Trauma and PTSD: what do we know, and why should non-Lewkowskians care?
We had our second major bout with PTSD today, directed by the best lecturer I've had the privilege of seeing live in five and a half years of uni. To celebrate this event--and in honour of this amazing Doc Brown/John Malkovich channeling wonderman--I hereby invite you to a relatively unstructured discussion about PTSD and trauma and their relevance to our lives.
Did you know that the lifetime prevalence of PTSD (relatively narrowly defined by DSM-IV) may be around 7.8% in the US? Women are twice as likely victims as men (ca. 10%). Obviously most of these people are not war-veterans. There are many who meet the symptom criteria but not the A-criteria and who therefore don't get a PTSD diagnosis.
In the gay thread, Lewkowski expressed some bizarre ideas about suicide that were based on the fact that most people don't commit suicide. You guys know how it is: most people experience crises but don't get depression; most smokers don't get lung-cancer; most soldiers don't get PTSD (or at least many don't).
There are risk-factors and salutogenic factors that worsen or improve a person's chances of developing PTSD as well as influencing their prognosis:
Some people are biologically predisposed, due to genetic and epigenetic factors.
Traumas that occur in the public sphere (war, natural disaster, etc.) are better than those that occur in the private sphere (abuse by partner or parent, rape, mugging, etc).
Activity is better than passivity: fighting or fleeing improves your chances; freezing and being helpless does the opposite.
It's important that people see and react appropriately. Secret traumas--eg. the whole family knows you're being abused, but no-one says or does anything and pretends everything's fine--can sometimes make for long-repressed memories but generally have worse outcomes wrt PTSD.
The ability to contextualise is extremely important both in preventing PTSD and in treating it. The context may be eg. a cruel fairytale, a shared belief about demonic possession, or even a conventional religion. Similarly, involvement--in society, or in a Cause--is beneficial.
Haven't got my notes on me so I leave the stage to you :heart: :up:
