STATISTICS RESEARCH

Statistics Research

Statistics Research

Introduction

Posttraumatic stress disorder is known by its acronym in English PTSD. It is an anxiety disorder that can occur after a person goes through a traumatic event that caused intense fear, helplessness or horror. Posttraumatic stress disorder may occur as a result of personal trauma (e.g. rape, war, natural disasters, abuse, serious accidents or captivity) or have witnessed or know of a violent or tragic event.

This paper deals with the PTSD patients that who have served in a combat zone, although it is common to experience a brief state of anxiety or depression after such events, people who suffer from PTSD are "reliving" the trauma; avoid individuals, thoughts or situations related to the event and have symptoms of excessive emotions. People with this disorder have these symptoms for more than a month and cannot carry out their duties as they did before the traumatic event. Symptoms of PTSD usually appear within three months of the traumatic situation, however, sometimes appear months or even years later.

Risk Factors

Pretrauma factors in general have not emerged as consistent predictors of PTSD. One consistent finding that has emerged, however, is that women are approximately twice as likely to meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD as men. These gender differences can be partially, but not completely, explained by differences in the types of trauma experienced by women as compared with men, particularly women's greater risk for experiencing sexual trauma, such as childhood sexual abuse and rape.

In contrast, no consistent findings are available with regard to differences in PTSD prevalence among individuals of different ages and ethnic backgrounds. There is some evidence to support that those individuals with pre-existing psychopa-thology such as depression and substance use disorders are somewhat more vulnerable to developing PTSD following trauma exposure. Family psycho-pathology also seems to be associated with a slight increase in vulnerability to developing PTSD, although the extent to which this reflects a genetic vulnerability factor and/or factors or environmental vulnerability factors (e.g., a chaotic family environment) is unclear.

Individuals' peritraumatic responses seem to represent clear and significant risk factors for the development of PTSD, although the strength of the association found between these variables and PTSD may be somewhat inflated because of the reliance on retrospective reports of these responses. Peritraumatic responses associated with PTSD risk include the extent to which the individual perceives that his or her life was in danger during the trauma, with some studies finding that perceived life threat is more strongly associated with PTSD than objective life threat during the trauma.

The intensity of individuals' emotional responses during the trauma, such as whether the person has a panic attack or experiences feelings of helplessness, horror, or anger, also have been associated with increased risk of developing PTSD. Another peritraumatic risk factor associated with PTSD development is the extent to which an individual dissociates during the trauma. Indeed, a recent meta-analytic review found that peritraumatic dissociation had the strongest relationship with PTSD of all the risk factors ...