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Felicia Williams
DeBock
English 4
3/8/16
Living with PTSD
Veterans who has PTSD goes to meetings to talk about what they went through while
they were overseas fighting in war. Many vets would drink heavily, spend time alone and play
video games. Not only do vets get PTSD but women get PTSD from worrying about their loved
ones and children get PTSD from being abused while they were younger.
In the article Before the Trauma, it talks about how your stress hormones rise, adrenaline
floods your body, your heart rate accelerates and blood shunts away from nonessential functions
such as digestion to more essential ones such as powering the muscles needed to move. A theory
supported by studies showing that patients with PTSD have disturbed cycles of stress related
hormones such as cortisol and altered expression of genes involved in the fight or flight
response. Results corroborating the latter idea are beginning to surface from the Marine
Resiliency Study at the VAs San Diego facility, among other places. The investigation took a
variety of measurements from some 2,600 marines before and after deployment. Both findings
imply that a tendency toward inflammation can predispose someone to PTSD and that the
immune system may be causally involved in the disorder. The link between PTSD and immune
activation fits with a growing body research connecting inflammation and psychiatric illnesses,
especially depression. (Velasquez-Manoff)

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In the article Veterans battle with PTSD years after deployment, it talks about how a
veteran named Justin Weis spent his days in Iraq serving in the Marnie corps, experienced with
nightmares, mood swings, depression and anger, all symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,
and everyday things trigger him. To cope, Weis meets with other veterans living with PTSD
weekly at the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center. In a roundtable at the Dayton Daily news,
he and some five fellow veterans shared their combat experiences in places like Iraq and
Afghanistan and describe the toll it has taken on them emotionally physically and mentally, not
everyone wanted to be identified because of the stigma attached to post-traumatic stress. Another
veteran Jack Choate, a Dayton man who spent a tour of duty as an Ohio Army National Guard
convoy truck driver in Iraq during desert storm in 1991, says living one life and trying to go
back to the life I used to know is kind of rough, certain things I enjoy doing cant do anymore.
Choate cant do things he likes because of having PTSD, many veterans would stay inside their
house just to be away from loud noises and people. (Barber)
In the last article Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder overview, it talks about how PTSD is a
psychiatric condition brought about by an exposure to one or more traumatic or adverse
environmental events. PTSD can have devastating effects on the lives of sufferers and their
families. Many PTSD patients have difficulty interacting in social environments and have
subsequent problems in maintaining employment. PTSD treatment typically involves a
combination of behavioral modification, counseling, and medication to treat anxiety and
depression. It also talks about the modern definition of PTSD can be traced to the APA, an
organization founded in 1892 for psychiatric research and practice. Though this was the first use
of the term PTSD, similar stress-related conditions have been identified in hundreds of historical

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accounts. During World War 1, similar symptoms were grouped under the rubric shell shock
while the same disorders were called battle fatigue during World War 2 and stress response
syndrome during the Vietnam War. PTSD symptoms vary widely among sufferers. (Issitt)
Veterans who has PTSD go to meetings to talk about what they went through in their past
time while they were in war. There are some veterans who doesnt go to meetings because they
dont want to talk to strangers about what they went through overseas.