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Fyi, while PTSD is commonly associated with soldiers and the experiances of war, it is far more common in many civilian trades. Top of the list: train drivers.
by sandworm101 3y ago
Fyi, while PTSD is commonly associated with soldiers and the experiances of war, it is far more common in many civilian trades. Top of the list: train drivers. Also, certain types of doctors such as pediatric oncologists. But we never hear about PTSD treatment studies involving anyone other than vets.
- asylteltine 3y agoIf everyone has ptsd then no one has ptsd. It’s too loose as it is. Sorry but people who got bombed and shot at deserve a little more priority in terms of mental health.
- callalex 3y agoWhen a person tells you they are suffering and in pain, what criteria do you use to determine weather to tell them that their feelings are invalid?
- asylteltine 3y agoWho said their feelings have to be invalid just because they don’t have “ptsd”
- antonkar 3y agoPTSD can be caused by any trauma, like a car crash or abuse. PTSD is actually a fear of a traumatic memory. A person experiences flashbacks (pieces of the traumatic memory) and fears that the traumatic event will reoccur. The most effective treatment is exposure therapy - in a nutshell, you eventually write down the traumatic memory in full (not just pieces of it) and read it until it becomes boring/you understand that for example it wasn't your fault. Here is a recent meta analysis https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
- jdjdjdkdksmdnd 3y ago[dead]
- Doxin 3y agoDoesn't even have to be a profession. I've got (actual legit, not "trying to be hip") PTSD from my experiences getting bullied. I'm lucky that my symptoms are fairly mild, but at this point I don't expect them ever to go away. Turns out getting called ugly about a hundred times a day by almost everyone you know does things to a kids psyche.
- loceng 3y agoI think it's for society buy-in and relatability - that we can assume, because we see in entertainment (or real-life footage) the horrors that happen during war, but other professions may be harder to relate to.
- Terr_ 3y agoAlso one of the easier groups to target research on, since they are easier to systematically identify and are more likely to have similar underlying experiences.
- sandworm101 3y agoAnd they have standardized health insurance provided through an enormous government agency, which is rare amongst workers in the US.
- fragmede 3y agoRight. Who has the money to pay for a study to be done? The VA, for all its faults, can. Battered women and abused IT help desk employees can't, so we don't hear stories of big expensive studies being done with them.
- DoodahMan 3y agohealthcare workers during the pandemic come to mind.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoIt's hard to find good or consistent stats on this but I believe most cases are not from work at all. IIRC the most common causes are sexual assault, car crashes, and child abuse.
- hollerith 3y agoAnd surgeries.
- _jal 3y agoThere's a reason for that. If civilian PTSD were more widely acknowledged, insurance would be paying out more and people would want employers to do something about high-stress jobs. > Top of the list: train drivers. I rather suspect front-line in Trust and Safety at any major social media outfit is up there, too.
- candiddevmike 3y agoPretty sure anyone who has been in help desk has some kind of PTSD, especially if you supported attorneys
- gerdesj 3y agoPTSD is generally indicated for people experiencing situations that involve say trauma rather than distressing. However, enough exposure to distressing might be considered trauma. Anyway, this is all arse backwards: You start off with a diagnosis of PTSD based on symptoms and try to work out causation, through diagnosis. You don't start off with: "I worked on a helpdesk for attorneys and therefore I have PTSD".
- candiddevmike 3y agoEmotional abuse can cause more severe PTSD than other forms[1] and help desk (really any call center) occupations deal with far too much of it. Sure you can be pedantic around the phrasing, but do not hand wave how crushing these kinds of jobs are. 1 - https://www.talkspace.com/mental-health/conditions/articles/ptsd-from-emotional-abuse/ https://www.talkspace.com/mental-health/conditions/articles/...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoI'm not sure what you consider to be the source(s) of "emotional abuse" for a Help Desk or call center employee, but nobody who works on the phones for customers is required to endure any sort of egregious verbal abuse from them. Such a worker should be free to warn them, and then hang up or refer the to management as appropriate. It is certainly a good skill to be able to defuse situations where the customer is angry and ranting, but there is hopefully no personal or intimate connection with said customers, and that's really the key to effective emotional abuse. Likewise, the worker is hopefully not enduring emotional abuse from coworkers or management in the course of their jobs, although this is also a possible thing.
- chaps 3y agoYes, and it's also worth noting that DSM5 has some pretty loose wording with PTSD diagnostic criteria. Not even saying that as a bad thing, more to say that a lot more people (diagnostically) likely have PTSD without realizing it.
- syndacks 3y ago[flagged]
- KittenInABox 3y agoConsidering that 1 in 9 girls and 1 in 20 boys are sexually assaulted, yeah I can buy someone in GenZ having PTSD requiring being accompanied by a service animal everywhere. :(
- TriangleEdge 3y agoCan you provide a data source?
- KittenInABox 3y ago"The lifetime prevalence of child sexual abuse and sexual assault assessed in late adolescence" - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24582321/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24582321/, which was cited by RAINN(Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) on their statistics page https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens I know this might be quite shocking but in my experience, sexual abuse to children is unfortunately common. Remember the olympic gymnastics doctor that (convictedly) sexually abused "at least" 265 women and minor girls, with the overall scandal being (allegedly) over 500 women primarily under 18? How about the thousands of child sex abuse cases in the Boy Scouts? These are just the high profile cases. Literally "creepy uncle" jokes have been common crass comedy for decades.
- xen2xen1 3y agoTo add to the chorus, I've had multiple kids waking up in the middle of the night screaming "Don't hit me mommy!" for months or more after moving in. I promise those kids will meet any definition you can find in a textbook.
- green-salt 3y agoand it continues for decades too
- adzm 3y agoProbably complex PTSD? Honestly I'd be surprised if you can handle that kind of thing without developing it yourself.
- wyre 3y agoComplex PTSD isn’t in the DSM (yet) so treatment for it is obsfucated behind every other diagnoses that carry traits of cPTSD.
- animal_spirits 3y agoI have a loved one with CPTSD and the best therapy she's had was IFS based.
- rendx 3y agoTrue. It is however finally in ICD-11.
- anigbrowl 3y agoThis seems to be missing some context, like if you're a foster parent or similar?
- morkalork 3y agoI know someone whose bio family ran a foster home and just being exposed to that 2nd hand was enough to make them seek professional help.
- LanzVonL 3y agoIt's not kind to say, but one must wonder if after you kill people, rip their bodies asunder, send them into the afterlife... if PTSD doesn't have a spiritual or karmic purpose. We're not meant to be doing this to each other.
- thinkingtoilet 3y agoI'm as about as big a hippie as you can get, however we live in a cold world and sometimes killing is the right thing to do. Look no further than the war in Ukraine. My family left there from pogroms over 100 years ago and again Russian aggression is causing innocent people to have to kill to defend. We're not meant to do this, you're right. However, sometimes you have to so I don't believe PTSD to be 'karmic'.
- meiraleal 3y ago[flagged]
- LanzVonL 3y ago[flagged]
- MeImCounting 3y agoI certainly did not expect to read Russian propaganda on hackernews today
- LanzVonL 3y ago[flagged]
- MeImCounting 3y agosnarky comment about karma and being rude Anyway I find your original statement about people incurring PTSD as somehow justified an absolutely despicable point of view and everything you said after that is colored in that light for me. Edit: I come on HN so I can participate in an online discussion board without having to see this garbage. At least grandparent got flagged but its still frustrating.
- harimau777 3y agoDo you have any context on train drivers? Is that due to some sort of accidents happening or due to some sort of chronic stress?
- sandworm101 3y agoSuicide by train, but also a great many more animals that are killed. What makes is especially bad is that drivers see the accident coming many seconds in advance. One you've seen one person throw themselves in front of your train, every time you see another person near the track you relive the scenario.
- devin 3y agoPeople commit suicide by train. Accidents between trains and cars happen and are often fatal.
- duskwuff 3y agoNot only that, but the driver of a train will often see an impending collision, but will have no way to prevent it -- it takes a freight train over a mile to stop. The combination of being in control of the train, but unable to stop an accident, is a recipe for trauma.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoAll of the early research on. PTSD was done at the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, I believe. The affliction was first seen in this group before being better understood.