Healing Trauma by Daniel J. Siegel

Author:Daniel J. Siegel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and The Nature of Trauma

Bessel A. van der Kolk

THE HUMAN RESPONSE to psychological trauma is one of the most important public health problems in the world. Traumatic events such as family and social violence, rapes and assaults, disasters, wars, accidents and predatory violence confront people with such horror and threat that it may temporarily or permanently alter their capacity to cope, their perception of biological threat, and their self-concepts. Traumatized individuals frequently develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in which the memory of the traumatic event comes to dominate victims consciousness, depleting their lives of meaning and pleasure (van der Kolk & van der Hart, 1991). Trauma does not only affect psychological functioning; for example, a study of almost 10,000 patients in a medical setting (Felitti et al., 1998) reported that persons with histories of being severely maltreated as a child showed a 4 to 12 times greater risk of developing alcoholism, depression, and drug abuse, attempting suicide, a 2 to 4 times greater risk of smoking, having at least 50 sex partners, acquiring sexually transmitted disease, a 1.4 to 1.6 times greater risk for physical inactivity and obesity, and a 1.6 to 2.9 times greater risk for ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, hepatitis, stroke, diabetes, and liver disease.

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