The diagnosis of PTSD requires one or more symptoms from three main categories. The first category is re-experiencing the event. This can include reliving the event through nightmares, upsetting thoughts, flashbacks, or anything that can remind the person of the traumatic event, making them have physical and mental reactions ("Post-traumatic Stress," 2014). Next, the second category is avoidance. The individual will avoid thoughts, activities, or conversations that can remind them of the traumatic event. The third stage to diagnose PTSD is increased arousal in your life including, a loss of interest in important things you need such as decreased sleep and being unable to concentrate in your day to day life ("Post-traumatic Stress," 2014). Major depression, substance abuse, and panic can also correlate with PTSD. This diagnosis requires these symptoms to be bad enough to interfere with your daily life and last at least a month.
A person who suffers PTSD also exhibits strange behavior like avoidance of certain events, locations or anything that is deemed to bring back memories that trigger semblance of the original traumatic experience (Yehuda, 2002). As the patient tries to avoid such circumstances, they manifest as antisocial behavior. They avoid people, certain places as well as suffer a sense of memory loss. They try to numb their ability to remember the painful traumatic event. A major symptom amongst
work with individual families and with families as an aggregate within the population (Clark, 2003). Several areas will be presented such as biophysical, psychological, physical environmental, sociocultural, behavioral and health system considerations. The data obtained during family health assessment enable the nurse to make informed decisions about the health care needs of families (Clark).
The family assessment is a thorough assessment done by a health care provider. This assessment is the foundation of how health care providers deliver care for a certain member of the family or the family as a whole. This assessment involves exploration of the family structure, development, and function. In addition, the family will express their strengths and barriers, internal and external structure, ethnicity, social class, religion, and subsystems, which will allow the reader a better understanding of the family’s functioning.
In his article, Creamer discusses and differentiates how civilian and veteran cases of PTSD are treated. He also discusses the details of PTSD and the treatments and classifications of it. This article receives its credibility by being published in the popular medical journal called the “International Review of Psychiatry”.
The symptoms of PTSD, while generally not life threatening, can be very distressing and have serious effects on a person’s health and well-being. There are three classes of symptoms related to PTSD, re-experiencing symptoms, avoidance symptoms, and hyperarousal symptoms. The re-experiencing symptoms are generally flashbacks, bad dreams and frightening thoughts. These symptoms are produced from the persons own thoughts and can be triggered by anything reminding them of the experience. The second classification of symptoms are called the avoidance symptoms and they include staying away from places and other objects that remind the person of the experience, as well as feeling strong guilt, depression, worry, emotional numbness, and a loss of interest in the world around you. The final classification, hyperarousal symptoms, includes being easily startled, feeling tense, having angry outbursts, and insomnia. These symptoms are
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric sequel to a stressful event or situation of an exceptionally threatening or catastrophic nature. It develops after a person is involved in a horrifying ordeal that involved physical maltreatment or the threat of physical harm. These events can include combat or military experience, abuse during childhood or adulthood (physical or sexual), terrorist attacks, serious accidents or natural disasters. This person may have been the one that was harmed, witnessed a harmful event or had a loved one who was harmed. It is normal for the body’s fight or flight mechanism to engage in times of danger. With a person who has PTSD, that mechanism is damaged and the person feels this even when they are not in danger. Symptoms can be categorized into four different areas – re-experiencing symptoms (flashbacks, bad dreams, frightening thoughts) , avoiding situations that remind the person of the event, negative changes in beliefs and feelings (may be fear, guilt, shame or losing interest in those activities that once were enjoyable) and hypervigilence (always feeling keyed up, trouble concentrating or sleeping). There are also feelings of hopelessness, despair, depression or anxiety, alcohol or substance abuse, physical symptoms or chronic pain and problems with employment and relationships.
A family health assessment is a process by which a nurse evaluates and describes the health status of a given family. It is a framework that helps to identify areas of potential risk for illness, opportunities for health education and actions needed to address these (World Health Organization, 2001). Specifics covered in a nurse led family assessment will include family history, perceptions about health, reports, health records, and any clinic test results. The nurse conducts an interview, compiles data and performs an appropriate
A comprehensive family assessment provides a foundation to promote family health (Edelman & Mandle, 2011). 1987 Marjorie Gordon purposed 11 functional health patterns to use for guidance in order to facilitate nurses to have a frame work for the family assessment in. Gordon’s 11 functional health patterns help organizes basic family assessment information. This standardized format will guide nurses to complete the family assessment using system approaches, which will identify a patient’s
Husband is the head of the family. All the family members are health conscious. The whole family is covered under medical insurance and adheres to annual health check up. This family prefers homely food and the parents set example for that. They also enjoy the relationship with neighbors and with extended family members. There are no risk factors of smoking, alcoholism, and use of other drugs.
It is stated that once a person experiences a traumatic event, PTSD can develop as a combination of varying symptoms. When diagnosing possible PTSD patients, clinicians use the DSM-IV as a guide in “understanding clusters of symptoms” (Staggs, para. 1). Some of these symptoms include “recurrent and intrusive” recollections of the situation, “including images, thoughts, or perceptions; acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring; intense psychological distress” to symbols representing trauma; and “recurrent distressing dreams of the event”, or nightmares/terrors (DSM-IV, Appendix E). While all
Using Gordon’s functional health patterns to assess a family will guide the nurse in developing a comprehensive nursing assessment that is holistic in nature. Gordon’s functional health patterns are founded on 11 principles that are incorporated within the nursing practice. These 11 principles serve as a framework for a thorough nursing assessment in which to build a holistic and individual family care plan (Grand Canyon University, 2011). The author has developed family-focused questions for each of the 11 principles and utilized these questions as a tool to assess her own family. This paper will summarize the family assessment that was performed by the author and discuss two wellness nursing diagnoses that
Individuals with PTSD persistently re-experience their traumatic event in their thoughts, perceptions, imagery, dreams, illusions, hallucinations, and flashbacks. They may experience intense physiological distress or reactivity to cues of the traumatic event. These individuals persistently avoid any stimuli associated with the traumatic event and use other mechanisms to cope with any situation or cue that recalls or contradicts their emotional or cognitive responses to the traumatic event (American Psychiatric Association [DSM-IV-TR], 2000). Individuals with PTSD also experience persistent symptoms of increased arousal, such as irritability and difficulty concentrating. These disturbances can cause significant distress in social life, the work place, and family systems. According to the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV-TR), in order for individuals to be diagnosed with PTSD they must experience disturbances and symptoms for more than one month (2000). Symptoms can be specified as acute (less than 3 months), chronic (3 months or more), or with delayed onset; in which onset starts 6 months after the actual stressor (DSM-IV-TR, 2000).
Gordon’s functional health patterns is a method developed by Marjorie Gordon in 1987 proposed functional health patterns as a guide establishing a comprehensive nursing data base(Kriegler & Harton, 1992). Gordon’s11 functional health patterns are; health perception/ health management, nutrition, pattern of elimination, activity/ excerise, cognitive, sleep/ rest, self perception/ self concept, roles/ relationships, sexuality, coping/ stress and values/ beliefs. By using these categories it’s possible to create a systematic and standardized approach to data collection and enables the nurse to determine the following
Health practices are activities performed by individuals or families as a whole to promote health and prevent disease. Health practices vary from family to family and nurses play a pivotal role in promoting health for the family. Families identify and perform health-maintenance activities based on their perceptions about their health because their choices are influenced by the family’s values, beliefs, priorities, cultures and practices. Being a nurse requires an assessment of the family as a whole. A family health assessment is to evaluate and describes the health status of a given family