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Selco on PTSD: The Price You Pay for Survival
Selco on PTSD: The Price You Pay for Survival
Editor’s Note: Something a lot of people forget when they think about survival is what happens after you’ve survived. When you get through something terrible, there’s always a price you must pay for your survival. You won’t get through it unscathed.
Oftentimes, that price is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. This is a very real condition triggered by experiencing or witnessing a horrifying event or series of events. You can learn more about PTSD here on the VA website. Once called “shell shock” or “battle fatigue syndrome” it can affect more than just soldiers.
You can’t survive something awful and expect to live unscathed. PTSD isn’t a symptom weakness. It’s a sign that you have a conscience and a heart. It’s a sign that you love and you care. It’s part of being a survivor, and that’s why all of us are here – we want to survive.
In this article, Selco shares his deeply personal experience with PTSD.
The Price You Pay for Survival
by Selco
I am not alone.
he’s here now.
sometimes I think he’s
gone
then he
flies back
in the morning or at
noon or in the
night.
a bird no one wants.
he’s mine.
my bird of pain.
he doesn’t sing.
that bird
swaying on the
bough.—Charles Bukowski
For all people out there, who carry this ugly bird on their shoulders.
Anxiety, phobias, PTSD, depression… are just words.
For the people who have not experienced it personally, those words cannot portray feelings of being lost, alone and cornered while you are fighting for air, or simply thinking that you are going to die. Or that you are not gonna make it. Or that it is not worth to make it.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Fukushima: Thousands Have Already Died, Thousands More Will Die
Fukushima: Thousands Have Already Died, Thousands More Will Die
Official data from Fukushima show that nearly 2,000 people died from the effects of evacuations necessary to avoid high radiation exposures from the disaster.
The uprooting to unfamiliar areas, cutting of family ties, loss of social support networks, disruption, exhaustion, poor physical conditions and disorientation can and do result in many people, in particular older people, dying.
Increased suicide has occurred among younger and older people following the Fukushima evacuations, but the trends are unclear.
A Japanese Cabinet Office report stated that, between March 2011 and July 2014, 56 suicides in Fukushima Prefecture were linked to the nuclear accident. This should be taken as a minimum, rather than a maximum, figure.
Mental health consequences
It is necessary to include the mental health consequences of radiation exposures and evacuations. For example, Becky Martin has stated her PhD research at Southampton University in the UK shows that “the most significant impacts of radiation emergencies are often in our minds.”
She adds: “Imagine that you’ve been informed that your land, your water, the air that you have breathed may have been polluted by a deadly and invisible contaminant. Something with the capacity to take away your fertility, or affect your unborn children.
“Even the most resilient of us would be concerned … many thousands of radiation emergency survivors have subsequently gone on to develop Post-Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety disorders as a result of their experiences and the uncertainty surrounding their health.”
It is likely that these fears, anxieties, and stresses will act to magnify the effects of evacuations, resulting in even more old people dying or people committing suicide.
Such considerations should not be taken as arguments against evacuations, however. They are an important, life-saving strategy. But, as argued by Becky Martin,
“We need to provide greatly improved social support following resettlement and extensive long-term psychological care to all radiation emergency survivors, to improve their health outcomes and preserve their futures.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
