Janet

Running head: THE CASE OF JANET

The Case of Janet

What is emotional and psychological trauma?

Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless and vulnerable in a dangerous world.

Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and alone can be traumatic, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It’s not the objective facts that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event (Van der Kolk et al., 1996, p. 153). Regardless of its source, an emotional trauma contains three common elements:

• it was unexpected;

• the person was unprepared; and

• there was nothing the person could do to prevent it from happening.

Emotional and psychological symptoms of trauma:

Shock, denial, or disbelief

Guilt, shame, self-blame

Feeling sad or hopeless

Confusion, difficulty concentrating

Anxiety and fear

Withdrawing from others

In the DSM-IV-TR, p. 469, the term "Acute Stress Disorder" is used for a similar syndrome lasting less than 30 days. Nonetheless, the DSM-IV-TR defines Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the following manner:

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD)

1. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:

* the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved 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. Note: In children, this may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior

2. The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

* recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or...