News Nearly Half Of U.s. Kids Exposed To Traumatic Social Or Family Experiences During Childhood

[MyPTSD]

Nearly half of all children in the United States are exposed to at least one social or family experience that can lead to traumatic stress and impact their healthy development – be it having their parents divorce, a parent die or living with someone who abuses alcohol or drugs – increasing the risk of negative long-term health consequences or of falling behind in school, suggests new research.

[DLMURL="http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/mind_brain/ptsd/~3/VNnaJT2Fwjk/141208105318.htm"]Continue reading...[/DLMURL]

 

[anthony]

And people wonder why they scream PTSD when something bad happens! Sheesh!

 

[Chava]

Even aside from "PTSD" I don't understand terms like "traumatic stress" being tossed around. Trauma implies the fight-flight responses (near death, trapped, serious violation, etc). A friend told me once she was traumatized by taking the bus. And she was serious. I wanted to say, "You mean 'STRESSED OUT'?" But I just listened. Childhood is stressful. Seems like most of our grandparents will die or parents will get divorced, and maybe one of them has an addiction. None of that traumatized me, but it was stressful.

I don't actually feel very optimistic about how we've researched and helped PTSD and "cptsd", but we continue to make it murky for therapists alike when any stressful thing is considered trauma.

"trauma-informed" care...for parents divorcing? Okay, what IS that? Do we need more diagnosis to outline the care and get insurance companies on board? I don't love labels but it seems like we need them. Soon this will all fall under some other labeled trauma disorder and nobody will know what trauma is...we'll all just be traumatized all the time. Sucks to be humans.

 

[anthony]

I know... right! Because the buzz word is post traumatic stress disorder, right now, it seems they've taken it a step further to push their cause in society, using two words with different meanings to apply and label anything wrong in life, as traumatic stress.

Trauma -- relating to or causing psychological trauma, physical injury.

Stress -- a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.

There is actually quite a significant difference between those two meanings. Check out just how much trauma usage has climbed in the last 30 years for usage, compared to stress, which has been quite a gradual climb over more than a hundred years, declining even in the past decade due to the increase in trauma, most likely.

The assertion really needs to be made, what is adverse or demanding versus psychologically traumatic. When you leave it up to humans to choose, then you allow individualistic emotions to dictate and mix between the two because clear distinctions aren't made.

But the kicker is just this... for PTSD, a clear distinction is made, which is what pisses most people off when they get told they don't have PTSD for their relationship breakdown or such, even though a therapist told them they did. People are actually now claiming PTSD due to harsh comments made against them online now. Yes, that stupid. People find harsh comments as bullying or such, even though all theoretical with no physical attachment or threats, but just harsh comments are being claimed now for giving people PTSD.

People are morons.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Part of my frustration lies in that a top rated hospital/university has published this article. This institution is trusted by many so when one of their own puts out an article like this, people will put blind faith in it in part because of the source. Quite a few in my family have gone to Hopkins for care as its one of the best places in this region to get specialized care. But, on the flip side, they are NOT known for trauma care (believe me, I would have had a doctor there if they were!)

I share the frustrations that others have posted.

 

[Chava]

It's not even helpful to the stressed out people. I mean, they need to know they will recover and that stress, even bad extreme stress, is not so abnormal. To make it "trauma" or worse, a trauma disorder? I wasn't traumatized because my brother beat me up or called me fat, or because my dad abandoned me to his addiction (though that sucked in a non-life-threatening way....stressful, yes). And to think that would just muddle my confusing trauma mix further. I need a therapist who understands real trauma and can direct me in working through all that, not just the issues with as shitty colleague.

This is all still relatively new study in our human world, so understandable it's muddy sometimes. But there are definitions for PTSD, and within that "T" there are definitions for trauma. I think we'd better validate people's true suffering if we saw stress as stress, grief as grief, abandonment as abandonment, trauma as trauma, etc. It's like people think being dumped can only be heart-breaking and disorientating if it's "traumatic." No, it still sucks, but physiologically it's really a different story...it's still suffering, but it's not all called being traumatized. The colleague being seriously traumatized by riding the bus really pissed me off. I'll never tell her about my stuff...surely i'd traumatize her.