News When Veterans Return; About Secondary Ptsd

[Born to Run]

When veterans return, their children also deal with the invisible wounds of war:

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This article has made me understand secondary ptsd, as I was totally ignorant how this works. Maybe helpful for others as well.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

Secondary or Vicarious PTSD is the transference of trauma experience from victim to witness, as in all walks of life witnessing a travesty can be just as traumatic as being involved in the trauma. The cognitive mind processes only 18 % of it's total capability at any one time, Military personnell utilize 24% of their concious mind due to heightened awareness and acute sense.

Vicarious PTSD is an empathetic response to one's understanding of pain and grief.

Commanding officers in the military very commonly suffer vicarious PTSD because they are ordering men to step forward and sacrifice their own lives in protection of another.

 

[Born to Run]

Thank you for elaborating on this Laurie.

 

[Sighs]

I can't seem to get the link to open.

I thought secondary PTSD was not about witnessing trauma - I thought that qualified as PTSD. (Eg: Being a bystander to a fatal car accident.) I thought secondary PTSD was about being exposed to the primary sufferer's symptoms.

I know as a small child I was terrified of my father's unpredictable rage. We walked on eggshells but anything could set him off. His brother who served longer and saw more action was even worse. We were all terrified of him. That has to have an effect as you grow up.

Can anyone help with another link or a way to search for the article?

 

[Deleted member 20280]

The veteran is directly involved as a participant however willing or not to the trauma event. Secondary or vicarious PTSD is the effect of the exposure or witnessing of the primary victim's trauma event.

 

[Recovery4Me]

Secondary PTSD is what my son has and what he is in therapy for...from me (accountability). There is quite a lot of research currently involving the children who suffered due to PTSD parent(s). I appreciate the article being offered for many reasons. It is but another reason to become self-regulated asap.

 

[Born to Run]

@Sighs This is the plain URL:

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[Sweetpea76]

I thought secondary PTSD was about being exposed to the primary sufferer's symptoms.

From what I've read, there are a lot of issues and/or disagreement over the labels, especially since none of them are official diagnoses.

Like, Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder supposedly comes from indirect exposure to a loved one's trauma experience (ie hearing their firsthand experiences in detail) and reacting to it with symptoms that parallel PTSD, like hypervigilance, nightmares etc. It would be like knowing your spouse had a specific trauma, and because of it, he has "trigger X." You then start to be hypervigilant about avoiding "trigger X" to protect your spouse, but then eventually "trigger X" begins to trigger you and you "relive" your sufferers trauma if you experience that trigger too. Its pretty controversial, since it's more of a reaction than a disorder.

I think the stress from dealing with your sufferers symptoms is more of a Compassion Fatigue. This would be more along the lines of dealing with the push/pull, being the target of lashing out behaviors, etc.

I'm pretty sure that living with a PTSD sufferer that is abusive because of their symptoms (like in domestic violence situations) would just cause another case of PTSD in the supporter if they go through their own trauma.

"Secondary PTSD" seems to be a blanket term that is applied to any or all of these, depending on where you see it.

 

[Recovery4Me]

http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/PTSD-overview/dsm5_criteria_ptsd.asp

From the National Center for PTSD with respect to DSM-5 and the subset for children

 

[Deleted member 28812]

Have not read the article yet... but does it say people with PTSD use a bigger percent of the brain capacity? I assumed that reading your discussion. That sounds interesting. Will have to read the article tomorrow.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

The concious brain processes 18% of gathered information all the time, a Soldier uses 24%of his brain all the time. The unconcious brain is responsible for the remaining information processing. These are channeled into memories that are stored in the right rear cerebral cortex of the brain.

Th unconcious brain will transfer a memory thread into the concious brain for it to be processed at a better time. We are inherantly unable to process or deal with these kind of emotions at the moment of trauma. Whereby we are protected by the un-concious brains capacity to do just that.

 

[Ocean5]

Didn't read article - too much right now.

But when I was a young teenager VA doctor told my mom we were the last prisoners of war. That war came home.