The world is at war. Pockets of civil unrest from Syria to Afghanistan put soldiers and civilians in harm’s way. And for those who live through the trauma, many now battle with post-traumatic stress disorder, in which their past remains, in many ways, a part of the present.
“Normally you have a sense that you have a future in front of you,” says Dr. Barbara Lopes Cardozo, a psychiatrist and medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But for those withPTSD, she says, it’s almost like a person is mentally stuck at a point in time. “It’s as if the memory is still current … it’s like it’s not in the past, [and through] flashbacks they’re reliving that memory as if it’s in the present time. So they don’t really move forward. There’s no future.”
Lopes Cardozo’s work is focused on mental health in “emergency settings” overseas – in conflict and war zones and areas where disasters have taken place. She’s visited Syrian refugee camps in the north of Jordan. “For the Syrian refugees, there’s been a huge amount of violence. They’ve had to flee from bombings to leave everything behind quickly – their life was threatened – all those things make them at risk for PTSD,” she says.
[For more of this story, written by Michael O. Schroeder, go to http://health.usnews.com/healt...d-at-home-and-abroad]
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