June is National PTSD Awareness Month and as one of the area's largest providers of behavioral health services, we want to use this opportunity to provide you with some information about this often misunderstood condition.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a behavioral health condition that occurs after someone is exposed to a trauma, which can include experiences such as physical and sexual assault, social and political violence, or war and terrorism related activities. It is estimated that as much as 8% of the population will suffer from PTSD during their lifetime and at any given time during a 12-month period, 3% of the general population is experiencing PTSD. For individuals and families participating in Cherokee Health System's refugee program, which provides primary care and behavioral health screenings and other services to newly settled refugees, the rate of PTSD diagnosis is over 50%.
Anyone over the age of one can be diagnosed with PTSD and it ranges in severity with many different accompanying symptoms. These symptoms can include nightmares and flashbacks, emotional changes such as decreased frustration tolerance or angry outbursts, auditory and visual hallucinations, distrust of others, hypersensitivity to stimuli, anxiety, and depression. It is important to note, however, that not everyone experiences PTSD the same way, even if they experienced a similar trauma. This phenomenon is explained by the concept of resiliency, which simply states that some people are more resilient than others when coping with trauma.
Dr. Eboni Winford, a Behavioral Health Consultant at Cherokee, details a personal story of two of her clients who suffered from PTSD. "Last year I had a couple who came with their family to the United States to escape terrible violence in Iraq. The husband was intensely focused on his wife's condition. He said she cried all of the time and couldn't sleep--but he never discussed any of the problems that he was experiencing. During a session with his wife, he showed me a video on his cellphone from his home in Iraq--a bomb had gone off and there were dead bodies everywhere. I knew at this moment that he was also suffering and I had to get creative with ways I could help him without overstepping cultural boundaries. Because Iraq is a very patriarchal society, I couldn't just tell him what to do for help--men there do not typically reach out for help of this nature. From there on out, I would ask him to accompany his wife to her appointments and as I helped her, he also benefited from seeing her improvement and hearing my recommendations for her. I'm happy to say that they are both improving and doing really well now!"
