"PTSD is stimulus-driven," explains Matthew Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., the executive director of the Department of Veterans' Affairs National Center for PTSD and a psychiatry and pharmacology professor at Dartmouth Medical School. "Stimuli that resemble the trauma are going to bring that trauma back to the victims. So part of PTSD involves numbing, emotional shutdown and avoidance." The second set of symptoms focuses on sufferers' tendency to continually relive the event, both while sleeping in the form of nightmares and while awake, when flashbacks occur. These images cause extreme emotional or physical reactions, including shaking, chills, heart palpitations and panic. The final set concentrates on hyper-arousal, as victims are prone to irritability, sudden anger, startling easily or being unable to concentrate.
How an individual responds to a traumatic event depends, in part, on what he or she brings to the table, Friedman points out. For instance, people who have experienced a prior trauma, have a family history of psychiatric problems or grew up in a disruptive household or with abusive parents are at greater risk for developing symptoms. Amount of social support and degree of resiliency -- which has both a genetic and experiential component -- also play important roles.
"Most of us were impacted by September 11," says Ray Monsour Scurfield, D.S.W., L.C.S.W., an assistant professor of social work at the University of Southern Mississippi. "But after a few months, it started taking somewhat of a backseat for some people and less of a backseat for others. The key is questioning whether a person feels their memories are beyond their control. If they're wallowing in isolation and denial and painful memories -- if they're a prisoner to them -- it's time to seek help."
This psychological imprisonment is something Wyle likens to piecing together jigsaw puzzles. "If you do the same puzzle every day, you get the same picture every day because you've got the same pieces," he says. "But if you wake up one morning and something traumatic happens, when you put your pieces together, nothing fits right. And when you do get them to fit it makes a different picture, one somewhat grotesque. Ultimately, you just want your picture to look like it always did, but it's never going to look that way again."
After witnessing the refugees' anguish, Wyle knew he wanted to do more to help victims of trauma and violence. So when he returned to the U.S. he began working with Human Rights Watch, a human rights advocacy group. Then Dr. Carter, the character he plays on "ER," was stabbed on the show, and Wyle found himself portraying many of the symptoms he'd witnessed in Macedonia. That's when Moving Past Trauma (MPT), a community outreach program that works to increase awareness about and treatment of PTSD, asked him to be one of their spokesmen. He agreed and soon began working with Kellie Greene, another program spokeswoman.
What's noteworthy about Greene is that she's also a PTSD survivor, though by looking at her today one would never guess that there was a time when she was afraid to step foot outside of her apartment. The energetic, outgoing, 36-year-old is constantly smiling and seems ready and able to take on the world. But on January 18, 1994, Greene was attacked and brutally raped by a stranger who had followed her home. She was traumatized and subsequently unable to concentrate or make simple decisions. She also began isolating herself from her family and friends and was plagued by nightmares and flashbacks of her rape.
www.psychologytoday.com
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Noah Wyle and Real-Life Trauma (page2)
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