The Link Between PTSD and DID
© Pamela Perez
On May 8, 1991 a group of incest survivors gathered with their families, therapists, and one reporter in a small auditorium on a Colorado University campus to discuss the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect. Attending that meeting was a surprise speaker by the name of Marilyn Van Derbur Atler, Miss America of 1958. She shocked her audience with a statement that exposed the sexual violation she had endured at the hands of her father which began at the time she was five years old and continued until she was finally old enough to leave home for college. Dr. Lenore Terr (1994) commented in her book as she recounted this story that "The part of the story that held the most interest... was Marilyn's statement that she had remembered nothing about her sexual ordeals until she was twenty-four years old" (p. 123). This is an example of someone who had suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is an acquired (reactive) disorder that results from exposure to extreme trauma, "an event outside normal human experience" that leaves the one experiencing it feeling powerless, helpless, paralyzed, and yet forced to focus consciousness in attempts to cope. PTSD was officially recognized as a psychological disorder in 1980 when a great number of war veterans were displaying the after-affects of their wartime experiences. It was once thought that when a conflict ended and danger was past that the symptoms of having been involved in an extreme or life-threatening trauma would naturally abate with the passing of time. In recent years, however, the medical and psychological communities have begun to realize that the psychological and emotional damage these experiences can cause do not heal so naturally as was earlier assumed or hoped.
War veterans were not the only ones exhibiting the signs of PTSD. Many survivors of other types of traumas or terrifying ordeals, such as victims of rape, violent assaults, childhood abuse, and/or those who had witnessed any event where an experience of terror or threat (or perceived threat) to "life or limb," also displayed the same kinds of symptoms. Recent studies have revealed that one group, in particular, has been shown to be at extreme risk for developing this condition: Victims of childhood sexual abuse face the greatest risk of developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Individuals who have been abused as children, especially when the nature of the abuse is sexual and/or physical in nature, are highly prone to a chronic form of this disorder. Studies of abused children support this, particularly in cases where the abuse is physical and/or sexual (Widom, p. 1223-1229, 1999). Many people still only equate combat trauma, once called shell shock or battle fatigue, with PTSD but some experiences such as rape and repeated or severe abuse are even more likely to produce symptoms of post traumatic stress in individuals (Sidran Foundation, p. 1-3, 2001). According to the Associate Professor of the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California, Ferol Mennen, "Child abuse has increasingly been recognized as a serious life trauma and a potential trigger for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and PTSD like symptoms" (In Press).
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