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//** What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? **//
====// Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD is a disorder that occurs when someone experiences a traumatic event outside the range of usual human experiences. Some of the common reasons for people experiencing PTSD are: rape, natural disasters, car/plane crash, kidnapping, violent assault, sexual or physical abuse, medical procedures, death of loved ones, terrorist attacks and life threatening illness. When people experience these things, it is common for them to have major or minor symptoms due to PTSD. Common symptoms are experiencing the original trauma through flashback and/or nightmares, avoiding things that have a relation to the thing that caused the trauma (for instance if you got in a car accident and are experiencing symptoms then you might not even walk on a sidewalk where cars pass by, out of fear that one might run you over or get into an accident), increased arousal, (not being able to fall or stay asleep, experiencing nightmares that neglect you from the sleep your body needs and having sleep medicines not affect how you sleep), feeling emotionally numb, memory problems, being easily startled or frightened, trying to avoid talking or thinking about the traumatic event and hearing or seeing things that are not actually there. // ====

//** Where is PTSD found? **//
====// Many veterans experience PTSD after returning home from war. In the World Wars, it wasn’t called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; it was called Shell Shock, Soldiers Heart, Battle Fatigue, and other things. People then didn’t know that it was psychological, instead they thought that it was physical damage done to the brain because of exploding artillery shells. The explosion right next to the head, they believed, would cause the symptoms that are commonly found in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients. But as wars and heath care for soldiers on the front line evolved, doctors found out that it was actually not physical damage, but it was just all in the head. // ==== ====// Even though it was called something different, there were more cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Vietnam than in World War Two. Even though you would think that living through World War Two would be a lot scarier that living through Vietnam, but there is a theory as to why this is. In World War Two the returning American Veterans were welcomed home as heroes, and were supported by the general public. The atrocities they were forced to commit by the Nazis, were viewed, as a necessary evil to rid the evil would be empire. When the soldiers returned from Vietnam, they were treated terribly. During the war there was a huge anti-war movement against Fighting in Vietnam, and most of the people in the United States of America hated the army and also the soldiers in it. When soldiers came off the plane home, they were booed and jeered, because nobody supported the war. The soldiers then felt guilty about what they did. It is believed that when soldiers feel guilt about what they did in the war then it increases the risk that they will develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. // ====

//** Treatment: **//
====// There are many different type of therapies that have been invented to help veterans that have PTSD. The one that has had the most success has been Cognitive Behavioral therapy. // ====

//** Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy: **//
====// This is when the person is carefully and gradually exposed to thoughts, feelings and situations that remind them of the traumatic event. It also involves identifying with what happened during the event and then replacing the defenses your mind has put up and rewriting how you feel about the event. i.e. a person would start to think about the car from the car crash and cut the connections between that car and other cars. Then they will not be scared that other cars are also unsafe and be more likely to get in a car again. // ====

//** Medication: **//
====// Sometimes medication is prescribed to the patient. It can sometimes help with the anxiety and the depression but it will rarely help with the direct causes for the PTSD. There is no medicine that can cure PTSD like an Advil will clear your headaches. When you have a headache and take the Advil your headache often disappears within 45 minutes but with PTSD it isn’t that simple. The doctors can’t change the nightmares or visions the person is experiencing. // ====

//** Family Therapy: **//
====// PTSD often affects not only the direct victim but also the person’s family. The person often has mood swings and gets very angry and violent with his/her family members. This group therapy can help everyone in the family to understand what the patient is going through and help the patient and family through it. // ====

//** Governments failed plans to help: **//
==== // The government (United States of America) is actually very bad about helping out the veterans of our country, especially the ones with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When soldiers come back from foreign battlefields and they have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder the government will usually not help them. The reason is it can cost an estimate $5,900 to $16,890 treat a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The government will usually say that, even though the government allowed the person to enter the military, the soldier in question has a serious personality disorder, and therefore is not eligible for Veteran’s Benefits for the treatment for the soldier suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The worst things about this is that one, a soldier should not be able to join the military with a serious personality disorder, two that a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder will not be able to function successfully in society, and therefore will not be able to get a job and support his family. This burden creates a drain on the already stressed economy. And three it is sad that a person that risked his life to defend his country and all the people living inside of it would be treated poorly by his country, from the government and the people who do not respect and support our troops. // ==== ==== //The reason that most of the veterans with PTSD are male is the fact that men serve on the front line more commonly and men are responsible for most of the kills in battle. Women typically do not serve on the front line because of fear that if they are captured they will be raped or sexually assaulted.// ==== ==== //The numbers of veterans with PTSD for each war depends greatly on the rest of the country’s reaction to the war. After World War I and World War II when the soldiers arrived home, they were treated as war heroes that had saved the world and were thrown parades and parties. However after the soldiers returned from Vietnam there was a completely different reaction. People didn’t like them invading Vietnam so they were very mean to the soldiers. This made them feel even guiltier for killing the enemy.// ==== ==== //Also in Vietnam the soldiers had problems telling the civilians from the Viet Kong so they often ended up killing innocent people who were just trying to live their lives. Also a philosophy of the Viet Kong is to sacrifice their life for the strength of the group or colony. So they would often send in a five-year-old kid with a grenade strapped to its back and the soldiers wouldn’t shoot because it was a kid and then the grenade would blow them up. This made the soldiers very cautious and they ended up shooting innocent women and children too out of fear that they would try to harm them.// ==== ==== //There are a lot of factors that determine whether a person gets PTSD or not. Also some people get it much more severely than others. The only common factor is that the government needs to help out all of the people who helped to protect our nation. If they risked their lives to save us then we should be able to send them to therapy to help them deal with the symptoms they are facing from the battle they were fighting for our country.// ==== ==== //Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a terrible physiological condition that affects our veterans. What makes it worse is the difficulty of treating it, and that most veterans cannot afford to treat it without government help. Government help has been hard for our veteran’s to get. It is difficult for people to get jobs with PTSD because they have the symptoms they suffer from.// ====