News Article claiming divorce caused ptsd

[lostforgottensoul]

Mentally healthy people don’t do that.

Indeed! Thanks! That helps a ton!

 

[Cyberluddite]

Rape plus a required number of the specific mental health symptoms in the DSM can be PTSD. That’s overlooked a lot.

...often by a mind-boggling number of medical doctors who went through enough education, residency, and experience to know the difference between "stubbed toe" and "PTSD criteria". At least here in the U.S.

 

[joeylittle]

Forcible sleep deprivation alone is, like, pretty maliciously awful and could easily lead to a whole host of both physiological as well as psychological issues. How a clinician could consider forced sleep deprivation to be “not traumatic”, or somehow not likely to have a major impact on a person’s function, distress, behaviour, thoughts, emotions? would be beyond me.

Forcible sleep deprivation is threat of serious injury or death. I think there are enough studies to back that.

And @mumstheword - of your list, I can easily see how many of those elements of psychological abuse actually contain PTSD criterion, as they now stand.

Often, examination of the events being described will reveal exactly how they are big-T-trauma, and therefore, "fit" within the current understanding of PTSD. And they can do that without needing to be understood as a different, distinct element.

Threat of serious injury/death can be holding someone under water.
It can also be taking someone who can't swim out on the ocean in a kayak (without safety gear), then abandoning them by swimming away to shore.

In either case, the fear - the terror - is of drowning. In either case, it's plausible. In the kayak example, the abuser didn't lay a hand on the individual. And the threat of injury/death isn't as obvious a match as holding a gun to someone's head, holding them under water, etc...but it not being obvious, doesn't mean it's not there.

Telling someone what can't swim that you're going to take them ocean kayaking? I would say, not enough proximity to the threat.

Telling that same someone you will take them kayaking again, the morning after they finally got dragged in by coast rescue? After spending hours on an open ocean with no-one around, shore no longer in sight, and no flotation gear? That message, "I'm taking you kayaking", now has meaning. Telling them might well have enough proximity to the threat because their mind has been conditioned to the threat.

Something like that, isn't "just mental", "just emotional", "just psychological. The word "just" doesn't have anything to do with it. It's changing the brain, and the brain is an organ. In many ways, PTSD is a kind of very specific brain damage, and in order for it to be there, something needs to have already affected the brain. Ultimately, why does dangling someone off a cliff have the ability to cause PTSD? Because the scale of the fear/terror, the intensity of the event, altered the landscape of the mind. The experience was recorded in a way that doesn't allow it to recede properly into memory, through the passage of time. That's the mind. Threat of death is damage to the mind, rape is damage to the mind...it's all the mind.

I think this is just another reason why I believe separating out 'psychological' abuse, when talking about PTSD, isn't even necessary. I know that's a very academic way of looking at it, but that's what we are talking about, when we talk about the nitty-gritty of diagnosis.

Personally, I find the theoretical side really useful in my own recovery. That's just part of how my own mind works. I totally get that for others, it can be frustrating as all hell. And for people who, like @Justmehere said, are suffering and don't have access to a word for that suffering, because yeah, it was really bad, but it's not PTSD...most of the time, those people don't know that there are so many more ways to psychiatrically describe what they are going through. If they would just be willing to keep an open mind and look at the whole of their lived experience, not simply the thing that looks like it is the reason for the problem, they'd get a more useful explanation.

Just thinking out loud.

 

[mylunareclipse]

Now that I have read all ten pages! Lol.

I think some of us want validation for our diagnosis not because it's cool or whatever, but just because it gives us sense to symptoms that perhaps we were unable to articulate before. It's like things come together and it's like oh this is what I have and then you can start doing things to help yourself out. It's not that I want PTSD but if that's what I have might be helpful to know.

Another thing I was thinking was that how does one instance vs ten lead to PTSD. I.e. Maybe being emotionally abused one day won't cause PTSD. Being bullied for one year won't. But if you were bullied and saw domestic violence and were threatened etc etc can the previous experiences weaken your system to a point that a smaller incident can then cause you PTSD.

Lastly, I think that people might not necessarily remember all their abuse. I think being bullied and psychologically abused at work was the final straw that broke down my system. It seems so silly to me. But all of a sudden I was having flashbacks from when I was little of things I didn't remember. Being strangled and sexually abused.

Anyway just trying to make sense of all of this as it comes together. I am not bothered by anyone claiming to had PTSD just as I am not bothered if anyone says they are depressed or anxious. it almost seems like some people who get so upset about other people saying they have PTSD of questionable abuse are the ones carrying their PTSD as a badge to be worn. i am talking here about obviously exaggerated nuts cases, but about people who have the symptoms and were even diagnosed but don't fit the "criteria".

 

[Gs172003]

I don't think you necessarily have to have been rescued to have the fear. Anybody over the age of two knows that if you can't swim you can drown, if you fall off a cliff you can die, etc etc. The kayak example is a good one. If someone that can't swim is left on their own doesn't have to have been rescued before for the damage to be done. They know they can die the first time. Or maybe I'm misreading?

 

[Deleted member 45588]

I don't have the diagnosis, but It kind of upsets me to see articles like this because I felt it was difficult for me to talk about my trauma and take what happened to me seriously and not blame myself/be in denial for a long time and to see people like this getting taken seriously and have a therapist makes me feel like it's unfair because it's like they are getting the help I need while for four years I never got any help and was messed around with and not taken seriously. I have to admit now, I do kind of see PTSD as kind of validation, but without it I would feel my life was out of control and I would be having numerous awful flashbacks and being unable to explain it. I don't know how to get around this, but I don't want to be seeing PTSD, diagnosed or not, as a badge of honour.

I've learned a lot from reading this discussion.

 

[CatInTree]

I'm someone else who can explain what happened if given the chance. My timeline's messed up for in what order I spoke with who (I dare anyone to try and memorize the order of conversations with different people spread out over two years), but I know what was going on.

That doesn't mean I'm faking.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

That doesn't mean I'm faking.

I don't think anyone here said that. I didn't mean that in my post anyway. Sorry if it came across that way.

 

[Cyberluddite]

One of the ways to determine the severity of a person's PTSD diagnosis is the "GAF score" (General Ability to Function). It's used for veterans and civvies, when filing for disability assistance.

I knew I'd been through a lot, mostly because I had to deal with everything on my own a lot of the time... but to see those scores on paper... it explains a helluva lot. My high school buddy served overseas, and he was a hot mess for the first couple years.

So yes, it is possible to rate the severity of PTSD. However, since every human is different, and experiences different things differently, it's a bit more challenging to rate the severity of events in a score... the best we have, thankfully, is the criterion.

 

[Gs172003]

One of the ways to determine the severity of a person's PTSD diagnosis is the "GAF score" (General...

Yes there is definitely a range of severity

 

[Cyberluddite]

Yes there is definitely a range of severity

The problem is, again, how does one verbally convey the magnitude of that very statement to someone who doesn't have PTSD? Ignorance may be bliss, but it's a horrible reason for the author to legitimize marital infidelity.

 

[Sideways]

My dirst diagnosis, 8 years ago, was Bipolar II.

It validated for me that I was suffering in a big big way. I totally get that getting a diagnosis is validating.

But that doesn’t make it helpful for a person who is suffering from something else, to try and validate their suffering by deciding all trauma, with subsequent mental illness, must be ptsd.