety Disorders Treatment Target: Amygdala Circuitry" from the ADAA 18th annual

meeting.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/events/pranxst.htm