Trauma And Violence

Here, suggestions for mental health professionals serving the needs of refugees from around the world who have been traumatized by violence.

As psychiatrists, we practice holistic medicine. Our traumatized patients depend on us to uncover their emotional pain delicately, to understand its effects on their minds and bodies, and to recognize and draw on their unique strengths and vulnerabilities as we promote recovery.

Former President of the American Psychiatric Association, Nada Stotland, MD, MS, speaks here about abortion-a subject that is especially important for psychiatrists in several ways.

When our jails become our largest public mental health facilities, we definitely have a problem-a problem we created-in how we respond to serious mental illness.

Combat veterans who have suffered a moral injury in the past may be predisposed to a recurrence of the painful memories associated with previous trauma after exposure to similar traumatic events with moral overtones.

Over half of the population is exposed to at least one lifetime traumatic event, yet relatively few of those exposed have lasting psychiatric sequelae. As psychiatrists, we attend to the needs of those who suffer.

Psychiatrists need to understand how living in violent families and neighborhoods increases the likelihood of trauma and the psychiatric sequelae associated with it as well as how to respond in the aftermath.

When attempting to incorporate resilience-building strategies into practice, it is worthwhile to note that resilience is a dynamic concept in which successful coping may mean a mixture of major real-life successes in the context of continuing difficulties.

The Sandy Hook Promise . . “To do everything in our power to be remembered--not as the town filled with grief and victims; but as the place where real change began.”

Both clinicians and weather forecasters employ the same general process of information gathering, analysis, and reaching a conclusion.

Because the aftermath of sexual violence can result in suicidal feelings, depression, PTSD, and other mental disorders, clinicians play an important role in treating both victims and perpetrators and helping to prevent further damage.

It is yet unclear whether the overwhelming shock of Newtown will galvanize action not only to prevent future mass murderers, but also to finally reduce the public health and mental health risks of more chronic, common, and routine gun violence in America.

PTSD is a psychiatric illness resulting from a physical or psychological trauma that is sometimes related to warfare, but of course occurs in the case of civilian trauma as well. However, wars have been a propitious time for studying PTSD.

This week's news stories: intimate partner violence, gun control and mental illness, eating disorders, and more.

The news media has always been in the business of searching for "the right sort of madness" to capture the public's imagination.

Gun owners and non-gun-owners alike support gun control policies that account for mental illness, according to a study published in a recent issue of NEJM.

Perceived relationship power helps to explain the association between intimate partner violence and mental health issues.

Newtown’s loss has finally forced us to look more deeply at violence and the treatment of mental health within our society.

If we, as a people, continue to sacrifice genuine security for a false sense of freedom, we shall find ourselves in a nation neither secure nor free.

"You turn on the television, and violence is there. You go to a movie, and violence is there."

With the recent tragedy in Colorado and the high likelihood that questions about psychiatry will be inextricably tied into it, guidance for practicing psychiatrists can be gleaned from this coincidence.

The shooting in Colorado is obviously a tragedy for the victims and their families which will never be forgotten by those close to anyone touched by this event. It will cause painful grieving among the families and friends of those who lost their lives.

Psychiatry has no way to predict mass murder and no way to prevent it. There is no indication that psychiatry can change the statistics of violence or the proclivity of the violent.

Apathy is our enemy. Pain, paradoxically, is our ally because it is one of the most powerful fuels we have to impel us to a different and better tomorrow.

Propranolol therapy at a relatively low dose can cause anger and rage behaviors to subside in some patients. This case describes a man with Down syndrome who, after an accident, sustained minor brain trauma. Subsequently, he regressed to a rage state he had experienced when he was younger.

Few circumstances confront the psychiatrist with more complex, painful, and potentially problematic clinical dilemmas and challenges than the treatment of the incest victim. Here are some factors that may lead to memory of a trauma becoming inaccessible or withheld by a patient.

The Holocaust is well known and has been well researched. The purpose of this study was to evaluate persons 65 years after the Holocaust who remained in Poland and discovered the “secret” of their Jewish ancestry, despite not being raised as Jews.

Several studies have been undertaken to test the efficacy of drugs in the management of aggression and hostility in patients with schizophrenia and other mood disorders.

Agitation can be displayed in patients as loud, disruptive, hostile, sarcastic, threatening, hyperactive, and/or combative. Here are tips on managing agitated patients.

The first half of the 20th century saw 2 world wars, indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilians, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the Holocaust-all of which created intense trauma for soldiers and civilians.Yet it was not until the American intervention in a post-colonial civil war in Southeast Asia that the psychiatric community in the 1970s formally described what we now call PTSD.