Post Traumatic Stress Research Papers

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychological change that can occur to an individual after some sort of traumatic event. While post-traumatic stress disorder is often paired with a variety of ranging opinions about the topic, the act of gathering one's own information about such a disorder is crucial. After this research one may find that the issue of post-traumatic stress is often much more common than initially believed; this disorder has been noted to affect more than five million Americans almost every year (Nebraska Department of Government Affairs) . Post-traumatic stress disorder is surrounded with misinformation and controversy, therefore the identification of causes and outcomes of this disorder

When individuals speak of post-traumatic stress disorder it is is often accompanied by the discussion of someone who as participated in a war, however this is nowhere near the only cause for post-traumatic stress. Causes for a post-traumatic stress disorder are often referred to as disasters; an example of such a disaster could be seen in losing a loved one to a bad car accident (Rahman). Causes of post-traumatic stress disorder are often not as severe as one may think; for example, a child who once got stuck in an elevator may choose to take to stairs in the future. While this issue may not seem large for some individuals, it may have been quite traumatic for the child to experience. To continue from this example, one must understand post-traumatic stress can affect anyone, not just adults. Children are noted to quite frequently display signs of post-traumatic stress after disasters

Not many if any of these physical changes would be noticeable to anyone on a day to day basis however when examined many significant changes in brain structure have been noted throughout many patients who happen to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Researches have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study many patients brain structure compared to a control. The most common observation made about patients with post-traumatic stress disorder is the contrast in hippocampal volume. Individuals who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder often are reported to have a smaller hippocampus than a control subject. This change has been reported to range from zero percent all the way to an astounding twenty percent. This becomes even more fascinating when observing the correlation of smaller hippocampi and other disorders; patients who are diagnosed with disorders such as depression or schizophrenia often have a similarly small hippocampal volume when compared to post-traumatic stress disorder. The hippocampus is not the only feature affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, structures such as the amygdala, corpus callosum and event the frontal lobes have been noted to have a notable difference in size when observing patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. The noted change in