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What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Do you or someone you know experience irrational rage, are easily startled by a sudden noise or an unexpected touch or avoid certain situations that risk bringing traumatic memories? Have you or this other person experienced a catastrophic event?

Being upset after a shattering event is normal. However, if the symptoms last for more than a month or the bad feelings return anywhere from three months or even years later, you may be experiencing posttraumatic stress disorder. According to the American Psychiatric Association, PTSD is a “psychiatric disorder that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, rape or other violent personal assault.”

Anyone can experience PTSD, from combat veterans to victims of crime; from children under six to children and teens to older adults, from different races, genders or countries of origin. Natural disasters, learning of a loved one’s violent death or frequently witnessing tragedies such as first responders constantly and continually live through can lead to the disorder. PTSD respects no boundaries or classifications.

  

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Posted by New Horizons Counseling Center

For several days, the news had been hammered into residents of Southwest Louisiana and parts of Texas: a dangerous hurricane of potentially monstrous proportions is headed your way. The surge alone will be unsurvivable. Leave almost all that you own, all that you call home, and get out of the way now before it’s too late.

The anxiety brought about by the ceaseless warnings were the stuff of sleepless nights. “I began to feel anxious during my evacuation from Laura when I heard weather announcers use the term ‘unsurvivable’ because of a possible 20-foot storm surge,” says Lake Charles resident Kathy English. (Names have been changed in the interest of privacy.) “My anxiety was so high the night that Laura hit that I don’t think I slept at all. I kept imagining people who stayed drowning just like they had during Audrey.” Four hundred seventeen souls lost their battle with the savage surge and winds of Audrey.

 

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Posted by New Horizons Counseling Center

Is the COVID-19 situation leaving you anxious and depressed? It’s important to know that you are not alone. It might be helpful to envision many boats on the same ocean of turmoil and realize that you are the captain of your solitary boat, alone but not really alone. “We are all going through this, but it doesn’t have to define us,” says New Horizons counselor Brenda Roberts, EdD, LPC-S, LMFT.

 

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Posted by New Horizons Counseling Center

“He was just beating me until he was absolutely tired. I was covered in bruises and my face was completely disfigured. There was a client in the room and he was having an issue with something I couldn’t do because I was all beat up,” recalled a victim of human trafficking.

 

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Posted by New Horizons Counseling Center

Helping our children cope with school shootings Images of the latest school shooting in Parkland FL saturated the news and social media. It is normal for children of all ages to worry that it might happen in their own schools. Although no one can guarantee that a shooting won’t happen in their own schools, we cannot allow children to live in constant fear. What can you do for your children when depression, fear and anxiety take hold? Mental health experts agree that talking with your kids is paramount in helping them cope with the reports of school shootings.

 

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