Is PTSD Contagious?

[polly7]

It's rampant among returning vets—and now their spouses and kids are starting to show the same symptoms.

—By Mac McClelland | January/February 2013 Issue

BRANNAN VINES HAS NEVER BEEN to war. But she's got a warrior's skills: hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers. Super stimuli-sensitive. Skills on the battlefield, crazy-person behavior in a drug store, where she was recently standing behind a sweet old lady counting out change when she suddenly became so furious her ears literally started ringing. Being too cognizant of every sound—every coin dropping an echo—she explodes inwardly, fury flash-incinerating any normal tolerance for a fellow patron with a couple of dollars in quarters and dimes. Her nose starts running she's so pissed, and there she is standing in a CVS, snotty and deaf with rage, like some kind of maniac, because a tiny elderly woman needs an extra minute to pay for her dish soap or whatever.

Brannan Vines has never been to war, but her husband, Caleb, was sent to Iraq twice, where he served in the infantry as a designated marksman. He's one of 103,200, or 228,875, or 336,000 Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and came back with PTSD, depending on whom you ask, and one of 115,000 to 456,000 with traumatic brain injury. It's hard to say, with the lack of definitive tests for the former, undertesting for the latter, underreporting, under or over-misdiagnosing of both. And as slippery as all that is, even less understood is the collateral damage, to families, to schools, to society—emotional and fiscal costs borne long after the war is over.

Like Brannan's symptoms. Hypervigilance sounds innocuous, but it is in fact exhaustingly distressing, a conditioned response to life-threatening situations. Imagine there's a murderer in your house. And it is dark outside, and the electricity is out. Imagine your nervous system spiking, readying you as you feel your way along the walls, the sensitivity of your hearing, the tautness in your muscles, the alertness shooting around inside your skull. And then imagine feeling like that all the time.

Caleb has been home since 2006, way more than enough time for Brannan to catch his symptoms. The house, in a subdivision a little removed from one of many shopping centers in a small town in the southwest corner of Alabama, is often quiet as a morgue. You can hear the cat padding around. The air conditioner whooshes, a clock ticks. When a sound erupts—Caleb screaming at Brannan because she's just woken him up from a nightmare, after making sure she's at least an arm's length away in case he wakes up swinging—the ensuing silence seems even denser. Even when everyone's in the family room watching TV, it's only connected to Netflix and not to cable, since news is often a trigger. Brannan and Caleb can be tense with their own agitation, and tense about each other's. Their German shepherd, a service dog trained to help veterans with PTSD, is ready to alert Caleb to triggers by barking, or to calm him by jumping onto his chest. This PTSD picture is worse than some, but much better, Brannan knows, than those that have devolved into drug addiction and rehab stints and relapses. She has not, unlike military wives she advises, ever been beat up. Nor jumped out of her own bed when she got touched in the middle of the night for fear of being raped, again. Still.

Full article: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/ptsd-epidemic-military-vets-families

[TexasTowelie]

1. It could be.

I'm in a situation where I'm suffering from verbal and an occasional spat of physical abuse from someone who served in the first Persian Gulf War. I'm stressed out trying to change things to get away from the problem.

[polly7]

3. I'm so sorry to hear that,

I hope you can get the help you need to protect yourself and be safe??

I've had PTSD from abuse and stalking for a long time. I can't see how anyone living with me for long could escape being affected by it, at least a bit. I have no idea how bad it can be for someone returning from war, but can only imagine it's a hundred times worse, and pretty scary to live with.

[southernyankeebelle]

2. I remember my dad always sleeping with a baseball bat at the side of his bed.

I also remembered when you woke him up you always go to the foot of his bed and call out his name. Sometimes you had to gently wiggle his toes and he still jumped. That was the only effect I could remember from my father's experience of being in war. I thank god he didn't go through what some of these guys go threw.

[polly7]

4. Aw, your poor dad:( I'm glad it wasn't any worse for him, or you. nt.

[southernyankeebelle]

8. Sometimes I wonder. He didn't have a long life. He died at 50. He bleed to death. However,

they had him in the VA hospital because he was really sick with high fevor. He had malaria when he was in the African campaign during WWII. His fevors would get so high they thought he would die. They couldn't figure it out. They even had him before a medical board at John Hopkins and still nothing. Finally one night he bleed and they couldn't stop it. He was delirious. Now that was so unexpected. No one thought he would die. I think his body just gave out. He left us to early. But it is what it is. Life has to go on. It took 3 yrs before I could even speak about my dad without crying. You get over it but you never forget. I pray when its my time to go I will get to see him and my mom. The old saying when you laugh the world laughs with you. When you cry you cry alone. It is so true.

[zazen]

5. a lot of BPD is actually Complex PTSD

and I think without any type of recovery, it reproduces itself from generation to generation. A hypervigilent, paranoid, highly reactive parent who sees everything in black and white because s/he learned that growing up (from a parent with complex ptsd and/or any kind of abusive behavior) will either model that and/or act it out on a child, who then grows up with the symptoms and perpetuates it. That used to be called "borderline personality disorder," which blamed it on the sufferer, of course, rather than tracing it to its etiology, which is typically in abuse.

I think a lot of language about "the disease of alcoholism" in families is really about this, as well as how battering reproduces itself.

I'm defining complex ptsd as the ongoing relational trauma of being dependent on someone who abuses you on a regular basis.

It's different than war time ptsd, but traumatic just the same.

[Phlem]

6. I have PTSD from my stepfather

Last edited Sun Jan 20, 2013, 05:00 PM - Edit history (1)

I saw no field duty and worked on airplanes. He was an alcoholic and just a fucking big dick with the verbal and physical abuse. And, I'm pretty sure if he had PTSD it was before he entered the military. He just fucking hated me for whatever reason. The day that I crossed over was when I had to beat the piss out of him @ 16 just to protect myself. Does anyone beat the piss out of a parent @ 16? Yes hyper vigilance is exhausting but my psychiatrist says it's a gift because I can see things happening before they happen. I'm not so sure that's a gift.

Usually someone who has PTSD passes it along to another family member by their behavior and treatment of others in that family.

My girl will never have PTSD from me, ever.

-p

[Mrs. Overall]

7. The new field of Epigenetics is now discovering we inherit our ancestors' trauma on certain levels--

It is really a fascinating field, so I think if we can inherit the trauma of our great great grandparents going through a famine, then certainly we can "catch" or absorb the trauma of those we are living with or have a close relationship to. There are stories of children who were born to mothers who had been traumatized by the Holocaust, but who were adopted into non-Jewish families as newborns. As these children grew up, they exhibited post traumatic stress signs and had elevated hormonal responses consistent with trauma. They somehow "inherited" it.

This is a great documentary on Epigenetics: The Ghost in our Genes (http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-ghost-in-our-genes/)

[riverwalker]

9. wow thank you

I never heard of this, have always wondered. My Dad was a POW in WW2 and my mom lived in occupied Norway and was terrorized by German troops. My siblings and I have had "issues".