Soldier's Heart: The Misconceptions Of Mental Illness

Traumatic events are terrible things; many people who go through such harrowing times can find themselves forever altered from the experience. The impact of things such as car crashes, war, abuse and many other moments of intense trauma can cause people to unwind at the seams as their minds attempt to cope. One type of unraveling that can happen to these people is commonly referred to now as PTSD. Before known as ‘Soldier’s Heart’ during the civil war, then during World War one began to be referred to as ‘Shell shock syndrome’ or ‘Battle fatigue’ and afterwards finally gained its current name PTSD. These mental disorders would begin following these men as they returned from either the battlefields or the hospitals, the injuries following them …show more content…
This means that undiagnosed cases of mental disorders are quite common sadly; many people don’t even notice they have such issues in the first place because the social viewing of going to a psychologist isn’t overall very good. Much of this stems from the misconceptions of mental illnesses. Some people even believe that people with mental illnesses have no chance at living a normal life. Stigma itself is split into two different kinds. The first being public stigma, the reaction that is given by the general public for people with mental illnesses. The second being Self stigma, the reaction the people have for themselves learning that they have a mental illness. Usually neither of these are good reactions, as mental illness in itself can refer to a wide variety of problems. Many of them extremely harmful or disabling but even more of them are mostly benign and something people could cope …show more content…
To society PTSD and its stigma is bad and can lead to misrepresentation of the group of people as a whole but it doesn’t come close to how terrible the actual effects of PTSD are to the inflicted person. PTSD causes harsh reliving of terrifying memories which they hold no control over during dreams or when they’re awake. PTSD can lead to insomnia, violent bouts of anger or fear, alcoholism, marital troubles, overwhelming self shame and many other destructive habits which lead to a very unhealthy life. People with PTSD are said to be jumpy and scared, afraid of anything that reminds them of the event and can have many parts of their life inaccessible due to fear of being reminded of what happened. While it is treatable in a way there is no real cure for PTSD because it all is in the mind of the Inhabitants, scared of their own memories and unable to live with things they’d seen or done. This is if they can even get themselves to go to treatment or even realize they need it in the first place, referring to the earlier mentioned stigmata people who have PTSD can find their lives upturned with little to no support. People could avoid them altogether and many did when the Vietnam veterans returned, swept under the rug and out of sight, stigma is much more powerful than many people