Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Journal of Politics and Law

This paper will discuss the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in legal cases based on the historical development of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM). Further the discussion will draw on the diagnostic relationship between the DSM and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). It is important to understand how the courts received evidence in relation to a person’s traumatic experience and to define the limits of liability for psychiatric illness cases. In tort law, the courts had been cautious to permit recovery to underserving litigants. Interpreting traumatic experiences from psychiatry to law, at times, do not succeed in a claim for compensation. Belanger-Hardy opined ‘Tort Law has always viewed mental harm with caution, not to say scepticism’. Historically, compensation for PTSD claims have always been awarded on ad hoc basis in tort law for fear of opening the floodgates. In Saadati v Moorhead , Brown J acknowledged the ...

Psychiatric Services, 2007

BOOK REVIEWS W illiam O'Donohue and Eric Levensky remind us in Promoting Treatment Adherence that between 20 and 80 percent of our patients do not complete or continue the treatments we prescribe for them. Reasons for poor adherence can be astounding: one reason cited by the authors is "patients and clinicians often disagree whether a medication has been prescribed.

The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 1999

Psychological trauma heightens and rigidifies the penchant of humans for dichotomizing others into allies and enemies. With today's "adult delayed recall" controversy a case in point, traumatized individuals tend to unite into tightly knit in-groups that resemble cults and to denigrate others as enemies. This process creates new enmities where objective interests otherwise clash only minimally. The trauma response is reinforced by the neurobiology of avoidance and reenactment. Among all protagonists, polarized beliefs are mutually shaped by suggestive interactions that resemble hypnosis. The end result is to reenact and perpetuate the trauma response on a large scale. In the contemporary milieu, this process presents a formidable obstacle to cooperative problem solving. Discussion focuses on strategies by which clinical and forensic psychiatrists can help to master this obstacle. These strategies include balancing interests, extending the role of informed consent, and ...

Psychiatry, 2006

During the 1970s a paradigm shift occurred in the way that psychological trauma was conceived and managed. Until then, it was argued that individuals without a family history of mental illness or other evidence of predisposition, if exposed to a traumatic event, might develop acute psychological distress, but would then go on to recover naturally with no long-term effects, rather like a self-healing wound. The discovery of a so-called 'delayed stress syndrome' during the Vietnam War seemed to show that healthy soldiers subjected to stress could suffer chronic, adverse effects that were not apparent at the time of their exposure. The terrifying event, until then regarded merely as a trigger, assumed a crucial importance in the genesis and description of psychiatric breakdown. This new concept of psychological trauma also saw the retreat into obscurity of 'secondary gain', the attention and rewards that a patient received as a consequence of suffering from a recognized disorder. Before the 1970s anyone who broke down and suffered long-term effects was considered constitutionally vulnerable or the product of a degenerate family; in either case, responsibility lay with the individual. Not everything, however, was attributed to pre-exposure predisposition-since it was also considered that 'secondary gain', which was often but not exclusively financial, could inhibit the process of recovery. After the admission of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to DSM-III in 1980, 1 causation was attached to the event itself and individual sufferers were largely absolved from blame or responsibility. The

Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2007

The inclusion of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in DSM-III in 1980 represented a paradigm shift in the conceptualisation of post-trauma illness. Hitherto, a normal psychological reaction to a terrifying event was considered short-term and reversible. Long-term effects, characterized as ''traumatic neurosis'', were regarded as abnormal. Enduring symptoms were explained in terms of hereditary predisposition, early maladaptive experiences or a pre-existing psychiatric disorder. The event served merely as a trigger to something that existed or was waiting to emerge. Secondary gain, the benefits often but not solely financial that a person derived as a result of being ill, was considered the principal cause of any observed failure to recover. The recognition of PTSD reflected a diversion from the role of the group, in particular the ''herd instinct'', towards a greater appreciation of the individual's experience. From being the responsibility of the subject, traumatic illness became an external imposition and possibly a universal response to a terrifying and unexpected event. This shift from predisposition to the characteristics of the event itself reduced guilt and blame, while the undermining of secondary gain made it easier to award financial compensation. #

Handbook on the Politics of Memory, 2023

1997

2011

Acknowledgements This handbook represents the culmination of a three-year project. We wish to thank all those who contributed to it. We owe a debt of gratitude to the women whom we interviewed and who shared their experiences with us so openly. They taught us much about the gaps in representation and services that they and many others face across the country, and affirmed our belief that this is an area in need of improvement. Their stories shaped the direction of this project and guided the writing of this handbook. We offer a special acknowledgement to our esteemed colleagues who generously and kindly offered their time and expertise to review draft outlines and offer comments, suggestions, and insights: We also wish to thank Lydia Watts of Greater Good Consulting for her excellent meeting facilitation. We are particularly grateful to Carole Warshaw, MD, for her ongoing support for this project and for her vision that serves as the foundation of the National Center. Finally, we wo...

This is a collection of the first 29 pages of the book of the same title, plus the front matter: Foreword, Editor Introduction, and Chapter 1: Theory-Driven and Research-Informed Brief Treatments.

Law and Literature

In this article, the anatomy of psycho-trauma (psychological trauma) is expounded in three interconnected stages – Pain, Illness and Recovery.The latter is presented within the framework of Cognitive Conceptual Therapy. Mental or psychic pain that a person can feel their lifetime and which is commonly called “psycho-trauma”, has quite a complicated nature. The real psycho-trauma only develops when the occurred conceptual dissonance becomes conscious and acknowledged by the person: this is when the person really is traumatized. For the "recovery" of the person it is necessary to integrate the traumatic experience into their general experience: the person’s conceptual system. CITATION: Begoyan, A.N. An Anatomy of Psycho-trauma: Pain, Illness and Recovery. International Journal of Psychotherapy: 2014, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 41-51.

Torture Journal, 2021

Last paper by June with an introduction by the Editor in Chief

American Journal of Psychiatry, 2002

The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 2019

By John E. B. Myers. New York: The Guilford Press, 2017. 300 pp. $40.00 John E. B. Myers has a national reputation as an expert in interpersonal violence. As a practicing attorney and law professor, he has focused much of his career on advocacy for abused and neglected children and persons involved