Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Can Be Contagious
PTSD sometimes spreads from trauma victims to the people who care for them, including rescue workers, spouses and even therapists
- When caregivers, rescue workers or family members attend to someone with post-traumatic stress disorder who has suffered a horrible experience, a number of them develop “secondary” PTSD, without themselves having witnessed the traumatic event.
- Stories of trauma, it seems, can become etched into memory as if they were the hearer’s own experiences. This memory transfer may occur because the brain regions that process real and imagined experiences overlap considerably.
- The more that caregivers or family members empathize with a victim and the less able they are to maintain emotional distance, the more likely it is that they will experience secondary trauma.
For years he was tortured by a horrifying image of 9/11: elevator doors at the World Trade Center slide open, and burning people stumble out; screams fill the area. Except, he was not at the World Trade Center that day. A clinical psychologist, he had treated several patients who were there and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result, unable to rid themselves of the terrifying memories. Over the course of long, tortured conversations, these memories etched themselves indelibly into his own mind. They intruded on everyday situations and turned up in nightmares. For the first time in his life he had panic attacks.
And he is by no means alone. In the past several years it has become evident that therapists, emergency personnel, the police and family members who deal with traumatized individuals can develop symptoms of PTSD secondhand. They endure what are called intrusions—images, flashbacks and nightmares that cause them to experience the horrible events over and over—even though the memories are not their own. Like people who have themselves been terrorized, they live in a state of stress-induced hyperarousal, with an overly active fight-or-flight response. They may suffer from sleep disorders and feel utterly hopeless./.../
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