POP Medical PTSD

POP is a patient-led organization dedicated to raising awareness of Medical Trauma and Medical PTSD.

02/02/2023

Roughly 6 out of every 100 people (or 6% of the population) will have PTSD at some point in their lives. About 12 million adults in the U.S. have PTSD during a given year. This is only a small portion of those who have gone through a trauma.

How many of those 6% live with Medical PTSD? At this point, due to lack of research, we just don't know. Care to make a guess?

Reference: National Center for PTSD

02/02/2023

Voices of Medical PTSD:

“My experience with medical PTSD is something that most people do not know about me. Most of the people who meet me and hear my story assume that I’m this strong and resilient person who is able to laugh her way through anything. But the truth is, my mind is a very dark and trecherous place. At times it makes me feel like a fraud. To this day, I have a horrible fear of sleeping as a result of the nightmares and flashbacks. I will literally stay awake until I pass out from sheer exhaustion. I begin to shake involuntarily if I need to go see a doctor or go to the ER. I also have massive panic attacks before any surgical procedure, big or small, because being placed under anesthesia is very triggering to me. It’s so intense that I require moderate sedation just as they wheel me back to the OR. I always wonder if people believe me, if they even care, or if they wish I would stop talking about my experiences because they're sick of hearing about it. Pushing through that fear so I could become a more fierce and public advocate was a major challenge for me. It still is. But it's always my hope that someone will read my words or hear me speak and maybe feel less alone, or better yet understood. Sometimes feeling seen and heard is enough to get us through to the next battle.”
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01/28/2023

Friday Book Club!

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.

"Trauma causes people to remain stuck in interpreting the present in light of an unchanging past. The scene you re-create in a structure may or may not be precisely what happened, but it represents the structure of your inner world: your internal map and the hidden rules that you have been living by. "

Buy it here: https://buff.ly/3tp0T9s

01/24/2023

Medical gaslighting is when a health care professional dismisses a patient’s concerns or symptoms and wrongly blames their illness or symptoms on psychological factors. “You can have doctors convincing you it’s all in your head or to defer to them because they’re the professionals,” explains Taish Malone, L.P.C. Ph.D., a psychotherapist and counselor at Mindpath Health. Most of the time, doctors are not intentionally trying to gaslight and may not even know they are doing it.

Have you experienced medical gaslighting? What happened to you?

Reference: https://buff.ly/2tJNeuh

01/23/2023

Meme Monday!

01/19/2023

Medical PTSD refers to symptoms that meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) originating from trauma in a medical setting. Such events can range for medical interventions required for survival to communication errors between patients and providers.

Medical PTSD is a form of Complex PTSD, as repeated exposure to medical settings are required when maintaining one's illness.

Do you agreed? Do you feel like you have Medical PTSD?

Reference: PsychCentral

01/18/2023

Medical trauma is defined as a set of psychological and physiological responses to pain, injury, serious illness, medical procedures and frightening treatment experiences.

Medical trauma can be viewed as an acute onset of a disrupted physiological system in which the ongoing threat is internal (i.e., the body) and may be long-term or permanent (e.g., cancer treatment). This differs from an external trauma (e.g., car accident) where once the event ends, the external threat ends."

Reference: International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

01/14/2023

What is Complex PTSD?

PTSD is typically results from "short- lived trauma"- think going to a war zone
C-PTSD stems from chronic, long term, exposure to trauma in which the person has limited relief it will ever end or could end - think living in a war zone

Do you think Medical PTSD could be a form of C-PTSD?

01/11/2023

According to the American Psychiatric Association, “PTSD, or Post Truamtic Stress Disorder, is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or r**e or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury.”

Sound familiar?

01/10/2023

When does a traumatic event morph into PTSD?

The month after a traumatic event, or series of events, survivors may experience symptoms of ASD, or Acute Stress Disorder. Symptoms are similar to PTSD, but persist over.a shorter period of time. If ASD, symptoms last for longer than a month, it could be PTSD.

01/07/2023

“What Is a Traumatic Event? Most everyone has been through a stressful event in his or her life. When the event, or series of events, causes a lot of stress, it is called a traumatic event. Traumatic events are marked by a sense of horror, helplessness, serious injury, or the threat of serious injury or death."

When I was 16, I was told that my life expectancy was mid-30s. That meant I was already halfway through my life before being old enough to vote. My illness has a high fatality rate and much of my young adulthood was marked with feeling hopeless, helpless, and constantly stressed. In fact, my baseline is still "always a little tense", it's my normal.

How was your illness elevated your stress levels? Do you feel like the stress ever became all encompassing?

01/04/2023

Have you ever felt lost in the healthcare system? Do you feel downright traumatized by the healthcare system and all that comes along with being a patient? Have you felt unheard or under valued by your provider? How has communication fallen so far in such an accomplished field of study? How is this impacting you, the patent? What about caregivers? What about the provider's themselves?

Get involved with POP (link in the bio!) through telling your own story, participating in discussion groups, checking out our resources page, and following us

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https://popmedicalptsd.org/

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