Poll Would 'Training' Have Avoided/Reduced Your Trauma's Impact?

[The Sentinel]

On one hand, preparing for a situation might not make it any better - however I can see certain and specific circumstances where it might indeed make you able to function. For example, if someone tried to rape me my training would kick in and I would, in all likelihood, kill them. Now, would I deepen or worsen my existing condition by doing that? Doubtlessly. However, proper training might assist in avoiding certain types of trauma in the first place (martial arts training to avoid a situation where you would need to use it, etc.). Part of my martial arts training is to avoid those types of situations and beyond that I don't have to end the other person's life in order to preserve my own if I have the appropriate opportunity to disable them. My training also gives me the ability to keep my presence of mind "under fire" and thereby potentially avoid the situation altogether. Perhaps I could disarm the situation or somehow escape it before it happened, but if I was raped... then honestly I don't think anything in the world would really help me endure that again - even having been there and experienced it.

However, I can't imagine that any degree of preparation and video games will ever prepare you to really face the trauma. It's like a flight sim computer program. They're wonderful and can give you an idea of what it's like but until you're actually up there with the controls in your hands you really aren't up there with the controls in your hands.

My sister talks about how she was "almost raped" by an overeager boyfriend who was trying to pressure her into sex. She thinks that it gives her some kind of preparation or understanding of what being raped actually is like and I'm sorry to say that it just plain doesn't. (I hope she never, ever, ever has to find that out.)

 

[Don]

An article I read (at my public library) today [Sc.Am.Mind July/Aug 2015, Moises Velasquez-Manoff pp.56-59] re-awakened my interest in the preventive side of avoiding PTSD (while the author's view is very different from mine he does include an intriguing chart (for the U.S. military) which you may be readily able to find through google: ibiblio Annual Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Diagnoses in All Services 2000-2014.

When I started this topic I had in mind how my own family caregiver experiences impacted me, how completely unprepared I was [my education's close to that of a nurse] and what might have helped prepare me better for the ordeal, and that a similar approach might be useful in military recruit training.

Of course, I ought to have remarked clearly on my limited focus at the start. My thinking about 'training' was an undeveloped concept along the lines of: before engaging in an activity that was high risk of PTSD, preparation could include rehearsals (extended videogame sessions over weeks or even months?). Perhaps that started with simulated development of close relationships with family or wartime buddies, followed by caregiver/combat episodes (gleaned from real life examples) eventually leading to confronting death in the loss of friends or family, in the hope that familiarization beforehand on even this simulated interaction level, would help prepare participants to manage a higher level of acceptance and coping when confronted with real life trauma.

It's a concept, I'm not expecting all or perhaps even most readers here to accept it. But perhaps some will find it food for thought.

 

[Fadeaway]

Concerning video games only, video games to not desensitize anyone to anything unless the person already has predisposition to it due to an underlying of a small handful of very specific mental disorders. I spent a lot of time studying and researching this for a paper I wrote when I was in school.

On the other hand, they can be beneficial in coping, post trauma.

 

[Ed Norton]

No. Well maybe if I grew up on a farm to know pig behavior Lol