Published: March 17, 2011
Hiroaki Ono / AP
all-to-wall news media coverage of the Japan and Canterbury earthquake disasters could put people at greater risk of developing traumatic reactions, a clinical psychologist says.
Ian de Terte, from the School of Psychology, specializes in vicarious trauma – where people are exposed to traumatic incidents through secondary means, such having personal involvement with victims or following news reports of devastating and tragic events.
This can apply to emergency workers, health practitioners and others dealing directly with the dead, the injured, the bereaved and other victims, but even those watching, reading and listening to the news can be just as much at risk, Mr de Terte says.
He says the phenomenon, also known as compassion fatigue, has similar symptoms to post-traumatic stress disorder. “It’s through watching disaster coverage and listening to it over and over again, you’re at greater risk of developing symptoms similar to PTSD.” [continue reading…]
Published: November 24, 2010
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder leaves the patient suffering from severe anxiety for months or years after the event — is often associated with battlefield combat and natural disasters. But as Dr. Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, noted in an interview, the typical trigger is more mundane — most commonly, a traffic accident.
The New York Times takes a look behind the facade of Post Traumatic Strress Disorder. Curious? Continue reading
Source: New York Times
As a 20-year-old, a writer was beaten and left for dead in his home. After years of flashbacks, he found a therapy, based on eye movement, that made his memories bearable. Link to read this account in The Times of one persons experiences of PTSD and treatment using EMDR
Source: The Times
Published: January 20, 2010
A group of 74 US veterans has been involved in clinical trials which appear to have objectively diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), something conventional brain scans, be it X-ray, CT or MRI, have thus far failed to do.
The findings, published today, Wednesday, 20 January, in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Neural Engineering, have sprung from advances in magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive measurement of magnetic fields in the brain. [continue reading…]
