Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs in people following the experience or witnessing of horrific events such as disaster casualties or motor vehicle accident deaths, military combat, sexual assault, street and domestic violence. Post traumatic stress disorder is evident in neighborhoods like Bayview Hunters Point, the Fillmore and the Mission, where children exposed to violent images on television and in films, fighting and violence they hear or see in their community and interpersonal violence at home and at school has cultivated a generation of urban combat war veterans, many of whom are "child soldiers" in need of rescue and assistance just like the combat veterans of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Firefighters, police officers, paramedics, emergency workers and trauma surgeons face a heightened occupational risk of PTSD and may manifest symptoms of chronic PTSD, including mood disorders, drug and alcohol "self medication," explosive rage and sleep disorders that are often accepted as "normal" behavior within the culture of the profession. As an attending physician in charge of the Persian Gulf, Agent Orange, Ionizing Radiation Registry at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital in 1997, I had the opportunity to evaluate dozens of Vietnam War veterans during the 30-year commemoration of the 1967 Vietnam "Tet offensive," in which thousands of American soldiers were killed, wounded and forever scarred by the brutality of the Vietnam war. In its study of children exposed to violence, adolescents were found to demonstrate a sense of foreshortened future, increased risk-taking, including daredevil behaviors, drugs and alcohol and unsafe sex, self injurious or suicidal behavior, delinquency and gang involvement and an increased risk of involvement in dating violence. Read More

[Tags]ptsd, sleep, violence, health, behavior, children, natural pet health[/Tags]