I'm choosing Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder / C-PTSD as my topic.
I'm very interested in human minds. Tiny ripples and echoes, shaping and changing someone's mind. How thoughts affect the real world and vice versa. C-PTSD is another important extension. When the ripples are so great, they alter the person's psyche in such a significant and destructive way.
From Wikipedia, C-PTSD is described as such : "psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma in the context of either captivity or entrapment (a situation lacking a viable escape route for the victim), which results in the lack or loss of control, helplessness, and deformations of identity and sense of self."
My main question is : how do you decide whether if someone has C-PTSD or not?
C-PTSD have been mistaken with Borderline Personality Disorder, DID, or just plain PTSD. There's not enough knowledge and education pertaining this particular issue, and the media aren't really showing a lot of good, profound, and realistic representations in media. This confuses the social context even more.
Generally, C-PTSD are mental 'wounds', related to traumas. The cause and effects of C-PTSD can be traced to other people; what they did, how they affected the mind and what happened as a result. On one hand, people accepts that humans have problems. Some are personal, others interpersonal, systematic. Regardless of what these problems are, they affected our lives significantly. Prolonged exposure to emotional/interpersonal trauma will alter the way someone thinks about humanity, relationship, and themselves. The missing core is the point when it's too much, and C-PTSD is established. But who's to say whether something is 'enough' to inflict C-PTSD? How much?
The main confusion is in the social determinants. At best, one can pinpoint the causes; Sometimes it's extraordinary situations, like wartime, kidnapping, gang violence, imprisonment. But other times it's things that are more mundane. Poverty. Grief and trauma. An abusive relationship. Emotional manipulation. People tend to focus on the physical signs. Black eyes, bruises, broken limbs. They are important, but the invisible wounds got unnoticed if not ignored.
Then there are sociocultural factors. There's a connection between expectations, values, culture, and community that's different between cultures, genders, race, sexualities, identities. Aside from how culture affects its development directly and indirectly, they created difficulties when it comes to diagnosing the disorder. They affect awareness, encouragement, and insights on the disorder and when to seek help.
For instance, men and women both have similar potentials on receiving mental trauma and abuse, but men have the stigma to appear 'macho', stoic, unaffected; while women had the ever-so-popular victim blaming working against them. People living in lower economic class have higher risk on developing mental disorders, and a lower chance of getting them treated and diagnosed. Some countries still has certain stigmas against psychiatric diagnosis. Patients are seen as whining, weak, if not outright unstable and dangerous.
People who dealt with numerous hardships may be expected to have a stronger resilience because of the general hardship. There is a paternalistic way of thinking that espouses a particular idea, belief, method as superior to everything else. People are compared with other people who 'deal with it'. Expressing vulnerability (like going to a therapist) is seen as a personal weakness.
These complex webs affect how diagnosis is done accurately and timely, and how fast potential patients seek treatment. And so far, they are very discriminating against people with C-PTSD.
