Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - Essay Example

On top of the physical manifestations of trauma, psychological symptoms related to possible post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) may surface. These may be accompanied by chronic pain syndromes, chronic fatigue syndrome, eating disorders, and irritable bowel (Springer et al., 2003).

          The case at hand is about a mother who has fled from her abusive partner because he has been found to have sexually abused her two children. Her older son, aged 9 is by another man, and the younger son, aged 5 is the abusive partner’s son. It is logical to assume that both boys may have been traumatized by their experience of child abuse. To add insult to injury, the man is requesting custody of both of them, and their mother is denying it due to obvious reasons.

          Studies have shown that most often, the abuser is somebody familiar to the child and that the abuse happens in a familiar environment, supposedly safe for the child (Administration for Children and Families, 2004). In this case, the perpetrator is the parent/ parental figure of the child victims, which further heightens the likelihood of trauma. Abused or neglected children develop painful memories of the experience and it can haunt them all their lives. The traumatic experience can even influence the way they behave with others or how they would raise their children in the future (Anda et al., 2005). Some children may never fully recover from the trauma, resulting in lifelong depression, anxiety, and personality disorders.  Shengold (1989) has termed the devastating long-term consequences of child maltreatment as “soul murder”.