The other day, I started wondering since 9/11 was televised, are a lot of Americans suffering from PTSD without knowing it? On a personal level, I get anxious when I hear a low-flying plane and haven’t flown since 2001. Just so people don’t think I’m a complete dope, I live around Boston - the city that didn’t catch the hijackers. The view from my living room window is the Prudential tower and I had a severe DVT complication the last time I flew (May 2001). I found the following link about PTSD: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/anxiety/ptsdfacts.cfm
“people who witness traumatic events are among those at risk for developing PTSD.”
This can pertain to a lot of Americans but probably New York City residents are more severely effected.
“Many people with PTSD repeatedly re-experience the ordeal in the form of flashback episodes, memories, nightmares, or frightening thoughts, especially when they are exposed to events or objects reminiscent of the trauma.”
The news media really didn’t help with this huh? Days of the same footage over and over. Then the anniversary approached and more days of the footage.
“People with PTSD also experience emotional numbness and sleep disturbances, depression, anxiety, and irritability or outbursts of anger. Feelings of intense guilt are also common” I still feel pissed/guilty that MY city didn’t catch the hi-jackers.
I also have this whole other theory that the government is well aware that most citizens are suffering from some degree of PTSD and they are using the information to manipulate us. But, I’ve been called a paranoid liberal wacko so… I am also wondering how people dealt after Pearl Harbor. Maybe joining WWII ended up being cathartic for some. Anyone around who remembers that time care to enlighten me?
I’ve been experiencing “emotional numbness and sleep disturbances, depression, anxiety, and irritability or outbursts of anger” for* years*—is there such a thing as Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
OK, seriously: I live in Manhattan and I’ve seen the gamut from no signs of PTSD (that would include me) to significantly upset (an employee of J&R Computer World which was close enough to get covered in ash when the towers fell).
Mostly I only get anxious when I anticipate that a new policy that may impinge on personal freedoms or immerse the US in yet more international stupidity is on the verge of being announced.
He was run over by his father with a mini van. When his father realized that he ran him over he went back to the kid who had been dragged and was bloody and yelled at him to “shut up shut up shut up”. He scooped him up and brought him to my house and asked me “Do you think we should take him to the hospital”
I took my son myself (as dad had to go drinking) and he had terrible road rash and 2 broken legs. (he later suffered with staph infection)
For the longest time he didn’t want to ride in a car/van. He suffered nightmares and for a long time he talked about it. When his casts came off he had phantom pain.
The doctor put him on Depakote for awhile. We eventully weaned him off it. FLASH FORWARD (9 years later) he is fine.
There are a lot of us with PTSD, and a lot of us know all to well that we are and that things will never be the same again.
Just now I heard an airplane fly low over the building I’m working in. A little jolt of “what was that?” happens. We go out into a clear, crisp morning and think, gosh, this feels just like 9/11.
Seriously, I do not share AHunter’s fear of boogeymen in the big bad government. I don’t hate any huge amorphous group of “A-rabs” or Muslims. I do despise the subset of those and other groups who think it’s a good idea to try with all one’s might to destroy as many non<InsertFavoredGroupHere> people as possible just for being who and what they are.
I think I experience it to a mild degree myself. Just yesterday morning, in fact, on my way to work I saw a plane descending from the sky. Nothing unusual about this, of course, but the plane looked like it was too close to be headed towards the airport, which is several miles away from where I saw the plane flying so close to the ground, but maybe the pilot had to alter the flight pattern upon approach. In any case it made me think for a moment, what if it happened again, and right here in Boise, Idaho, where most people tend to think that most terrorists probably don’t even know we exist out here. Just to be sure, I checked the news sites when I got to work to make sure there were no such reports of another plane crashing into a building.