What Do You Think Of "traumatic Psychiatric Injury" Versus "mental Illness"?

[shimmerz]

Well, we ALL know this is a bunch of BS

I is not WE and no WE don't all have to agree, and be called BS'ers if we don't. I am tired of having names thrown at me (or WE) if I don't agree with something. YOU think it is BS, I don't. My opinion. Let me have it.

 

[shimmerz]

childhood trauma and Schizophrenia.

This is a very good point. My T always said that Schizophrenia was trauma that had morphed beyond PTSD.

 

[Ocean5]

"Lots" of very deep emotions in this thread....it's good people are getting things out.

Hmmm, I do think I like "not normal". I could settle on that one.

I've know I'm not normal since early kid, or maybe just not normal for the very rural and remote area I grew up in. But I'm fine being called not normal...odd..awkward...weird kid....

stems from the minimization/denial of the actual *events* that caused my ptsd in the first place, which is really common for folks.

Seriously - I finally start to open up to some relatives about my youth. They admit I've been through so much, and have no idea how to understand - yet I'm told I should find a way to move-on, forget my youth and not think about it. How does one forget things I don't/barely remember???

I'm scared of what I don't remember.....

It's so frustrating because it's so hard to open up to start with. I try to explain I don't remember most of my youth, but my mind & body does. They think PTSD is just a thinking disorder or something. My body goes into extreme anxiety and panic (flight/fright mode). How can you forget things you don't or barely remember??

I'm always focused on "getting out of that body/mind state".... yet they say find a way to forget and move-on....

I'm very grateful to one Aunt who does understand, and been there for me past couple years. Thank you so much!

 

[Ocean5]

This is a very good point. My T always said that Schizophrenia was trauma that had morphed beyond PTSD.

Thinking of my relative...research I did to try to help him... I think your T is correct.

I feel bad talking about PTSD when I know what he deals with is to the extreme (not to minimize PTSD in any way - it's a very serious condition.) But to have your brother tell you the voices he hears since he's been a kid...how he's a good person...but voices tell him to do things...it's horrible. So horrible.

 

[rainy_daze]

I'm scared of what I don't remember.....

You don't remember for a good reason Ocean. That's me saying that from my own experience though. I can remember more now than I've ever been able to, but I had to get to a place where the denial and dissociation would lift in order for me to be flooded with memories/flashbacks. I accept that there will be things I never fully remember though, and that was important for me to realise. Good luck with it.

JMHO, I prefer the term "mental illness" to the term "traumatic psychiatric injury".

For example, I suffer from dissociation, but I couldn't tell you exactly what the diagnostic label for it is (maybe dissociative disorder mixed or not specified? I have no idea), and my T said "just think of it as dissociation", because she knew I didn't want to keep getting hung up on a label. Plus, in the UK, they use something similar to the DSM but it is a little different.

I guess I don't mind now saying I have a mental health difficulty. Te term mentally ill doesn't have all these negative connotations for me, unless someone is acting ignorant of what a mental illness actually is/how it happens.

I don't mind ticking the boxes on a form and writing down PTSD and depression. Maybe it just shows I'm further on in healing than I give myself credit for. [Why feel ashamed?]

I assumed I was "crazy" aka mentally ill

I thought I was crazy before I was diagnosed. Do I think I'm crazy now? Nope. When you live through child abuse (and then later in life live through another trauma) your sense of reality and/or identity can become very confused. But the emotions/reactions I have had, still have, and continue to work on managing, are all normal reactions to abnormal situations.

I don't equate mentally ill with being crazy. I find that it is that precise attitude that cause the stigma around all form of illnesses (not just PTSD).

I guess take what works for you and leave the rest. If you prefer to say you have had a traumatic psych injury, go for it.

You've had some good responses here MT, thank you for sharing the thread and to everyone for replying to the question, it's an interesting discussion.

 

[Go Hungry]

I'm not sure how to answer. I mean.. in my case, I do believe that I am mentally ill. I go by the definition in the OED and it's pretty broad. I hate the stigma that comes with that though, because when most people hear the words 'mentally ill' they immediately think of criminals and homeless weirdos. And though I am a little weird, it's more of my symptoms and coping mechanisms than it is me. It was especially bad when I was a child, because I was showing bipolar symptoms when I was 11 years old. I never had the chance to grow up with a normal life, so I couldn't help but be weird. I lived in an insane world of terror and madness, so it was just inevitable...

I know that before I got my diagnosis, I did believe myself to be the most miserable coward. I couldn't stand myself, to be honest. But the only remedy was death, and that was certainly off the table. Once I got this diagnosis of a brain injury, it took a very, very great deal of weight off my shoulders. I realize that there is a difference between a brain injury and psychiatric injury, but I try to simplify it for people that I may have to tell about it. Anyway, everything suddenly made sense. I'm not crazy, or cursed by the gods, or any of the other explanations that I cycled through to try and explain it. As somebody stated earlier, I was just a normal person living through extraordinary circumstances.

It was hard getting the diagnosis though... to have confirmation of it. It hurt really bad. I went into a deep depression.. It's one thing to know you're a bit strange, it's another to know that you truly are damaged on a physical level, and that it isn't going to change.. There's no cure for the way my brain developed. But finding out that my symptoms are extremely typical of that sort of injury... it was quite revealing and a little spooky to realize that I wasn't really that special of a snowflake when it came to my illness.

Okay, so that was total tangent, but anyways... I find comfort in knowing that I'm injured, and that the injury spawned bipolar disorder, dissociation and flashbacks. Those illnesses had plagued me for decades, and to have the key to it all... It's priceless.

 

[Sighs]

My mother (who happens to be a clinical psychologist) always says the only people who are normal are the ones you don't know very well...

 

[Anarchy]

My mother says the only people who are normal are the ones you don't know very well...

I think that there may actually be some "normal" people in the world.

About three of them.

 

[Ronin]

About three of them.

My Avoid list has just shrunken down to a manageable number :)
Thank you, Anarchy.

 

[J'qel]

It *is* an actual injury. Your brain suffers physical symptoms as a result. Your hippocampus shrinks. It *is* an actual physical ailment. Illness can work as well, but calling it a mental illness a lot of people have misunderstood as meaning that the "illness" is purely "mental"-when it very much isn't.

 

[Friday]

@J'qel ... I've read a whole lotta studies over the past couple years and my understanding is that, to date, there's no actual physical marker that can pinpoint PTSD. Do some people show hippocampus shrinkage? Yep. But not reliably. Aaaaaaaand -more back to the drawing board- so does some of the wider population at large, with no history of trauma at any point, nor any present or past symptoms of PTSD. Meanwhile, to loop back around, many people who are textbook PTSD don't show any effect on the hippocampus.

The same is true with other regions of the brain. There's been a lot of excitement from time to time with initial studies, but once the scope is broadened? (Larger sample sizes & control groups, even short longitudinal studies instead of snapshot studies, etc.)...The results don't hold.

Is PTSD neurological? Absolutely. As are many other disorders and conditions that we -plain & simple- don't know the exact mechanisms for. Yet.

There are heaps and heaps of physical ailments that aren't injuries. Diabetes isn't an injury (even though we know the islets of langerhan in the pancrease are to blame). Using that one as an example because while Type1 is inherant, Type2 -like PTSD- is an acquired condition.

 

[J'qel]

Actually according to the Journal of affective disorders, there is a definitive link in those who suffer repeated trauma PTSD-like those from war zones-with shrinkage in the hippocampus.

It is those with single affector PTSD that show little if any variation.

It has to do with a sustained aroused fear response over a prolonged period.