Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
What is it?
A psychiatric disorder that can occur in people who have witnessed a traumatic event.
Traumatic events may be a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terroist act, war/combat, rape, or other violent assualt
PTSD can occur in all people: any ethnicity, nationality, and age
PTSD affects approximately 3.5% of US adults and an estimated 1 in 11 million people are diagnosed in their lifetime.
Key Points.
Someone suffering from PTSD can experience problems such as:
Depression
Anxiety
Alcohol & Substance use
Life and Relationships
People with PTSD may feel isolated, struggle in maintaining a job, have difficulty controlling their emotions and trusting others
PTSD causes a negative impact on mental health, social aspects, and relationships
Certain sounds and actions may be truggers for people with PTSD
for example: fireworks
Survivors of the Cambodian Genocide.
There have been many studies conducted over the past years that researched Cambodian Genocide survivors.
“Cambodians are basically very similar to Holocaust survivors. They’ve been through a completely traumatic experience that was pretty hopeless, very violent, very graphic, where they witnessed murders and were physically tortured, raped, beaten,” says Daryn Reicherter, MD, a psychiatrist at Gardner Family Care Corporation.
The RAND Health study, published in the Aug. 3 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, conducted a research among a group of adult Cambodian refugees who live in Long Beach, CA and "found that among 490 adult refugees ages 35 to 75, almost all reported experiencing near-death due to starvation before coming to the United States. Another 90 percent had a family member or friend murdered by the Khmer Rouge, and 54 percent reported being tortured before coming to the United States."
In 2005, a study showed that 62% had PTSD. About 51% of the refugees had depression, while many had both.
It is beyond anyones control to imagine the traumatizing events that occured during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. As shown in the research, many Cambodians still struggle pyschologically with the aftermath of the war. Although 40 years have now passed since the mass genocide, most survivors still struggle to understand to cope with their painful legacy.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532676/
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20150217/cambodians-post-traumatic-stress-disorder#1