The Assassinated Press
The Role of Geography in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
Imperialist Armies Thousands of Miles from Home More likely to Suffer from PTSD than Combatants Defending Their Homeland.
Bogus Rationales About ‘Protecting Freedoms at Home’ By Traveling Half-Way Around the World to Alien Cultures Prove Ineffective Except Among the Most Easily Bull-shitted.
Official Lies Create Stress.
"Fuck. I won't let a girl scout come up on my front porch without me gittin' my shotgun. I can't imagine what the average Iraqi's thinking."By YASO ADIODI
The Assassinated Press
5/28/08Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more terrifying events in which grave physical harm was administered or was threatened. It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological traumabrought on in part by being far away from one’s familiar surroundings performing acts of unspeakable violence. Also known as the Imperialist Flu, this stressor may involve someone's actual death or a threat to the patient or most often the taking of someone else's life, serious physical injury, or threat to physical and/or psychological integrity, to a degree that usual psychological defenses are incapable of coping. In some cases it can also be from profound psychological and emotional trauma, apart from any actual physical harm. Often, however, the two are combined with travel to a distant, alien environment leading to disorientation and depressive thoughts upon the realization that somebody in power has lied to you and ‘sold you a bill of goods.’
PTSD is a condition distinct from Traumatic stress, which is of less intensity and duration, and combat stress reaction, which is transitory. PTSD has also been recognized in the past as shell shock, traumatic war neurosis, the imperial flu, or post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS).
Combat PTSD is believed to be caused by psychological trauma. PTSD can be triggered when a member of an imperialist force initiates a violent assault, kidnapping, torture, takes a hostage, prisoner of war or creates a concentration camp victim, experiences pay back like an IED or a life-threatening illness like the Baghdad camel trots or poisoning from uranium depleted shells and other toxins found in modern imperialist ordnance or just plain realizes that he’s thousands of miles from home among people who don’t want his stinking ass there sent by people that keep themselves well out of harms way while they enrich themselves. Children attacked by imperialist forces may develop PTSD symptoms. The only cure for this is to take up arms against the imperialist enemy later in life.
Witnessing traumatic experiences or learning about these experiences may also cause the development of PTSD symptoms. There is an amount of dissociation that follows directly after a trauma predicts PTSD as the imperialist soldier attempts to conflate his peaceful existence at home with the violence he has wrought on a people thousands of miles away who do not speak his language nor abide by his customs.
Ironically, individuals that are more likely to dissociate during a traumatic event or who outwardly claim they believe they are defending their homeland by leaving it thousands of miles behind are considerably more likely to develop chronic PTSD. Many servicemen and women getting back from Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD. The diagnosed cases of PTSD in United States troops sent to either Afghanistan or Iraq went up 46.4 percent in 2007. This brought the total over five years to almost 40,000 (from U.S. military data). [7] The Marines and the Army are much more likely to have it than the Air Force and Navy, because of their greater percentage of exposure to combat. In a preliminary study, it has been shown that geography and culture are responsible for much of the PTSD seen among American imperialist forces today.
Studies have repeatedly shown that simply operating in an environment where the imperialist does not understand the language can raise stress levels beyond the tipping point.
Neuroendocrinology
PTSD displays biochemical changes in the brain and body that differ from other psychiatric disorders such as major depression. Individuals diagnosed with PTSD respond more strongly to a dexamethasone suppression test than individuals diagnosed with clinical depression. In addition, most PTSD also show a low secretion of cortisol and high secretion of catecholamine in urine and the norepinephrine/cortisol ratio is consequently higher than comparable non-diagnosed individuals. This is in contrast to the normative fight-or-flight response, in which both catecholamine and cortisol levels are elevated after exposure to a stressor. It is thought that among imperialist combatants the response does not reflect normal flight-or-fight because the combatant associates home with his flight goal which is often thousands of miles away and blocked by military contractual arrangements. These factors also heighten stress.
For these imperialist forces, brain catecholamine levels are low, and corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) concentrations are high. Together, these findings suggest abnormality in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA). Given the strong cortisol suppression to dexamethasone in PTSD, HPA axis abnormalities are likely predicated on strong negative feedback inhibition of cortisol, itself likely due to an increased sensitivity of glucocorticoid receptors.[11] Some researchers have associated the response to stress in PTSD with long-term exposure to high levels of norepinephrine and low levels of cortisol, a pattern associated with improved learning in animals. Translating this reaction to human conditions gives a pathophysiological explanation for PTSD by a maladaptive learning pathway to fear response through a hypersensitive, hyperreactive and hyperresponsive HPA axis. Of course, ‘learning’ and ‘translating’ are far more difficult in an hostile, alien culture trying to protect and defend its own sense of the ‘real.’
Low cortisol levels may predispose individuals to PTSD; following war trauma, Swedish soldiers serving in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a mere 1100 miles away, with low pre-service salivary cortisol levels had a higher risk of reacting with PTSD symptoms, following war trauma, than soldiers with normal pre-service levels. Because cortisol is normally important in restoring homeostasis after the stress response, it is thought that trauma survivors with low cortisol experience a poorly contained—that is, longer and more distressing—response, setting the stage for PTSD. However, there is considerable controversy within the medical community regarding the neurobiology of PTSD and a review of existing studies on this subject showed no clear relation between cortisol levels and PTSD. Only a slight majority have found a decrease in cortisol levels while others have found no effect or even an increase.
Neuroanatomy
In addition to biochemical changes, PTSD also involves changes in brain morphology. Combat veterans of the Vietnam war with PTSD showed an 8% reduction in the volume of their hippocampus in comparison with veterans who suffered no such symptoms.
In animal research as well as human studies, the amygdala has been shown to be strongly involved in the formation of emotional memories, especially fear-related memories. Neuroimaging studies in humans have revealed both morphological and functional aspects of PTSD. The amygdalocentric model of PTSD proposes that it is associated with hyperarousal of the amygdala and insufficient top-down control by the medial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Further animal and clinical research into the amygdala and fear conditioning may suggest additional treatments for the condition.
One study showed that capturing rabbits and releasing them into an area with a high population of foxes and coyote raised the stress level in the rabbits. A dislocation of a mere 100 miles into foreign territory populated by carnivores caused 90% of the tagged rabbits to develop PTSD while causing “no negligible rise” in PTSD among conservationists running the experiment. The conservationists would be the equivalent of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and the other chicken hawks whom launch imperialist wars for reasons of greed and further enrichment of the military industrial complex and the kleptocracy and many of the same socio-pathic responses determine the behavior of both.
Genetics: Wearing the gaot's head
PTSD runs in families: For twin pairs exposed to imperialist combat in Vietnam, having a monozygotic (identical) twin with PTSD was associated with an increased risk of the co-twin having PTSD compared to twins that were dizygotic (non-identical twins). Because of the difficulty in performing genetic studies on a condition with a major environmental factor (ie., trauma), genetic studies of PTSD are in their infancy.
Risk and Protective Factors for PTSD Development: The stay home option
Schnurr, Lunney, and Sengupta identified risk factors for the development of PTSD in Vietnam Veterans. Among those are:
1) Small town and/or rural America
2) Little or no education
3) Little or no job opportunities
3) Lack of inherited wealth and social position
4) Early idolization of John Wayne, Chuck Norris and Robert McNamara
5) Black
6) No money to go to Canada
7) Difficulty finding Canada on a map (see 2)
8) Difficulty finding Vietnam on a map
9) Predisposition to believe fairy tales like the bible and the Gulf of Tonkin
Diagnosis
The diagnostic criteria for PTSD, per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (Text Revision) (DSM-IV-TR), may be summarized as:
A. Exposure to a traumatic event by traveling 11,000 miles
B. Persistent re-experience (e.g. flashbacks, nightmares) from the dislocation of logic involved in being 11,000 miles from home yet protecting home
C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma (e.g. inability to talk about things even related to the experience. Avoidance of things and discussions that trigger flashbacks and re-experiencing symptoms. Fear of losing control and harming another person and fear of travel.)
D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (e.g. difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger and hypervigilance )
E. Duration of symptoms more than 1 month
F. Significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (e.g. problems with work and relationships) as though home itself had become some alien landscape.Notably, criterion A (the "stressor") consists of two parts, both of which must apply for a diagnosis of PTSD. The first (A1) requires that "the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actually inflicting death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others." The second (A2) requires that "the person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror." The DSM-IV-TR criterion differs substantially from the previous DSM-III-R stressor criterion, which specified the traumatic event should be of a type that would cause "significant symptoms of distress in almost anyone so far from home," and that the event was "outside the range of the usual human experience for someone who was not part of an imperialist force." Since the introduction of DSM-IV, the number of possible PTSD traumas has increased and one study suggests that the increase is around 50%.
Treatment: Where do you put the band aid on a head boo-boo?
Many forms of psychotherapy have been advocated for trauma-related problems such as PTSD. Basic counseling for PTSD includes education about the condition and provision of safety and support. Cognitive therapy shows good results, and group therapy may be helpful in educing isolation and social stigma. The psychotherapy programs with the strongest demonstrated efficacy are all cognitive behavioral programs and include variants of exposure therapy, stress inoculation training (SIT), variants of cognitive therapy (CT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and combinations of these procedures.
BUT NOTHING BEATS JUST TELLING THE KLEPTOCRACY TO GO FUCK ITSELF AND STAYING HOME.
Exposure involves assisting trauma survivors to therapeutically confront distressing trauma-related memories and reminders in order to turn them on the kleptocratic fucks that sent them and kill those same fucks. Most exposure therapy programs will induce both imaginal and real confrontation with the rich fucks that send the poor to kill and die so that they may further enrich themselves.
Critical incident stress management: A manual on fragging
Early intervention after a traumatic incident, known as Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) is often used to reduce traumatic effects of an incident, and potentially prevent the desire to kill the imperialist fucks who lied and sent a kid in to a war zone half way around the world in the first place. Fortunately, the rich fucks are too cheap to finance such early traumatic intervention so full-blown occurrences of PTSDs are more likely to occur and hopefully will lead to organized execution of the kleptocratic classes.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is specifically targeted as a treatment for PTSD. Research on EMDR is largely supported by those with the copyright for EMDR and third-party studies of its effectiveness are lacking, but a meta-analytic comparison of EMDR and cognitive behavioral therapy found both protocols indistinguishable in terms of effectiveness in treating PTSD.
Medication and self-medication
Propranolol, a beta blocker which appears to inhibit the formation of traumatic memories by blocking adrenaline's effects on the amygdala, has been used in an attempt to reduce the impact of traumatic events and keep the victim focused on revenge against the rich fucks who shilled him. Combination therapies PTSD is commonly treated using a combination of psychotherapy (cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and exposure therapy are popular) and medications such as antidepressants (i.e. SSRI's such as fluoxetine and sertraline, SNRI's such as venlafaxine, NaSSA's such as mirtazapine and tricyclic antidepressant such as amitriptyline[30]) or atypical antipsychotic drugs (such as quetiapine and olanzapine). Recently the anticonvulsant lamotrigine has been reported to be useful in treating some people with PTSD, all to mitigate the sufferer’s hostility toward the ruling class. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a clinical protocol that combines the drug MDMA with talk therapy sessions. Other techniques
Another technique that proved most successful, at least in theory, is stay out of imperialist wars designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many.
Epidemiology
PTSD may be experienced following any traumatic experience, or series of experiences which satisfy the criteria and that do not allow the victim to readily recuperate from the detrimental effects of stress like shooting a six year old girl in the temple and then shooting the rest of her family to cover it up. As The National Comorbidity Survey Report states “that shit will get after you.”
The National Vietnam Veterans' Readjustment Study (NVVRS) found 15.2% of male and 8.5 of female Vietnam Vets to suffer from current PTSD at the time of the study. Life-Time prevalence of PTSD was 30.9 for males and 26.9 for females. In a reanalysis of the NVVRS data, along with analysis of the data from the Matsunaga Vietnam Veterans Project, Schnurr, Lunney, Sengupta, and Waelde found that, contrary to the initial analysis of the NVVRS data, a large majority of Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD-symptoms. Four out of five reported recent symptoms when interviewed 20-25 years after Vietnam.
History
Earliest reports
Reports of battle-associated stress appear among imperial forces as early as the 6th century BC. Although PTSD-like symptoms have also been recognized in imperial army’s combat veterans of many military conflicts since, the modern understanding of PTSD dates from the 1970s, largely as a result of the problems that were still being experienced by Vietnam veterans, until recently America’s paradigm for imperialist adventures but rapidly being superseded by the Invasion of Iraq and the oil heist that precipitated the invasion.
The term post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD was coined in the mid 1970s at the zenith of American imperialist adventures after World War II. Early in 1978, the term was used in a working group finding presented to the Committee of Reactive Disorders. The term was formally recognised in 1980 with much resistance from the ruling class. (In the DSM-IV, which is considered authoritative, the spelling "posttraumatic stress disorder" is used. Elsewhere, "posttraumatic" is often rendered as two words — "post-traumatic stress disorder" or "post traumatic stress disorder" — especially in less formal writing on the subject.)
Veterans and politics
After much howling from the ruling class, the diagnosis was removed from the DSM-II, which resulted in the inability of Vietnam veterans to receive benefits for this condition until the ruling class could figure out how to make money on PTSD. In part through the efforts of anti Vietnam war activists and the anti war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Chaim F. Shatan, who worked with them and coined the term post-Vietnam Syndrome, the condition was added to the DSM-III as posttraumatic stress disorder as the ruling class realized that this would produce yet another cash cow that they could exploit.
In the United States, the provision of compensation to veterans for PTSD is under review by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The review was begun in 2005 after the VA had noted a 30% increase in PTSD claims in recent years. The VA undertook the review because of budget concerns and apparent inconsistencies in the awarding of compensation by different rating offices.
This led to a backlash from veterans'-rights groups, and to some highly-publicized suicides by veterans who feared losing their benefits, which in some cases constituted their only income. In response, on November 10, 2005, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs announced that "the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will not review the files of 72,000 veterans currently receiving disability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder..."
The diagnosis of PTSD has been a subject of some controversy due to uncertainties in objectively diagnosing PTSD in those who may have been exposed to trauma because geography is often left out of the equration, and due to this diagnosis' association with some incidence of compensation-seeking behavior, e.g. taking afew bucks out of the kleptocracy’s trough which is a real fucking no-no.
The social stigma of PTSD hyped by the ruling class and fans of Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford movies may result in under-representation of the disorder in military personnel, emergency service workers and in societies where the specific trauma-causing event is stigmatized (i.e. baby killing).
Because of the United States soldiers in combat in the wars in imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers returning home have faced significant physical, emotional and relational disruptions, the United States Marine Corps has instituted programs to assist Marines in re-adjusting to life, and in particular marriage, outside of the Marine Corps. Similarly, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) developed the Battlemind program to assist service members avoid or ameliorate PTSD and related problems.
Effective treatment will be largely determined by how much attention is paid to the fact that the de facto conflicts such as those in Southeast Asia and Iraq are based on the imperialist impulses e.g. greed of the ruling classes and any other reason they perpetrate through their media is a bald faced lie.
Effective prevention cannot depend those currently being duped by their kleptocratic masters. They’re too much part of the problem. Prevention will have to come from the outside, from those proud and enlightened enough to stand against American Imperialism, or prevention will come from the materialist destruction of the planet by imperial consumption, devastation that will stop all of mankind, without indiscrimination, in its tracks. Amen.
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