Traumatic Consequences Long After Fall of the Berlin Wall

English: Political Prisoners, sculpture by Suren Nazaryan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

PTSD – not just a war zone related condition.
The real eye opener was that 2/3 of the survivors were not suffering from this condition according to the parameters of the study.
Note to self: Research factors

 

 

 

From the 25 October 2012 article at ScienceDaily

 

One in three former political prisoners of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) still suffers from sleeping disorders, nightmares and irrational fear. Professor Andreas Maercker from the University of Zurich and PD Matthias Schützwohl from Dresden University of Technology reveal these post-traumatic stress disorders in a study — the first to examine the post-traumatic consequences in former political prisoners over a period of 15 years…

…To our surprise, post-traumatic stress disorder is still present in a third of the people studied,” says Professor Maercker, summing up the results. “While some have recovered compared to 15 years ago, in others the stress disorder has only manifested itself in recent years.” In all, such a delayed or recurrent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was apparent in 15 percent. We know from studies from other countries — mostly on prisoners of war or other victims of violence — that delayed or recurrent PTSD exists, albeit to a lesser extent. Maercker and Schützwohl’s study is the first to demonstrate this for former political prisoners. It appears in the journal Nervenarzt and additional analyses are to be published in the English-language journal Torture…

…

Decline in dependency on addictive substances

Other psychological disorders that former GDR prisoners suffered from decreased during the 15 years. Specific phobias such as claustrophobia were less common, for instance. The number of people addicted to alcohol and medication also fell. However, the number with acute depression quadrupled to 41 percent of those studied last year. At both time points, a more or less equal number suffered from anxiety disorders such as panic disorder (24 percent last year)….

 

Related articles

• Traumatic consequences long after fall of the Berlin Wall (medicalxpress.com)
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – Not Only Members of the Military Affected (maddsuspicions.wordpress.com)
• Ethically Treating the Post-Traumatic Brain (nation.time.com)
• Great Educational Video on PTSD: Introduced by Dr. Barbara Kamholz, MD (jajsamos.wordpress.com)
• Cops with post-traumatic stress disorder ‘deserve respect,’ expert says (metronews.ca)
• Early Altered Resting-State Functional Connectivity Predicts the Severity of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in Acutely Traumatized Subjects (plosone.org)
• Trauma switch identified: Mechanism protects our brains from turning stress and trauma into post-traumatic stress disorder (sciencedaily.com)