Analyzing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Essay Example

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD is one of the most common psychological disorders affecting individuals around the world. A disease that influences how individuals think and eventually how they react and feel to stimulus, PTSD is most evident in military personnel who are almost always in a combat or life-threatening environment. Moreover, the disorder is perceived to be higher in females. In this article, the researchers try to compare if a kind of cognitive behavioural therapy is better than a supportive intervention to treat PTSD among female military personnel. The researchers share that attention was focused on PTSD after several unfortunate events such as the September 11 attack, Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina. However, when the study was published in 2007, there had been no prior study assessing the treatments for PTSD as administered to women in the armed forces. The disorder lasts longer in women than in men. Hence, the researchers conducted the study to know which treatment would be better for women and, as a consequence, help women overcome the problem sooner. Cognitive behavioural therapy and administration of inhibitors are initial treatments for PTSD. The researchers hypothesize that prolonged exposure, a kind of cognitive behavior therapy, is more effective than present-centred therapy. Where prolonged exposure allows the participant to talk about the traumatic experience and its effect on the participant’s life, present-centred therapy tries to help the participant reflect on his/her current life and understand the problems that may have resulted before or from PTSD. The researchers divided a group of 284 female veterans into two groups. 141 would be treated with prolonged exposure while 143 would be undergoing present-centred therapy. The 90-minute sessions lasted for 10 weeks. An assessor with a master’s or doctoral degree in the field made evaluations before and after the therapy. There were evaluations done on follow-ups on the 3rd and 6th month post-therapy. The assessor was not made privy to the types of treatments. 52 female therapists who had a master’s or doctoral degree in treating women with PTSD worked with the participants. Sessions were videotaped and assessed. These were supervised and feedback was given through telephone on a weekly or biweekly basis as well as in monthly group conference calls. The researchers discovered that there were no significant differences between the participants. Results showed that all women were exposed to an average of 10 types of trauma in their lives, the worst being of a sexual nature around the age of 21. Also, the treatment time was not significant in both groups as all participants showed favourable responses post-treatment and on follow-up dates. However, the group under present-centred therapy showed a tendency to need an antipsychotic at the 6-month follow up mark and an increased or new medication during the observation period. Researchers conclude that women from the prolonged exposure group were more likely to recover from PTSD and get total remission. As the results of the study showed a correlation between PTSD and sexual trauma, psychologists may refer to this study to get a better understanding of sexually-abused victims. Moreover, this finding would now help military therapists in providing treatment for female veterans. In addition, families of female veterans and the veterans themselves would be able to cope with PTSD more efficiently and help the patient recover from the disease faster. Reference: Schnurr, Paula P., Friedman, Matthew J., et. al., “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” JAMA. 297.8 (2007): 820-830. Web. 24 November 2012. 2. Before they were diagnosed with the sickness, the world did not understand why popular individuals such as Virginia Woolf, Carrie Fisher, Jean Claude Van Damme and Catherine Zeta-Jones would be so creative one moment and then be tremendously depressed the next. Relationships, careers and, in some cases, even the person’s life were put at risk and suffered from these mood swings. Later on, these changes in behavior were attributed to having bipolar disorder. People suffering from bipolar disorder have alternating moods; specifically depression to mania. Bipolar disorder, once discovered by the medical world, has been and is still being used to explain why personalities from the media suddenly manifest periods of creativity but later show erratic behavior because of severe depression. Because the above statement is just a supposed truth and there has been no controlled study done about it, Connie Strong and Terence Ketter conducted a study to find out if there is an actual truth in the claim that creativity is more enhanced in individuals with bipolar disorder. The researchers searched for signs of enhanced creativity by assessing non-eminent creativity in persons with bipolar disorder as compared to those without. Non-eminent creativity refers to the basic creativeness level of a person. There were three groups of participants: 49 diagnosed with bipolar disorder, 25 with major depressive disorder, 47 who were healthy & did not have any major medical illnesses, and lastly, 32 volunteers without any psychiatric or substance abuse issues who are also Creative Writing, Fine Arts or Product Design students at Stanford University. Participants who passed the screening were evaluated using four creativity measures. Results showed participants with bipolar disorder and the university students from degrees requiring creative output had enhanced creativity as compared to the healthy group. Participants with major depressive disorder were not part of the group with enhanced creativity. However, the researchers suggested on conducting additional studies to discover how enhanced creativity can happen and how this can be associated to diagnosis and treatment. This research is important because society can now know for certain that the occurrence of bipolar disorder in individuals does cause enhanced creativity. Additionally, those people who have bouts of depression and mania will now understand why they perform better at certain periods of time. If so, then they would not feel so down during those periods when they try to come up with something but nothing happens. For the people who live and work with an individual who manifests periods of extreme creativity and then depression, there will be less alienation and more understanding of what the person is going through. For the field of psychology, this research can pave the way to additional research on how enhanced creativity happens inside the mind of an individual who has bipolar disorder. Also, if the source of enhanced creativity is discovered then the source of depression may also be found and a more exact and efficient treatment can be developed. If so, then a lot of artistic people would not have to go through bouts of gloominess and their career and personal life would not be put at risk. Reference: Santosa, Claudia M., Strong, Connie M., et. al. “Enhanced creativity in bipolar disorder patients: A controlled study.” Journal of Affective Disorders.100 (2007): 31-39. Web. 24 November 2012. 3. Hypnosis is not new to society. Many cultures use hypnosis for various reasons. The medical field often employs hypnosis in treatment sessions for psychologically imbalanced individuals. Hypnosis helps the patient to deal with a stressful event through the prompting of a therapist. Usually, hypnosis is used for adults and is not the primary intervention for children. The researcher for this article theorizes that hypnosis can actually aid in making the brain more flexible and as a consequence function more efficiently. Moreover, hypnosis in children will help to lower stress levels and PTSD symptoms. The article is a review of how past research has discovered that hypnosis can aid in developing a child’s mental capacity and relieve stress which is the root of PTSD. According the article, the use of group hypnosis and teaching children self-hypnosis has been effective in helping children recover from trauma from terrorist attacks and sleep disorders, respectively. Lesmana, Suryani, Jensen and Tiliopouls conducted two studies: one for stress and another for sleeping disorders. They had children undergo a single 30-minute hypnotherapy session then return to the first stressful memory linked to the bombing. Results manifested that more than half of the children showed improvement after only one group session. For the sleeping disorder, therapists taught children how to hypnotize themselves by meditation. They were then told of a special place and a special pet to help them sleep, stay asleep and have good dreams. They were told to do this before going to sleep at night and results showed a big decrease of sleeping disorders symptoms. Another study tried to see how hypnosis could help in children remember information when the situation calls for it. The children were asked to take a pre-test and a post-test. They were put through a hypnosis session after the pre-test. Results showed a significant increase in performance after the post-test, establishing the fact that making the students relaxed had probably helped build their confidence in recalling the required information. The article goes further to say that a teacher had tried hypnosis in the classroom and achieved improvement in behavior, attention span and yearly test scores. This was not, however, a research project but was a method used by the teacher to help the students. The results were encouraging especially since the students started asking when they could “rest their brains”, the teacher’s way of introducing the hypnosis session. This review is important as it can provide insight to parents and people from the education industry on how to better facilitate learning. It can be deemed from the article that hypnosis can be truly beneficial for children, especially since as a child, an individual’s brain is more pliable to adapting new information. For those children with stressful experiences or sleeping problems, information found in this article can help their parents in assisting their children to overcome these difficulties. For the field of psychology, the article allows therapists to better deal with their very young patients. Moreover, it can help scientists discover more treatments employing hypnosis for other psychological problems that affect children. Reference: Stanton, Pauline. “Hypnosis for children.” Journal of Heart Centered Therapies. 14.2 (2011): 77. Web. 24 November 2012. 4. Selective attention is when the individual focuses on something or someone he or she wants to pay attention to. This is a normal occurrence for an individual cannot be expected to grasp the idea of everything that is going on around him or her. In this article, the researchers try to answer the question as to whether the males or females manifest differences in selective attention. The researchers in the article studied two completed experiments using the Posner cueing diagram to answer their question. The Posner cueing diagram is a visual test where a participant is showed “targets” on their own, with cues in the same location or pointing to the target and with cues in a different location or orientation. The participant’s response time is measured and then evaluated for selective attention. The Posner test is a commonly-used assessment to measure attention. There were two experiments conducted. One experiment required participants to look for the target which came out after a cue was shown in the same location. The participants needed to press a button when they see the target. In this experiment, the participants’ response times were faster when the cues were pointing to the target. The experiment employed 20 males and 53 females who were between 18 to 35 years old. The second experiment was similar to the first one except that the cue was a circle instead of an arrow and its location varied: sometimes where the target was, at a different location or at a neutral place. There were 70 participants, 35 of which were males. Participants were 18-35 years old. Results from the experiments showed that both males and females leaned towards seeing valid cues. However, females made more mistakes with invalid cues while males showed fewer mistakes with invalid cues when compared to locating the target without cues. For the research this is a significant result but further tests can be conducted that focuses on answering how each gender respond the way they do for cued tasks. This research is important in the field of psychology because there is little research on gender differences when it comes to selective attention. Moreover, the researchers advised on giving study results much consideration when using the Posner cueing paradigm as both male and female participants showed different responses to a basic Posner test. This finding is important to society as it helps in the understanding of the male and female cognitive behavior. This will help both genders to understand, for example, why it is easier for them to focus on things other than what they want to pay attention to. In the education industry, especially, the results of this study can help educators implement valid cues where students are required to concentrate on a particular lesson. Because of the noted differences between males and females, educators in a class with both male and female learners can probably design cues that are suitable for both genders this way all the students’ performance in class will improve. Research: Merritt, Paul, Hirshman, Elliot, et. al. “Evidence for gender differences in visual selective attention.” Personality and Individual Difference. 43 (2007): 597-609. Web. 24 November 2012. 5. Sleep is an important part of an individual’s life. As babies, individuals were observed to be cranky when they could not sleep or were woken up abruptly. Growing up, parents trained their children to sleep at a certain time to get a good night’s rest. School-age children, especially, were given curfews, primarily, so they would be well-rested the next day and not have a hard time waking up for school in the morning. In this article, researchers say that although there are existing studies in the effect of sleep on an adult’s fact and skill/procedure recall, there is little knowledge on the effect of sleep on the memory of adolescents. The researchers believe this study is important because this age group does not get the recommended amount of sleep. Adolescents tend to stay up later than their curfew doing extra-curricular activities such as chatting online, surfing the net, watching movies/television or cramming for tests and projects. This practice may prove to be detrimental for students since a sufficient amount of sleep equates to better memory recall. In the study, 20 male and 20 female adolescents from 10 to 14 years old randomly grouped into no sleep and sleep. Participants had no academic failures, accelerated academic performance or sleep problems. They were then given a paired-associate declarative memory task and a control working memory task at 9 am and tested 12 hours later, lacking sleep. For the sleep group, the same training was given at 9 pm and the test at 9 am. The tests were given on weekends or during school break. Participants were evaluated two times of the day around 9 am and 9 pm. Results of the study showed that the time of day did not influence the performance of the participants in both tests. It also showed that declarative memory was greatly enhanced after sleep, whether this was before or after learning. Since the tests in this study were visual in nature, researchers suggest a study of the effect of sleep in auditory declarative memory as well. This study is important as researchers have mentioned because adolescents are the typical group who go to school but do not get enough sleep due to a number of personal activities. The results of the study can help parents be more firm in implementing curfews so as their children can be well-rested and ready to absorb new information the next day. Also, the children themselves would better appreciate the importance of sleep as it has a direct affect on their performance in school. This study should also be considered by society as an eye-opener, especially for those in the field of education, so as not to burden the students with a lot of assignments that they cannot realistically accomplish unless they sacrifice several hours at night when they should be sleeping. Also, for those students who are not performing well in school, the people in their family and school may consider looking into the child’s sleeping patterns as this has been proven to influence cognitive output. Reference: Potkin, Katya T., Bunney, William E. Jr. “Sleep Improves Memory: The Effect of Sleep on Long Term Memory in Early Adolescence.” PLoS ONE 7.8 (2012): n.d. Web. 24 November 2012. Read More