Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Patient or Family Education Project

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Patient or Family Education Project
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What is PTSD?
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder which usually occurs when a person has witnessed or undergone a very traumatic occurrence (Tanielian, 2008). Such an occurrence is usually something overly terrifying and extends beyond the normal occurrences which take place in normal everyday life. In fact, while a person who is facing imminent danger is bound to feel afraid and prone to act in self-defense, this is actually a healthy and normal reaction (Ramchand et al., 2010). However, individuals with PTSD feel frightened and stressed even when they are no longer in the traumatic incident.
How it affects our military population?
Even though PTSD is suffered by many different kinds of people in different situations, a huge number of people with PTSD are individuals who have had experience in war. The department of veteran affairs reports that 15-25% of soldiers who fought in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars suffer from PTSD (Ramchand etal., 2010). According to physicians, veterans who suffer from PTSD suffer from anger, anxiety, a sense of isolation, sleeplessness and suicidal thoughts (Ramchand et al., 2010). Veterans with PTSD are usually individuals who witnessed the horrifying nature of war whereby people die violently including mothers and children who are usually innocent of the fighting.
Additionally, this same group of soldiers can also be traumatized by the fact that they had to shoot and kill human life in cold blood either in self-defense or under the justification that they were serving their country. Consequently, these particular kinds of sol...