Monday, August 4, 2008

Emotional trauma and dissociation

Another situation in which dissociation occurs is overwhelming emotional stress. It occurs in the settings of major disasters (natural or otherwise), emotinally traumatising experiences like sexual or physical abuse, torture etc. The victims tend to dissociate; may be this is a mechanism of nature to make the stress bearable, and have survival advantage.
It is also shown that persons who tend to dissociate during disasters have higher rates of developing Post Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD) later. This is a disorder characterized by hyper arousal (increased alertness and wakefulness that is unpleasant, difficulty to fall asleep, increased startle responses), flashbacks of re experiencing the situation again, avoidance of anything that reminds of the trauma etc.
Children who were sexually abused also show increased chances of dissociating later in life. They are prone to develop a type of personality disorder called Borderline Personality Disorder.

1 comment:

Devadas said...

SEX.. The extent of rationality in the social attitude!.

I feel ,it is high time we have a discussion on the public attitude and punishments awarded to some "minor acts" in the name of sexual offence.
Why the So called "victims" of molestation experience so much mental trauma?
Jansi Rani was married off at the age of 7 years to a person who was above 50 years of age and people celeberated it..The present generation reading history doesnt feel that, some punishable offence was committed by that old man!
But now people cannot tolerate such news/imagine the freedom of a man to have sex with a girl (even with her consent), who is below 18 years!or even with a female above 18 years..!

Inviting your comments,Harish!




What is the reason for such a drastic change in public attitude?
Is it a scientific attitude ?And What or Who brought the change in the social value of this subcontinent?