Posttraumatic Stress Disorder -- PTSD

What is PTSD?

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event. A traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or that happens to you. During this type of event, you think that your life or others' lives are in danger. You may feel afraid or feel that you have no control over what is happening.

A life-threatening event can develop PTSD. These events can include:

*Combat or military exposure
*Child sexual or physical abuse
*Terrorist attacks
*Sexual or physical assault
*Serious accidents, such as a car wreck
*Natural disasters, such as a fire, tornado, hurricane, flood, or earthquake.

After the event, you may feel scared, confused, or angry. If these feelings don't go away or they get worse, you may have PTSD. These symptoms may disrupt your life, making it hard to continue with your daily activities.

What are the symptoms?

Symptoms of PTSD can be terrifying. They may disrupt your life and make it hard to continue with your daily activities. It may be hard just to get through the day.

PTSD symptoms usually start soon after the traumatic event, but they may not happen until months or years later. They also may come and go over many years. If the symptoms last longer than 4 weeks, cause you great distress, or interfere with your work or home life, you probably have PTSD.

There are four types of PTSD symptoms:

*Reliving the event
*Avoiding situations that remind you of the event
*Feeling numb*Feeling keyed up

What causes PTSD?

Briefly explain how memory and emotion relate to PTSD.

Emotion and Memory = Flashbulb Memory?

Brown & Kulik (1977)

                                       
The aim of the study was investigate whether dramatic or personally significant events can cause "flashbulb" memories. The procedure was that the psychologists assessed the memories of 80 American people for the circumstances in which they learned of public events. They demonstrated that flashbulb memory is more likely for unexpected and personally relevant shocking events. They concluded that dramatic events can cause physiological imprinting of a memory of the events. The weakness was the data was collected through questioner, so it couldn't verify the accuracy of memories reported. 

                      

     


Neisser & Harsch (1992)          
In 1992, they asked 106 participants to answer the questions about circumstances of the challenger space shuttle disaster. Thirty two months later, they asked the same question again to the participants, and compare the results with original one. The finding showed that memories were not accurate, it showed the memories had in fact dimmed. Of 220 facts from the original questionnaire, 150 were wrong. They concluded that the Flashbulb memories are not reliable. 

  




Talarico & Rubin (2003)
This study is about that on September 12, they gave 52 students a questionnaire about their memory of September 11, and an ordinary event of their choosing from the preceding few days. They divided into three groups, and each group return for follow-up questionnaire session after different amount of time: 7days, 42days, and 224days. They were asked the same questions about their memories about both ordinary event and flashbulb memory. They found out that people have strong memories of September 11 than any other day. Therefore, they concluded that flashbulb memories are just like with other memories. 

Seneca and Lazarus

Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Innate, Not Learned

 

I read the article, Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Innate, Not Learned. The article says that facial expressions of emotion are innate. According to a new study, facial expressions of emotion are hardwared into our genes which the article says that facial expressions of emotion are innate, not learning how to express the emotions. The study demonstrates that sighted and blind individuals use the same facial expressions, producing the same facial muscle movements in response to specific emotional stimuli. Psychology professor David Matsumoto compared the facial expressions of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. Sighted and blinded athletes manage their expressions of emotion in the same way, even though blinded people had no way to watch and learn to express the emotion as like as sighted people. Therefore, it demonstrates that the facial expressions are innate.

I had a reason that I chose the article, because before I read this article, I thought that people would learn how to express the facial emotions. However, my thought was wrong. This article was interesting to me.  

Emotion, Gender and Culture

               

Emotion and Gender                     

There is recent research shows that different between men and women. There are 55 cultures demonstrated that women tend to be more emotional, agreeable, extroverted, and conscientious than men. Women read other people's emotional reactions better than men, they receive emotional from verbally or visually. Women reported experiencing love and anger much more intensely than men did in another assessment of gender differences in emotional response. Those women also smiled more when recalling memories of happiness or love. Lastly, men and women respond to stress in different ways. Women display greater sadness or anxiety than men.


Emotion and Culture
There are two studies of research, participants viewed group photographs comprising one central and four background figures. Researchers influenced the facial emotions and asked participants to determine the dominant emotion of the central figure. The study found that 72 percent of Japanese participants reported that their judgement was influenced by emotions displayed by all the figures in the group, while a similar percentage of North Americans reported not being influenced by the background figures at all.

Emotion

The word emotion includes a wide range of visible behavior, expressed feelings, and changes in the body state. We are experiencing the emotion and we can feel the emotions. Emotions are very complex to express them; we use a variety of terms, besides gestures and attitudes. The words are limited to express the feeling. Therefore, the words to describe emotions are quite condensed, so emotion allows people to share them.

If we do not have emotions, we would lose all the charm of living. Even dogs and cats have emotions. We have emotions because they make us to enjoy our life. They make us human. I cannot imagine that we do not have emotions. If we lose the emotion, it would be a like computer, because our computer is just sitting and being a perfect machine. It just think, store stuff and give results. Therefore, if we have no emotion, it is only an intelligent machine. We have emotions, because we are not low-level animals.  


I found the four theories of emotions, which is James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory, Schacter-Singer theory,  and most recently the Lazarus theory. 


The James-Lange Theory, this theory proposes that an event or stimulus cause a physiological stimulation without any conscious thought, and you experience the resulting only after you interpret the physical response.
The Cannon-Bard Theory suggests that the given stimulus evokes both a physiological and an emotion response. The Schacter-Singer Theory takes a more cognitive approach to the issue. Schacter and Singer believe that an event causes physiological arousal, but they you must identify a reason for the arousal before you label the emotion. The last theory is the Lazarus Theory proposes that when the event occurs, a cognitive consideration is made, and based on the result of the consideration, an emotion and physiological response follow. 

Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer‘s Disease is the most common case of dementia, this disease accounts for 50 to 80 percent of dementia cases. The case of dementia describes the symptoms, if can include loss of memory, mood changes, and problems with communication. These symptoms occur when the brain is damaged by certain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease, which means that the brain damages gradually. Alzheimer’s is not problem of age, increasing age is the great risk factor, and the most of people who has Alzheimer’s disease, they are more older than 65. However, this is not a disease of old age, people who is around 40 or 50, they also could get the Alzheimer’s disease.

I watched the video in the class. The video, “The forgetting”, this video was about the some of people who got the Alzheimer’s Disease. The people who got the Alzheimer’s Disease, they are losing their memory. Also,they are losing themselves. They could not remember anything about what they have done, and what they are doing. Also, they could not remember family and friend’s name and face. After I watched the video in class, I feel bad for the people who got the Alzheimer’s Disease. I think Alzheimer’s Disease was really sad Disease for people, this disease does not hurt the body, but it hurt the mind of people around who got the Alzheimer's disease. I cannot believe that people would lose their memories and themselves. I hope that people will not get the Alzheimer’s disease no more in the world.