Determining if PTSD is Contagious

“Brannan Vines has never been to war, but her husband, Caleb, was sent to Iraq twice, where he served in the infantry as a designated marksman. He’s one of103,200, or 228,875, or 336,000 Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and came back with PTSD, depending on whom you ask, and one of 115,000 to 456,000with traumatic brain injury.”

• Brannan Vines has never been to war.
• She personally doesn’t know how it feels to have PTSD because she hasn’t experienced that war like environment.
• Caleb is in fact a victim of PTSD from serving in the war with Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Depending on who i ask one of 115,000 to 456,000 have this traumtic brain injury. So if i ask one person it’s true but if i ask another person its false?

” Imagine there’s a murderer in your house. And it is dark outside, and the electricity is out. Imagine your nervous system spiking, readying you as you feel your way along the walls, the sensitivity of your hearing, the tautness in your muscles, the alertness shooting around inside your skull. And then imagine feeling like that all the time.”

• PTSD gives you a feeling of discomfort, like there is a murderer in your house.
• PTSD can give you a feeling you would get if it was dark outside and the electricity went out. So you have that anxious feeling that someone is in your house
• Apparently it makes you so alert to your surroundings, you have sensitivity to hearing, and just makes you so nervous about something bad happening literally all the time. You feel as if you cant get a good nights sleep because you have to watch over your shoulder all the time.
• This feeling seems to stay with people who suffer from PTSD for a long period of time and in most cases forever.

“Granted, diagnosing PTSD is a tricky thing. The result of a malfunctioning nervous system that fails to normalize after trauma and instead perpetrates memories and misfires life-or-death stress for no practical reason, it comes in a couple of varieties, various complexities, has causes ranging from one lightning-fast event to drawn-out terrors or patterns of abuse—in soldiers, the incidence of PTSD goes up with thenumber of tours and amount of combat experienced”

• If you diagnose someone with PTSD  it can indeed be a misunderstanding.
• Peoples actions tend to vary if they are a victim of PTSD they become very dangerous to be around.
• A lot of times people tend to forget things no matter how important it is just a symptom of this disease
• People who suffer from this disease usually have problems with abuse and are terrified of little things like an explosion on a televison can give them a flashback of a time in a war where a bomb went off or something of that nature.
• Abuse of family members is common they believe that someone in the family is an enemy of the war and they attempt to hurt them because they think that they are a threat.

“As with most psychiatric diagnoses, there are no measurable objective biological characteristics to identify it. Doctors have to go on hunches and symptomology rather than definitive evidence.”

• Basically when a psychiatric diagnoses someone with PTSD they really aren’t 100% sure that a war vet has this symptom.
• Doctors don’t have a complete understanding of how it works they mostly just go with their gut feeling and determine if someone does have PTSD that way.
• I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing i feel like doctors have way too much technology today to not know for sure if someone is having brain trauma or not.
• It is quite ignorant to just go with your gut feeling on something so serious as a brain injury.

“Different studies of the children of American World War II, Korea, and Vietnam vets with PTSD have turned up different results: “45 percent” of kids in one small study “reported significant PTSD signs”; “83 percent reported elevated hostility scores.” Other studies have found a “higher rate of psychiatric treatment”; “more dysfunctional social and emotional behavior”; “difficulties in establishing and maintaining friendships.”

• The children of World War 2, Korea, and Vietnam vets all have different results of PTSD.
• A percentage of 45 of kids in a small study had significant signs of PTSD while others have not.
• A larger percent of these children have reports of elevated hostility scores meaning they are more hostile and have emotional behavior than others.