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Stress Reactions May Turn Into PTSD

Everyone watching horrific events - seeing bombings andbloodied and mangled, crying people on television and the Internet - experience trauma. It is normal with an acute stress reaction, which includes anxiety, hyper-vigilance, greater startle response, grief and horror for the terrible events gone through by the victims as well as their families and wonder about our own safety and that of our own families. These emotions were normal.

People who have experienced trauma previously or those who suffer from existing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression are definitely more vulnerable to the trauma and might experience exacerbations of their past PTSD or other symptoms.

Whenever people are traumatized, they believe powerless. That powerless feeling could become maladaptive feelings of helplessness that turn into anxiety, depression and panic. Or we become angry to empower ourselves. In order to help, being proactive is adaptive; that is why there was such an outpouring of spontaneous offers of memorials, money and aid - the desire to do something on 9/11 resulted in lines around the block as people tried to donate their own blood.

America is comparatively late to the game in becoming accustomed to living with the cognitive dissonance of dialectical opposites: wanting ourselves to feel safe yet wanting our privacy and freedom to do whatever we want, once we want, and just how we wish. We cringe at encroachments or discussions on our independence: national identity cards, increased screenings at public venues of gathering, profiling - but, we should also feel less risky. Before, we fear totalitarianism but we are voting more monies to create more shades of "1984" than ever. We are comforted to see the new technologies of face recognition and infrared detection, to have a cooperative citizenry provide the video to help bring the progenitors of these heinous crimes to justice, but at the same time, we realize we are coming under video surveillance "for our own good" by third parties everywhere but in our own homes. As well as in our own Google, others and homes are mining Big Data for patterns of Internet use that reveal information about an individual user or families.

Obtaining the natural capacity or learning the relevant skills of perspective, understanding to utilize probability/possibility thinking and using reality (put simply, stating the positive then acknowledging the negative) to avoid catastrophizing all results in resilience and lessening the percentages of these acute stress reactions turning into PTSD.

Alan Manevitz, M.D. is really a Psychiatrist in Ny, where he keeps a private practice. Dr. Manevitz is really a clinical associate professor at Payne Whitney-Weill Cornell Medical Center, an attending psychiatrist at New York City Presbyterian and Lennox Hill Hospitals, and teaches at the Weill-Cornell Medical School.

Dr. Manevitz has been named amongst the Top Doctors in the usa by Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., New York Time’s Super Doctors, Ny Magazine’s Best Psychiatrists in New York City, and Best Doctors of America.

Psychiatrist New York