Behind every person in the world lies a different story. There can be great
things that happen in these individuals’ lifetimes, but there can also be
traumatic things that people go through as well. As those people move on with
their life after the experience, the physical pain may leave but the memory of
what happened never dies. Since everyone is different, the way they choose to
go about their life may be different from someone else. Some people may always
be paranoid from their traumatic experience and others could try and forget
about it and just go about their life day by day. So my question is, what does
literature say about adults who have gone through a childhood trauma?
There is more about the effects of a traumatic experience than most people
realize. The victims of an experience can go through a series of different
consequences or even none at all. The consequences can range from certain
disorders to emotionally scarring. The people who have gone through a traumatic
experience are all different as are there experiences so what comes next is
determined by how traumatized they were from their personal experience.
In some cases, individuals who have been affected by a traumatic experience can
eventually start to show symptoms of having a personality disorder. In cases of
personality disorders, latent variables can include factors ranging from
genetic vulnerability to coexisting environmental risks. Latent variables are
how someone starts acting after a trauma; it is not something you can see, you
notice it rather. But, you can not always conclude someone to having a
personality disorder. Personality disorders come from experiencing many traumas
from childhood to adulthood (Paris, Joel).
Every once in a while a news report or maybe in a local news paper has a topic
of a child going through some type of traumatic experience. As awful as it
seems, children are more vulnerable than adults, so the more severe the
psychopathology, the earlier in life is its origin (Paris, Joel). As that child
grows up, if they ever went through another or more traumatic experiences, it
could damage them mentally, and hurt them for when they reach adulthood. If
that actually happens, the child could very likely eventually get a personality
disorder. No matter what the age of the trauma that the child experiences, it
affects them the same way it would if they were older. Age is not a factor in
disorders in individuals who have gone through a traumatic experience; it is if
the trauma repeats itself later in that person’s life. So, the more traumatic
and negative experiences in a child’s lifetime (or even an adult’s), the
greater the outcome of negative consequences.
When children grow up to be adults, the probability of them to receive a
personality disorder or anything along the lines of something permanent to
happen to them actually decreases. It is said that in general, only about 25%
of children exposed to severe trauma develop demonstrable psychopathology as
adults. Of course, 25% is still a large probability but at least it is not
certain in adults who have went through any traumatic experiences. Only one
fifth of adults with histories of childhood sexual or physical abuse, however,
develop demonstrable psychopathology. Again, not a high probability but there
still is a good chance of an adult who when through a childhood trauma to
develop a demonstrable psychopathology.
There may be low probabilities of personality disorders but that does not mean
that the individual is immune to getting other disabilities. These traumas that
these victim’s had faced left them with various feelings and emotions and if
those happen continuously, it could damage the victim mentally. That being
said, if you have high levels of stress, fear, and arousal, they can commonly
induce learning deficits and memory loss (Joseph, Rhawn). What most
people do not know is that these are not uncommon when someone goes through a
traumatic experience. In fact, amnesia or partial memory loss is not uncommon
following severe stress and emotional trauma. Even high publicized national
traumas may induce significant forgetting. Memory loss is a consequence of
stress – induced disturbances involving the hippo campus, a structure which
normally plays an important role in the storage of various events in long –
term memory (Joseph, Rhawn).
When someone goes through a traumatic experience, to help cope with what
happened, they seek a therapist. The patients present for therapy with a wide
range of symptomotology include anxiety disorders, self – mutilation and
suicidal behavior, sexualized behavior in children, sexual dysfunction in
adults, substance abuse, complex post – traumatic stress disorder, and
dissociative disorders (Brown, Angela and David Finkelhor).
In my research of how adults dealt with a childhood trauma, it was stated that
it was how the victim reacts to the trauma that they went through. If their
trauma was reoccurring as the got older, the consequences would be much higher
rather than if the victim only went through and experience once. But, what I
did not find out was the immediate effects of someone who went through a
traumatic experience.
Methodology;
In this portion of my literature review, I decided to ask 10 of my
teammates about what they think the emotional immediate reactions would be for
someone who had gone through some type of trauma (an example that could be an
immediate reaction of a trauma could be PTSD). I did not want to go and ask
different people if they had gone through a trauma because I did not want to
bring up unpleasant memories that the potential victims had been trying
desperately to get rid of.
Research methods;
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Data collection process / Who I asked
To go about my research, I asked some of my
friends from my soccer team about my question. I decided to ask them because
they are from different towns and do not go to Norton so I wanted to know their
opinion on my topic.
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Data Analysis
From asking my friends on my team I collected my data. Seven out of the
ten people I asked (70%) predicted that the victim would get PTSD, two other
people (20%) predicted that the victim would get sleep loss, and one person
(10%) predicted that nothing drastic would happen until they gradually got
older.
From the
findings I found, I concluded that it can be possible to be effected by more
than one effect from a trauma. With both answers my teammates said, I think
someone who went through a traumatic experience could get both PTSD and sleep
loss and probably more than those two effects as well.
All in all,
literature has given many facts about what is says about adults who went
through a traumatic experience as a child. It gave me more knowledge about what
could happen after a trauma; such as it could lead to memory loss or
demonstrable psychopathology as an adult. In the seriousness of the trauma and how
traumatized the victim was from their experience are also key factors for the
consequences of the trauma. Luckily, there are trauma centers that doctors
prescribe people to go to which have been proven to lower mortality and
significantly decrease morbidity rates for patients that have gone through any
sort of trauma (SMITH, J. STANLEY). Traumatization is not to be taken
lightly and the victims of it can get serious disabilities or be diagnosed with
illness(es).
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Work Cited
Finkelhor, David, and Angela Browne. "The
traumatic impact of child sexual abuse: A conceptualization." American
Journal of orthopsychiatry 55.4 (1985): 530.
Hartman, Geoffrey H. "On traumatic knowledge and
literary studies." New Literary History 26.3 (1995): 537-563.
Joseph, Rhawn. "The neurology of traumatic
“dissociative” amnesia: Commentary and literature review." Child Abuse
Negl 23 (1999): 715-727.
Paris, Joel. "Does childhood trauma cause personality
disorders in adults?."Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 43.2 (1998): 148-153.
