Genetic Predisposition To Ptsd: Vulnerability Risk
Based on twin studies it has been posited that genetic factors can influence the risk of developing PTSD. As in combat veterans, the development of PTSD symptoms after non-combat trauma also seems to be moderately heritable. Moreover, many of the same genes that influence exposure to assaultive trauma appear to influence susceptibility to PTSD symptoms in their wake.
Blum et al. and Comings and Blum have proposed that defects in various combinations of the genes for these neurotransmitters result in a Reward Deficiency Syndrome and that such individuals are at risk due to behaviors used in seeking unnatural rewards. Because of its importance, the gene for the dopamine D2 receptor was a major candidate gene. Studies in the past decade have shown that in various subject groups the Taq I A1 allele of the DRD2 gene is associated with alcoholism, drug abuse, smoking, obesity, compulsive gambling, and several personality traits. One major area of importance is the potential for gene involvement in vulnerability to PTSD. A range of other dopamine, opioid, cannabinoid, norepinephrine, and related genes has since been added to the list. Like other behavioral disorders, these are polygenically inherited and each gene accounts for only a small per cent of the variance .
What Does The Historical Record Tell Us
DD are among the oldest reported psychiatric disorders with case reports appearing at the end of the 18th century and extensive descriptions in the medical literature of the 19th century. Nineteenth-century controversies included whether hysteria should be conceptualized as dual consciousness , somnambulism , or hysteria ., Ultimately, somatoform hysteria became the unifying framework for all these conditions., Nineteenth-century controversies about hysteria parallel modern ones. Was hysteria related to psychological traumaincluding sexual trauma? Was it due to frustrated and/or repressed sexuality in women, or female sexual overindulgence? Was it an artifact of suggestion on impressionable women?,
What Do Flashbacks Feel Like
Flashbacks feel different for different people. They can happen at anytime, even when we’re feeling happy.;
They can be very scary and distressing as you re-experience your trauma and it can feel like it’s really happening. You may see what happened;as single images or like a film, hear sounds or words, or feel as though you’re being touched. You might be able to smell or taste something linked to your trauma and your body might react the same way;by your heart beating fast or sweating.
Flashbacks can make you feel vulnerable, anxious and scared. They can leave you feeling isolated and not wanting to talk to anyone. You might experience intense feelings of anger, shame or numbness.
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Report: You Will Get Raped In Animal Crossing
Theres a new report out now from Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force and you need to take this seriously, folks. Turns out, if you have a Nintendo Wii, your child risks being molested. Im not joking! The game Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii is the new AOL chatroom of yesteryear. Dont take my word for it, take Andy Andersons word for it:
There is no reason an adult should have this game, says Andy Anderson, Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force.
Straight from the horses mouth. If you read this and your children get molested, its not my fault its Nintendos.
Link
The Long Shadow: Tracking The Lifelong Effects Of Rape In The Wake Of #metoo
I have measured my life by Octobers for almost 3 decades.
My life skidded off its original path on October 4, 1991 when I went from virgin to rape victim in the blink of an eye. When the MeToo Movement erupted last year, I was elated, triggered, and still in the grips of grief after losing my mother. I stayed quiet and didnt raise my hand. Two itty-bitty words just didnt seem adequate to give voice to the deepest pain of my life.
The confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh has shaken me to my core. It has been both riveting and repulsing to watch. As a teenage rape victim who is now a middle-aged woman, I can relate to Dr. Ford on so many levels. In our polarized society I see that many people simply cant. Or wont. I wonder: if given the opportunity to gain an intimate look what it is like to survive an assault, would people open their minds?
The MeToo Movement has been incredibly successful in illuminating the breadth of sexual assault in America. The next step it uncovering the depth of devastation caused by just a single rape. I call it the long shadow, because rape becomes a part of a victims identity that never completely leaves her.
Some people still dont get that.
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What A Flashback Is Like
How do you move past a scene that replays itself in your mind every night?
The thing about being raped is that it doesnt just happen once. Im not talking about repeated assaults, although statistically speaking women who have been raped once are more likely to be raped again . Im talking about how a single rape is, in fact, endless. Close your eyes, be raped. Close your eyes, be raped. Close your eyes, be raped. This is what flashbacks are like. For three months straight and then at regular intervals for almost a decade, I woke upgasping for airto the sensation of being raped. Flashbacks arent like a movie on a screen happening to someone else. Its a five-sense recreation of actual rape: He is on me. I cant breathe. He is in me. Will I die?
It is terror. It is trauma.
I was stuckfrozen in timefrozen in rape for ten years. A pattern of anxiety was established in my mind during the aftermath of rape. My neurocircuitry changed. I was biologically rewired to process all my fears at a high-alert level. Sleep became a battleground, and I always lost. There was no respite, no break, no chance to catch my breath. Those sleepless nights that became weeks that became years werent all about rape, but eventually all my fears followed the path rape carved in my psyche. Insomnia and flashbacks became the way I processed all of my worries, even minor, inconsequential ones.
Survival, survivor. Can you see how inadequate that word feels to me?
The Neuroanatomy Of Ptsd
On a macroscopic level, recent research suggests that the signs and symptoms of PTSD may also have anatomic structural correlations. For example, we know that sensory input, memory formation and stress response mechanisms are affected in patients with PTSD. The regions of the brain involved in memory processing that have been implicated include the hippocampus, amygdala, and frontal cortex. Likewise, functional abnormalities within the thalamus, hypothalamus, and locus coeruleus may be responsible for the heightened stress response .
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Rape Victims Say Face Masks Trigger Horrific Flashbacks Of Being Smothered Or Choked But They Are Being Trolled By Strangers If They Dont Wear Them
- Victims say that they are stigmatised for not wearing masks in public places
- Many rape victims have their mouths and noses covered during attacks
- Covering the face can therefore trigger flashbacks and cause severe distress
- Charity warns victims are simply staying indoors to avoid being ostracised
Rape victims say that wearing masks can trigger horrific flashbacks of being smothered or choked and are calling for less pressure to wear the face-coverings.
They are among a growing number who are concerned by so-called mask rage the shaming of those who dont cover their faces in shops and on public transport.
A number of sexual abuse victims have told charity Rape Crisis that they are avoiding places they would usually go to for fear of being stigmatised for not putting on a mask.
A significant proportion of rape survivors had their mouths or noses covered, or were choked or smothered, as part of the abuse and violence they experienced, Kate Russell, national spokesperson for the charity, told The Guardian.
Rape victims say that wearing masks can trigger horrific flashbacks of being smothered or choked and are calling for less pressure to wear the face-coverings
Covering their face and nose now can trigger flashbacks, panic attacks and severe anxiety, Ms Russell added.
Despite the government providing a legal exemption from mandatory face masks for those who experience severe distress, rape victims feel that they are being exposed to harrowing prejudices.
Scientific Study Of Dissociation
Beginning in the 1980s, researchers on dissociation and DD developed a number of reliable and valid symptom self-report inventories, structured and semi-structured diagnostic interviews, and self-report diagnostic inventories to assess state and trait dissociation and DD in children, adolescents, and adults . Use of these measures, in international clinical and general population samples in the USA, Canada, China, Europe, Latin America, Japan, Korea, Israel, Turkey, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand have identified cross-cultural samples of individuals with DD., Measures include the Dissociative Experiences Scale ,, the DES-Taxon Scale , the Adolescent DES , the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule , the Clinician Administered Dissociative States Scale , and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Dissociative Disorders .
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/11 Anniversary Live Updates: ‘unbearable Sorrow And Disbelief’
US marks 20 years since the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington; Joe Biden visits three sites where hijacked planes crashed in 2001; The Queen shares a message with the US president.
So we dont wear masks now? VictoriaPolice they got you again Easy to understand and imagine. Do you know what also has that effect, when victims of grooming gangs see their abusers walking the streets of the United Kingdom, when those same abusers are currently under deportation orders. Hmm.. I dont know about you but the face mask I wear doesnt feel anything like being choked or smothered? Maybe try a different brand something other than clingfilm/shrink wrap perhaps
Maybe the should champion the funding of counselling and mental health services then rather than fuel right wingers tantrums about considering others for a second by wearing a mask for a short time. of course, it’s the same symbolism Ive heard it all now
194,000,000,000 face masks spark fear of ‘global plastic crisis’A report found that if only 1% of face masks are disposed correctly, around 10,000,000 a month will still end up littering the environment. I have bough reusable from the very begging So glad ive never wore one,and never will.
Downing Street plans rape prosecution targets for police and CPSExclusive: unusual intervention aims to reverse decline and bring more cases to trial Downing Street? Isn’t this a matter for the Justice Ministry? Will those figures include M.P.’s? Tk Later
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Skeptical Views Of Dissociation And Dissociative Disorder
Skeptics view DD as an unscientific fad of the 1980s., They propose three interrelated models to support this idea. In the Iatrogenic Model DID is viewed as a condition produced in highly hypnotizable, fantasyprone,suggestible patientsmany with Borderline Personality Disorder by clinicians who believe in repressed memories and multiple personalities using risky treatments like hypnosis for recovered memory therapy to exhume forgotten traumas as the primary treatment goal, but instead implant false memories.,,Fantasy-prone is a specific construct from hypnosis and cognitive research, describing nonclinical samples of highly hypnotizable individuals with the ability to generate an extraordinarily vivid, compelling fantasy life with cognitive slippage and difficulty discerning the difference between internal and external experience. This dissociation epidemic is based on Freudian ideas of complete repression of traumatic memories, that are revealed under hypnosis. The Sociocognitive Model posits that psychotherapy is not necessary for the development of severe DD. North American culturewith its media focus on childhood sexual abuse, repressed memories, and multiple personalitiesis sufficient to cause highly suggestible people to develop the belief that they have dissociative conditions. The Fantasy Model conceptualizes dissociation as a cognitive trait that leads to fantasies/ confabulations of traumatic experiences.
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Studies Of Acute Dissociative Responses To Trauma
Depersonalization/derealization symptoms are strongly associated with acute traumatic events including motor vehicle accidents and other forms of life-threatening danger., Peritraumatic dissociation, including depersonalization/derealization, tunnel vision, trance-like experiences, confusion, changes in time-sense, disorientation, and amnesia are significantly correlated with later development of PTSD,
Modern Skepticism About Dissociation And Dissociative Disorders
In the early 1990s, skeptical views of dissociation and DD emerged with the rise of False Memory Syndrome , supported by an organized group, many of whose members had been accusedsome in the courtsby their children of childhood sexual abuse, and academics and clinicians who supported them. An extensive, highly publicized backlash occurred with promulgation of a legal theory where recanting former patients and/or accused parents sued mental health providers for malpractice and/or alienation of affections, alleging that the clinicians implanted false memories of childhood sexual abuse and created iatrogenic DD diagnoses. A cadre of attorneys and their experts divided up the country, seeking plaintiffs to bring these suits in local jurisdictions.
This legal theory was a counterpoint to a theory that survivors of childhood abuse could sue perpetrators outside the statute of limitations if they had completely repressed memories of abuse, and only recollected them later on, although dissociative autobiographical memory disturbances are often characterized by partial and/or fragmented recall.False-memory views continue to have considerable following in standard psychology textbooks, the media, and among many mental health professionals.
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Why Do I Have Flashbacks
We don’t really understand why flashbacks happen but there are two current theories:
Modern Interest In Dissociation And Dissociative Disorders
Modern study of dissociation results from several factors. Systematic, psychiatric attention to childhood maltreatment began in the 1960s with the description of the Battered Child Syndrome in 1962. In the 1970s, feminist scholars, psychiatrists and psychologists debunked the Freudian theory that reports of childhood sexual abuse were primarily based in oedipal fantasies. In 1980, the DSM-III added the diagnosis of PTSDwith psychogenic amnesia as a criterion symptomdiscarded the term hysteria and created diagnostic categories for Somatoform and Dissociative Disorders. After the publication of the DSM-IV, the terms Psychogenic Amnesia and Psychogenic Fugue were replaced by Dissociative Amnesia and Dissociative Fugue , respectively. Multiple Personality Disorder was replaced by Dissociative Identity Disorder . Returning Vietnam veterans brought wartime trauma and the diagnosis of PTSD into psychiatric and cultural awareness. Rigorous research on hypnosis in the 1950s and 1960s began to move hypnosis into the mainstream of psychology and psychiatry. The publication of Sybil in 1976, and the subsequent television and movie productions based on it, ignited public interest in what was then known as Multiple Personality Disorder, although this has been cited by skeptics as part of the social contagion producing DID.
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Delayed Recall Of Traumatic Events
Based on the controversies over recovered memory, many clinicians, members of the media, and the public disbelieve that there can be delayed recall of previously experienced traumatic events. Over 70 studies in clinical and nonclinical populations have documented amnesia for traumatic events., These include prospective studies, retrospective studies, studies of acutely traumatized soldiers after combat, victims of torture and genocide, and studies describing adults who fail to recall childhood traumas documented in their medical and/or social service records. In a study of over 9 000 members of a large HMO participating in the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study researchers found that the extent of childhood autobiographical memory disturbancedefined as inability to recall large aspects on one’s childhood after age 4was directly correlated with cumulative childhood adversities, particularly sexual abuse, physical abuse, and combined physical and sexual abuse.
Childhood Development And Did
Naïve views of the developmental origins of DID posit that the child’s psychethe personality born into the bodyis shattered by trauma, fragmenting the mind, and creating separate people in one body. A more developmentally congruent model hypothesizes that overwhelming early trauma, attachment disturbances, and lack of soothing or comfort after trauma prevent the normal development of continuity of the young child’s sense of self across states and contexts. This produces multiple senses of self, often in conflict with one another, that differentiate over developmental time. DID is more like a never-assembled psychological jigsaw puzzle, not a shattered mirror., All the DID self-states constitute the mind of the person; they are not separate people., Contrary to popular belief, in DID treatment, the whole human being is held responsible for the behavior ascribed to any self state, even if amnesia is claimed.
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Treatment Outcome Studies Of Did
Treatment outcome studies of the phasic trauma treatment model of DID, including recent international, prospective, longitudinal studies, have found that DID improves with appropriate treatment and that costs to the health system for DID treatment can decrease substantially as well.,, In an international, 30-month, prospective, longitudinal study patients and therapists reported lower rates of hospitalization; decreased suicide attempts and self-destructive behavior; significant decreases in depression, PTSD, and dissociative symptoms; reduced substance abuse; physical pain, and general distress; and an increase in feeling good. Patients also evinced significantly increased engagement in relationships, work, school, or volunteer jobs. A prospective study of Norwegian inpatients with a history of sexual abuse and other traumas on a specialized trauma unit, showed that, unless specifically treated, severe dissociative symptoms predicted negative outcome at 1-year follow up.