Psychological trauma

Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience. A traumatic event involves one's experience, or repeating events of being overwhelmed that can be precipitated in weeks, years, or even decades as the person struggles to cope with the immediate circumstances, eventually leading to serious, long-term negative consequences.

However, trauma differs between individuals, according to their subjective experiences. People will react to similar events differently. In other words, not all people who experience a potentially traumatic event will actually become psychologically traumatized. This discrepancy in risk rate can be attributed to protective factors some individuals may have that enable them to cope with trauma. Some examples are mild exposure to stress early in life,resilience characteristics, and active seeking of help.

DSM-IV-TR defines trauma as direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury; threat to one's physical integrity, witnessing an event that involves the above experience, learning about unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death, or injury experienced by a family member or close associate. Memories associated with trauma are implicit, pre-verbal and cannot be recalled, but can be triggered by stimuli from the in vivo environment. The person's response to aversive details of traumatic event involve intense fear, helplessness or horror. In children it is manifested as disorganized or agitative behaviors.

Trauma can be caused by a wide variety of events, but there are a few common aspects. There is frequently a violation of the person's familiar ideas about the world and of their human rights, putting the person in a state of extreme confusion and insecurity. This is also seen when institutions that are depended upon for survival, violate, humiliate, betray, or cause major losses or separations.

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