US troops advanced through the deserts of southern Iraq in armored convoys Friday, met by surrendering soldiers, and Marines punched through Iraqi resistance blocking the main road to the key city of Basra. This description was taken from an article published by the Associated Press (2003), located on AOL. Now think about the atmosphere of war; Chaos, killing and constantly being aware of your surroundings. It seems to me that war can be a very stressful time and depending on the location of the person, can have some life long effects.
According to Holmes (2001) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is simply referred to as a variety of anxiety-related symptoms that start after a particular traumatic event and then continue for a long time. Holmes (2001) also discussed five key factors that must be involved that are necessary to diagnose someone with PTSD:.
The individual must have witnessed or experienced a traumatic event.
The event is persistently experienced.
The individual avoids stimuli associated with the trauma and shows a general numbing of responsiveness.
The individual may show a generally heightened arousal that stems from anxiety.
The symptoms must last for more than a month.
Now if you think about this, it is very likely that many women in our military (and men) are prone to get PTSD. With all of the killings, murders, and hostages; that is enough to have anyone filled with anxiety.
DeploymentLINK (2002) says that there is evidence that having been traumatized may put a person at risk for future trauma. They also state that many of the women that experience trauma while they are in the military were not near any combat. While for me the trauma is stemmed from the war zone, for women, the risk is during peacetime and wartime services because many of the women are sexually assaulted while in the military (DeploymentLINK, 2002). .
This article only talks about the Learning Approach and the Physiological Approach to treating PTSD.