AN ALPHABET OF STRESS.

• Author: Butner, Michael R.
• Position: PSYCHOLOGY - Post-traumatic stress disorder - Essay

WE LIVE IN AN AGE of acronyms. If something can be named by a series of letters, we own it. Everyone knows immediately what "BFF," "TMI," and "LOL" mean. This labeling process is not a new phenomenon. When I was younger, knocking around with military types, the terms "PDQ," "SNAFU," and "FUBAR" were equally well understood. Now, as then, giving an emotion, a situation, or a condition a shorthand title is an easy way to discuss and deal with something that otherwise might require whole pages to explain. It is called "information compression."

This same practice applies to nearly all things medical. Whether practitioner or patient, everyone recognizes such terms as "AIDS," "CHF," "STD," or "MS." So, while each subject, be it congestive heart failure or multiple sclerosis, has been the sole subject of many professional textbooks, the simple letters at least get everyone onto the same first page.

The problem is, however, sometimes all of this compressed information either can be really confusing or just plain untrue--and that brings us to the subject of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, a current-day watchword that is a prime example of labeling gone wrong.

PTSD is not a new subject. The acronym simply describes a recognized group of symptoms that follows a traumatic experience. In my grandfather's day, these symptoms were called "shell shock." In my father's day, these same symptoms were called "combat fatigue." PTSD is just today's descriptor that sums up the sudden experience of hyper-awareness and - anxiety; feelings of isolation and threat; panic; flashbacks; nightmares; false sensations of visions, hearing, taste, or smell that follow a trigger stimulus, which instantly returns a victim back to an earlier time and place of great peril.

Growing up in a military family with men who had suffered in the trenches of the Western Front, bled in the waters of the Pacific, and watched their comrades freeze and die in Korea, I realized early on that not everything in life was going to be great.

What took me a little longer to understand was that all of us, combatant or not, are almost certain to experience in our lives variations of the same kinds of trauma that we usually associate with a battle-scarred veteran. Just as we all one day will die, we all will experience traumas in our lives that forcibly will take from us someone or something that we hold precious. Children watching their parents divorce; parents witnessing their children suffer; couples losing their mates--all are involuntary victims of loss. So are the victims of natural disaster or any kind of assault.

The common thread is that their sense of innocence or security...