PTSD INFO

Just so you know what has been happening in my life for at least 22 months because you choose to remain ignorant when it comes to this and not educate yourself. Well i know that you and your *friends* read this blog, maybe you will understand a bit more about this.... being the supporting person that you are...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a term for certain severe psychological consequences of exposure to, or confrontation with, stressful events that the person experiences as highly traumatic.[1] Clinically, such events involve actual or threatened death, serious physical injury, or a threat to physical and/or psychological integrity, to a degree that usual psychological defences are incapable of coping with the impact. It is occasionally called post-traumatic stress reaction to emphasize that it is a result of traumatic experience rather than a manifestation of a pre-existing psychological weakness. The presence of a PTSD response is influenced by the intensity of the experience, its duration, and the individual person involved.
It is possible for individuals to experience traumatic stress without manifesting Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as indicated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and also for people to experience traumatic situations and not develop PTSD. In fact, most people who experience traumatic events will not develop PTSD. For most people, the emotional effects of traumatic events tends to subside after several months. PTSD is thought to be primarily an anxiety disorder (possibly closely related to panic disorder) and should not be confused with normal grief and adjustment after traumatic events.
PTSD may be triggered by an external factor or factors. Its symptoms can include the following: nightmares, flashbacks, emotional detachment or numbing of feelings (emotional self-mortification or dissociation), insomnia, avoidance of reminders and extreme distress when exposed to the reminders ("triggers"), loss of appetite, irritability, hypervigilance, memory loss (may appear as difficulty paying attention), excessive startle response, clinical depression, and anxiety. It is also possible for a person suffering from PTSD to exhibit one or more other comorbid psychiatric disorders; these disorders often include clinical depression (or bipolar disorder), general anxiety disorder, and a variety of addictions.
Symptoms that appear within the first month of the trauma are called Acute stress disorder, not PTSD according to DSM-IV. If there is no improvement of symptoms after this period of time, PTSD is diagnosed. PTSD has three subforms: Acute PTSD subsides after a duration of three months. If the symptoms persist, the diagnosis is changed to chronic PTSD. The third subform is referred to as delayed onset PTSD which may occur months, years, or even decades after the event.