Impact of PTSD and the Military Family

Review of the Literature

According to the American Psychiatric Association, the PTSD or Posttraumatic stress disorder is considered to be one of the most frequent sequels after an individual witness or experience an event involving threatened, and serious injury or death or it may be a threat to physical integrity of others as well as themselves (Mittal et al., 2013). A huge body of literature examines the prevalence and incidence PTSD rates among individuals after exposure to a particular event of trauma such as violent or natural disaster. The trauma does not necessarily involve a car accident or death, but can also be from witnessing a tragic situation. When the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center happened, the entire world witnessed the catastrophe. Not all those people lost their loved ones, but still experienced the trauma. A person suffering from PTSD experiences anxiety and tends to become quiet and an introvert.

The response of a person includes helplessness, intense fear or horror. The traumatic event is steadily re-experienced with intrusive distressing and recurrent recollections, including thoughts, images or perceptions, unpleasant dreams, nightmares and feeling or acting as if the traumatic event was recurring (Fischer et al., 2013). It enhances the psychological distress at exposure to cues whether internal or external that resembles or symbolizes traumatic event aspect. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be addressed clinically in several ways, since it falls into the general category of Anxiety Disorders for which the cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy has developed multiple means widely effective (Smith et al., 2013).

The aim of cognitive-behavioral therapy is to help the individual to identify and control the negative thoughts and beliefs, identifying logical errors contained in the beliefs and alternatives of thought and behavior more functional and advantageous in relation to the traumatic event experienced. In this paper, we will discuss the topic “Grandparents raise grand children”. We will compare the topic and we will discuss that how this topic relates to different ethnic groups. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is also divided into three different types of categories: (1)-The situation in which the victim continues to re-experience the results of trauma, mainly through the recollection of the traumatic event in the form of nightmares and flashback, thus disallowing them to recover or get over the situation. (2)-The condition of emotional numbness of the patient, that allows him to avoid the places, activities as well as people that serve as reminders of the traumatic event (Lester et al., 2013). This implies that the patients generally start moving towards social isolation, thus cutting themselves off from the rest of the world and moving in their own safe cocoon. (3)-An increase in the feelings of discomfort, that leads towards increase in sleep and concentration deprivation and at the same time, cause significant decrease in the temperament of the patient (Mittal et al., 2013).

Thus, they continue to become increasingly jumpy and at the same time, are easily irritated and annoyed by even simple and insignificant events ...