| Stress Disorder
Criteria
The person has been exposed to a traumatic
event and
- experienced, witnessed or was confronted
with actual or threatened death or serious injury; or a threat to the
physical integrity of self or others
- the person's response involved intense
fear, helplessness or horror
- symptoms last for more than 2 days and a
maximum of 4 weeks
- symptoms appear within 4 weeks of the
trauma
Symptoms
- numbing
- detachment
- absence of emotional responsiveness
- reduction in awareness of surrounding
(being in a daze)
- derealization
- depersonalization
- dissociative amnesia (inability to
recall important aspects of the trauma)
- re-experiencing traumatic event
(recurrent images, thoughts, dreams and feelings)
- flashbacks
- hallucinations
- avoidance of thoughts, places, people,
etc that remind them of the trauma
- anxiety
- difficulty sleeping
- irritability
- poor concentration
- hypervigilance
- exaggerated startle response
- restlessness
- functional impairment (social,
occupational, etc)
- heightened emotional reactivity
(tearful, crying, fear, horror)
in part from:
Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Vol. IV American
Psychiatric
Association. 1994
Physical Stress
Physical or external stress that affects
the body is easy to identify.
Working too hard, staying up late, or eating too much, disrupts the
routine causing exhaustion and stress.
Some external stresses are beyond one's control.
Stressors such as illness, death,
divorce, marriage, job loss and other such major changes in life usually
create high levels of stress and are unavoidable.
Emotional Stress
Psychological or emotional stress is less
concrete and a little more difficult to identify. But if you look at
the stressors mentioned above, all of them have unavoidable emotional
ramifications.
Physical and emotional stress are often
inter-related. Severe emotional conditions cause physical illnesses
and physical illness causes stress.
Although these inner stresses often make people feel uncomfortable, it is
important to look clearly at one's own feelings and honestly
ask oneself what it is that causes inner difficulty or pain.
Stress has been
related to heart attacks, common cold, chronic pain and certain types of
cancer.
Also check:
[ Up ] [ good stress ] [ stress & distorted thinking ] [ managing stress ] [ coping with stress ]
|
