Lesson 5 - PTSD Flashcards
Kent County Lunatic Hospital
Also called Oakwood Hospital. Located in Maidstone, England. This 19th century asylum housed ~2000 psychiatric patients. In the mid-nineteenth century, the superintendent of the asylum was Dr James Huxley (1821-1907), the elder brother of Thomas Henry Huxley, the evolutionary biologist and friend of Charles Darwin.
Charles Dickens developed PTSD after which railway crash and when?
Great Staplehurst Railway Crash, 1865.
Who was Gilgamesh and why did he likely develop PTSD?
Ancient Mesopotamian demigod, developed PTSD over the death of his beloved Enkidu. One of the older recorded stories in history.
What happened after the battle of Marathon, when was it, and what is the significance?
An Athenian soldier was blinded by the trauma he witnessed during the war, an early example of PTSD symptoms. 490 BCE.
What did Emil Kraepalin contribute to the field of psychology?
Developed psychiatric nosology - classifying mental disorders based on clinical characteristics and course of illness. Described anxiety symptoms after traumas as “fright neurosis.” Laid the groundwork for understanding trauma disorders and PTSD.
What was “traumatic hysteria” and who (two) proposed it as a diagnosis?
Jean Charcot & Pierre Janet, expanded on Kraepalin’s findings. Indentified the relationships btwn traumas and psychological symptoms.
What was “male hysteria” and who proposed it as a diagnosis?
**Jean Charcot, who rejected the idea that so-called “hysteria” was unique to women. **Male hysteria was more commonly associated with traumatic injury from war or accidents, or with symptoms of Tourette’s syndrome, and was considered a distinct disease from female hysteria. So gendered stereotypes were definitely alive and well with Charcot, but the idea that women were not the only mentally ill ones was revolutionary to white people.
19th Century treatments for hysteria
Hysterectomy, sex or rape, magnetism, bed rest, and many other “treatments.”
Symptoms of “traumatic hysteria”
Seizures, vomiting, blindness, paralysis, pain, sensory impairment, dissociation of traumatic memories from everyday consciousness.
Memories of traumas return as intense emotional
reactions, aggressive behavior, physical pain, and
bodily states.
Charcot linked physical symptoms to intense fright mediated by unconscious mental processes.
Traumatic hysteria originated from the patient’s ideas about the traumatic event. The emotion experienced at the time of the accident determined the hysterical symptom.
Traumatic hysteria seen as a manifestation of hysteria due to psychological impact of physical trauma, regardless of gender.
What is trauma according to classical conditioning?
Trauma triggers intense emotional responses linked to specific cues or stimuli.
Classical conditioning explains the association
between trauma and behavior. Trauma-related stimuli can act as triggers for conditioned responses. Conditioned responses involve intense emotional or physiological reactions.
What is trauma-response generalization?
Generalized conditioned responses to stimuli similar to the original trauma, e.g. reacting to cars backfiring like the sound of a gunshot. In other words, being triggered in more situations than before.
What is shell shock and what is its relationship to traumatic hysteria?
Traumatic hysteria became known as shell shock during WWI due to its association with wartime bombings. Shell shock was said to have emotional origins but was also attributed to underlying personality defects.
What were the treatments for shell shock?
Initial treatments were just disciplinary: “Get your act together!” Later, hypnosis and abreaction were used to treat symptoms and process traumatic memories.
What were the Richmond, Netley, and Seale Hayne Military Hospitals and what is their importance?
These are British war hospitals. They treated psychiatric patients with shell shock during and post-WWI.
How successful were the treatments for shell shock and why?
The war hospitals had very high recovery rates for shell shock, though there was no universal or rapid cure for the condition.
Patients who didn’t respond to the hypnosis and abreaction treatments were sent to different facilities and eventually institutionalized in asylums.
The high success rate was due to: 1) institutional structure and support; 2) break from war stress and trauma; 3) use of talk-therapy to process emotions and heal.
