Effects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder on Attention - Research Paper Example

Effects of posttraumatic stress disorder on attention Introduction Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological response to the experience of intense traumatic events, particularly those that threaten life. E.g. for a man in the military, trauma may result from a direct combat duties in a war zone where exists a lot of dangers especially directed to his safety and the constant thought that he/she might die anytime. The deaths that they see especially among their troops infringe a lot of psychological trauma in the military men. PTSD affects all kind of people regardless of rank, age, race, culture and gender. The victims of PTSD undergo a wide range of signs and symptoms from intrusive symptoms, physical symptoms and psychological symptoms. Physical symptoms such as sweating increase when they are reminded of the scenarios that led to the disorder (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). The damage of the certain sections of the brain often is responsible the symptoms. Among the very many psychological symptoms these people experience is a deficit in attention. This affects the victim’s ability to pay attention (Kim, Lee & Seo, 2012). This too affects the victims in such a way that they cannot form new memories due to damage to the hippocampus impairment thus affecting learning. Attention has been found to be brought about by PTSD where it affects both sustained and focused attention, even though selective attention (which is used when processing sensory memories into short-term memories) is not affected (Kim, Lee, Lee & Seo, 2012). The signs and symptoms associated with PTSD will each have a particular way in which it affects an individual’s attention. These are discussed as follows: Anxiety Among the very many reasons why people with PTSD experience attention deficit is due to anxiety. When people undergo anxiety at high levels, they tend to be in deep thoughts. This brings the tendency of them trying to relate the current occurrences to a previous event that that primarily led to the PTSD. Anxiety often can interfere with the encoding of information into memory as a result of interference in attention (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). Again, anxiety makes people with this disorder to notice but will not be able to notice disengage their attention from anxiety-provoking thoughts and images from the past. This makes them unable to notice things that happen around their environment and/ or have problems in sustaining their attention on certain things (Kim, Lee, Lee & Seo, 2012). Insomnia People with PTSD experience sleeping problems that that will result in insomnia. Insomnia has been found to reduce a person’s ability to remember things and also problems with paying attention, a problem that can be attributed to the fact that sleeplessness creates fatigue in people minds hence reduced ability to concentrate (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). Associative Disorders PTSD is most often associated with some other mental disorders such as substance abuse like marijuana, disorders like depression and anxiety. These disorders present with other symptoms, especially substance abuse will negatively affect memory and attention (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). Depression and hopelessness Diminished ability to focus is a symptom of depression and is mostly due to gray matter shrinkage. Antidepressants that are taken to combat the depression also have the effect of diminished concentration. People with PTSD is often present with depression and hopelessness in most cases (Kim, Lee, Lee & Seo, 2012). This common when the PTSD is brought about by an incident that the victim blames himself/herself for its occurrence. They spend a lot of their time trying to think of how they would have helped the circumstances that result in accident or incident. This takes away all their concentration and, therefore, affects their attention (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). Irritability and aggression People with PTSD always are highly irritable and aggressive due to the events that took place in the past. They keep on blaming those events on the present day problems or blaming themselves for the events that led to the trauma (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). This most in cases causes anger even when there is no indication of anger and aggression at all. This affect attention and concentration as their anger cannot allow them to concentrate nor pay attention. Physical Aches and Pains PTSD, apart from it resulting from psychological factors, can also result from physical trauma for example accidents, sexual violation like rape and so on. In as much as these factors will greatly affect the individual psychologically, PTSD can too have physical effects. Injuries sustained from the past events can be felt although their lives (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). They can also develop somatoform features in that they will be feeling pain and body aches, even though, those symptoms are not present. This occurs when they are reminded of the events of present happenings. This affects attention as the victims spend a lot of their time tending to their pain and body discomforts (Kim, Lee, Lee & Seo, 2012). Hyper vigilance People who suffer from PTSD are always on the red alert. They cannot stay at one place because of their paranoia. They are tattled by small things like thunders, bangs, shutting of the doors screeching of vehicle breaks and many other sounds. This uneasiness cannot allow them to concentrate and pay attention at all. This can be related to the memories they tend to bring to them, they tend to relate the sounds and voices to the traumatizing events that happened in the past (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). Loss of interest PTSD victims often have lost interest in life activities and life as a whole. This usually is as a result of loss of loved ones in life. They see no use or importance in things that they once loved and cherished. A widow will see no use of remarrying after the loss of her family to an accident for example nor will a teacher see the need to continue with her career after losing her/ his family. This affects the attention of these people as they don’t care anymore about the activities of life (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). PTSD Drug Side Effects Some drugs that are prescribed for PTSD-like Paroxetine and Zoloft result in some bad side effects like headache, nausea, sleeplessness and drowsiness that affect someone’s way of life and self-esteem. These side effects affect the attention of the victim especially the headaches and sleeplessness (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). Conclusion Attention problems brought about by the PTSD are numerous and cannot be exhausted in a single discussion. They affect people’s normal way of life as they cannot concentrate and pay attention to instructions. These problems, however, can be managed by both pharmacological and/or non-pharmacological therapies e.g. behavioural change techniques. A thorough assessment is first done before a decision of which therapy to use is arrived at. Usually, behavioural therapies are first considered, and pharmacological therapies are only sought after the former fail (Mulder, Fergusson & Horwood, 2013). References Kim, S., Lee, C., Lee, D., & Seo, J. (2012). Effect of symptoms of adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder on post-traumatic stress disorder in Korean conscripts. Neuropsychiatrie De Lenfance Et De Ladolescence, 60(5), S256. doi:10.1016/j.neurenf.2012.04.655 Mulder, R., Fergusson, D., & Horwood, J. (2013). Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms form a traumatic and non-traumatic stress response dimension. Australian & New Zealand Journal Of Psychiatry, 47(6), 569-577. doi:10.1177/0004867413484367 Read More