Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Exposure to traumas, especially life-threatening ones, such as a serious accident, a natural disaster, war, or witnessing the death (or threat of death) of another person, or being assaulted can result in PTSD when the aftermath of the experience interferes with daily functioning. Common symptoms include avoiding activities, situations, people, and/or conversations associated with the event. Responses to trauma can include feelings of intense fear, helplessness, and/or horror, reexperiencing the event in thought or recurrent dreams, numbness and loss of interest in surroundings (detachment), inability to sleep, anxious feelings, being easily startled, irritability, angry outbursts, extreme vigilance, and a sense that your life opportunities have shrunk.
PTSD can occur at any age, although older adults rarely have it.
For PTSD to be diagnosed, your symptoms must be present for more than a month and must result in decreased ability to work, socialize, and participate in other areas of daily functioning.
Your physician will probably ask you the following questions …
1. Have you experienced or witnessed a life-threatening event that caused intense fear, helplessness, or horror?
2. Do you reexperience the event and feel numb or detached, avoid thinking or talking about it, avoid activities or people who remind you of it, blank on important parts of it, lose interest in significant activities in your life, or sense your life will never be normal again?
3. Are you troubled by two or more of the followingproblems sleeping, irritability or outbursts of anger, problems concentrating, feeling “on guard,” or startling easily?
Jeff, age forty-one, came back from active duty in Iraq. Four of his buddies had died when their jeep passed over a land mine. He was thrown from the vehicle, but his buddies were killed. His physical injuries were severe enough for him to be sent back to the United States. In the VA hospital, Jeff lost interest in living and tried to hang himself. He began to have flashbacks of the incident in Iraq, couldn’t keep his mind on a TV show, startled easily, couldn’t sleep, and had unpredictable outbursts of anger. His nurse practitioner diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder
If you have an intense fear and embarrassment in social or performance situations, you may be suffering from social phobia. If this is the case, you may be acutely aware of the physical signs of your anxiety (blushing, palpitations, tremors, sweating, diarrhea, confusion) and worry that others will notice, judge them, and think poorly of you. This kind of anxiety can lead to a panic attack when you are faced with a social situation or avoidance of the activity altogether.
If you suffer from social phobia, you tend to be sensitive to criticism and rejection, have difficulty asserting yourself, and suffer from low self-esteem. Common situations that bring out social phobia are performance related (speaking in public or to strangers, fear of meeting new people, writing, eating, and/or drinking in public).
Onset of social phobia is mid-to-late adolescence, but children may also exhibit symptoms. In childhood, the condition includes excessive shyness, clinging behavior, tantrums, mutism, decline in school performance, and avoidance of school and social activities with peers.
