Thread: PTSD - the words behind the diagnosis

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

I was at work one day( back a while now) when my mind decided it had had enough and sat me down.. I remember the ambulance ride( maybe just the noise bit) and when I came to a hospital bed and a pair of very concerned Wife eyes looking down. No tubes or staff so I thought I'd sit up- and blacked out again, next time I woke I had quite a few wires attached in all sorts of places, next time I tried to sit up my blood pressure went through the floor (again), which is exactly the opposite of whats supposed to happen. Apparently this is your mind saying No Way Jose....
6 hours later I managed to sit up.
The companies response to this was, naturally, see the company doctor, who naturally said deal with your work environment or quit. This after 5 years employment there.

After two weeks at home I had a call from one of the owners ( there were 4 brothers---) asking when I was going to quit so they could replace me...

Anxiety is quite the thing...

Hello Pedro,

Thank you very much for posting Pedro. Yes, sometimes our body as the last resort has to flick a switch that drops us on our arse. This is because our intellect has been governing our acceptance ... or denial of a situation and it has been overriding what our body is telling us. The intellect goes, 'Everything will be okay if I just do' ... 'This is only for a short period of time and things will get better when' ... Oh and purely and simply - some employers are just sheer arseholes who think employees burning out is just collateral damage to their making a profit.

Kind regards
Lionel

Hi Lionel. I would be interested in your thoughts re ADD, or ADHD as they insist on calling it now, and the PTSD hardwiring you speak of.

BTW, these threads of yours and others are why I was attempting a while back to get some sort of mental health sub forum started here.

G'day Tins,

I really do not wish to depress you... so you may choose to stop reading any further on...

There is the medical term called 'co-morbidity' which when translated to lay-person's terms means frequently associated with. Apparently in some circles this term is no longer politically correct. It needs to be whitewashed to appear more docile and with a nice sugar coating. Me - I still use co-morbid... Anyway, I digress

Autism has a string of co-morbid conditions; of which some of the more prominent are ADD and ADHD. Following not far behind would be: Bipolar, schizophrenia high rates of clinical depression, anxiety and a higher rate of suicidal ideation than any other form of disability.

It takes a very - very switched on clinician to be able to determine where Autism starts and finishes and when such things as adolescent or young adult Bipolar or schizophrenia are "triggered". Throw into pot how some of these previously mentioned things like depression and anxiety can form the possible hard-wiring of the brain for PTSD.

Oh, I forgot Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Sensory Processing Disorder ... issues with things like Nociception, Interception, Proprioception, Vestibular issues and interoception to name a few. The hint here is the 'ception' part of most of these words. It is a shortening of the root word of 'perception'. How we interpret our internal and external worlds. This perceived stimuli is then fed into the brain which may or may not interpret the data correctly that then causes some form of appropriate or perhaps inappropriate response.

My ignorant theory is that the issues of 'ception' due to the nature of Autism are the building blocks for triggering most if not all of the 'conditions' that formed the basis my previously provided ... and please take note ... incomplete list of co-morbid conditions linked to Autism.

Tins, please do not consider that I am being a Rick with a silent 'P' at the front. However, your question is similar to throwing a stone down a well and listening for the splash to work out how deep the surface of the water is from ground level. Hopefully I have not thrown you down there along with the stone. As technology and the medical and health sciences advance the distance between ground level and the distance down to the surface of the water in the well will only increase with Autism's amount of co-morbid conditions. As the same time the depth of water in the well will also increase. I hope you did not want me to make you feel better Tins as I have no doubt failed you miserably. On that cheery note - “I bid you adieu” . Nothing like ending a post on a high point - sorry, Tins!

Kind regards
Lionel

Originally Posted by Lionelgee

G'day Tins,

I really do not wish to depress you... so you may choose to stop reading any further on...

There is the medical term called 'co-morbidity' which when translated to lay-person's terms means frequently associated with. Apparently in some circles this term is no longer politically correct. It needs to be whitewashed to appear more docile and with a nice sugar coating. Me - I still use co-morbid... Anyway, I digress

Autism has a string of co-morbid conditions; of which some of the more prominent are ADD and ADHD. Following not far behind would be: Bipolar, schizophrenia high rates of clinical depression, anxiety and a higher rate of suicidal ideation than any other form of disability.

It takes a very - very switched on clinician to be able to determine where Autism starts and finishes and when such things as adolescent or young adult Bipolar or schizophrenia are "triggered". Throw into pot how some of these previously mentioned things like depression and anxiety can form the possible hard-wiring of the brain for PTSD.

Oh, I forgot Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Sensory Processing Disorder ... issues with things like Nociception, Interception, Proprioception, Vestibular issues and interoception to name a few. The hint here is the 'ception' part of most of these words. It is a shortening of the root word of 'perception'. How we interpret our internal and external worlds. This perceived stimuli is then fed into the brain which may or may not interpret the data correctly that then causes some form of appropriate or perhaps inappropriate response.

My ignorant theory is that the issues of 'ception' due to the nature of Autism are the building blocks for triggering most if not all of the 'conditions' that formed the basis my previously provided ... and please take note ... incomplete list of co-morbid conditions linked to Autism.

Tins, please do not consider that I am being a Rick with a silent 'P' at the front. However, your question is similar to throwing a stone down a well and listening for the splash to work out how deep the surface of the water is from ground level. Hopefully I have not thrown you down there along with the stone. As technology and the medical and health sciences advance the distance between ground level and the distance down to the surface of the water in the well will only increase with Autism's amount of co-morbid conditions. As the same time the depth of water in the well will also increase. I hope you did not want me to make you feel better Tins as I have no doubt failed you miserably. On that cheery note - “I bid you adieu” . Nothing like ending a post on a high point - sorry, Tins!

Kind regards
Lionel

No apologies necessary. I am already a long way down your metaphoric well, and have yet to splash!

My question was academic. I have a very good relationship with my psychologist for the "feel better" process.

Hello Tins and other readers,

You might be saying, 'but Lionel, I did not mention any association with Autism and ADD or ADHD. You have just like a broken record spun out your Autism stuff. Then jumped on your one size fits all Autism soapbox".

Please be very aware that I am extremely conscious of this. I attended a national health conference where there was a guest speaker who was then the current CEO of a mental health organisation - one that I will not name. As the CEO's talk progressed it soon became clear that every possible condition imaginable related directly back to the individual experiencing depression. It got to the extent and yes, this will be an extreme suggestion, - that if someone had an industrial accident that removed one of their arms and they walked into the person's office and stood bleeding all over the floor the organisation's CEO would have said 'that happened because you are depressed".

My background would be described as my being a Social Constructionism - Realist. My mob consider how an individual forms and interprets their sense of reality is built upon the use of language written, pictorial and spoken. Whether Social Constructionism Realism is a very precise form of linguistics is controversial. However, I am a language based interpreter. Therefore, I read the symptoms of say PTSD in military veterans, I then read the transcript of someone with Autism describing symptoms they experienced immediately prior to them going into meltdown. A little mental bell rings in my head and I dive for the scientific publication I just read about PTSD and I go to myself 'holy cow' this language describing symptoms between this article and the participant's transcript are describing the same thing. Off I go to search for other examples in literature or other participants to make sure that reading one article has not tinted my reading of a transcript. Not trusting that this possibility has not unconsciously occurred (tinted view = researcher bias), I have de-identified the sources or the individual's condition and sought out a psychologist and/or a psychiatrist and asked them to match the descriptions to a mental health condition they diagnose people with. On each occasion they have named 'PTSD'. If the description of a symptom matched something I later learnt from a peer-reviewed academic article identified as 'proprioception', I have done the same trial with an Occupational Therapist. None of my conclusions have been made without my verifying it with a professional from that field first. I also take my findings back to some of my participants and I ask them what they think.

Please also be aware that within academia I am regarded as a rogue element: During one supervisory visit I described to my principal supervisor - my later discontinued supervisor - how I had sought confirmation about my findings to professionals and the participants for their validation. Well light a match and put it on a fuse to keg of black powder. Kaboom went my supervisor. Why are you going out and testing the validity of your findings. As long as you justify your findings in your thesis to the examiners you do not have to validate it to other people. You are wasting your time!" Cease and desist, immediately I shot back... this must have been my practical Tradie side coming out.. I said, so you mean to say, I can sit on my arse in an academic ivory tower and spin a crock of bull... As long as I can academically justify my own self-generated findings - I am doing the correct academic procedure. By my going out into the community and asking the participants and professionals to validate the findings to see if they actually work in practice, I am doing the wrong thing." My then supervisor said yes that is correct you are not following academic procedure by asking your participants and professionals to validate that your findings actually work!. I had an early and extended lunch that day. Then after going back into the meeting without shooting myself in the foot I later took the long drive home considering whether I should continue with my studies. Therefore I am not your typical academic. Yes, this was another digression and a significant one. It does in some way relate to the following. Bare this in mind about my Tradie-based need to be practical and getting findings validated by the research participants and professionals...

So how does this relate back to my linking ADD and ADHD with Autism? I would suggest that if someone is diagnosed with either condition they should be tested for Autism. They may not meet all the criteria to receive a formal diagnosis however they would have significant amounts of Autistic traits. Now these traits might only come out when the person is in the middle of a stressful situation. On most occasions when someone undertakes an Autism diagnostic test it may be a long time after they experienced the stressful event. I wonder what response would be received if someone was brave enough to attempt to administer the Autism diagnostic test in the middle of a stressful event how the test results would come out? I write this with my Autism soapbox pushed out of reach behind me. I am also sure that the record is not scratched. I am writing that it should be something that should be considered over the individual's whole life and discussed with multiple family members who have know the individual for most of the person's life. By having a quick look at some of the Autism for want of a better term 'treatments' could be used to minimise aspects of ADD ADHD. It could be a case of when the chicken was lurking around and when the egg was found. Which came first is hidden and only the egg and the chicken are seen separately in the specific moment of time.

Bugger all of the above - everything can be attributed directly to Autism ma ha hawww (evil laugh)

Kind regards
Lionel