August 19th, 2010
I’m not the neatest person. My love of learning leads me to hang on to more printed material than I have time to read. This causes clutter. Every so often I clean up the piles and yesterday was such a time. I came across an email from last year that, unusually, I had printed.
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Tags: Stress History
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August 16th, 2010
Continuing the review from the last post of research from Melbourne, Australia on psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), we have seen that there was no assessment of childhood stress in their subjects (1). This glaring omission meant that the opportunity to therapeutically address these issues in their patients was lost. Consequently it is not surprising that the outcome in their subjects was poor. In the 28% of their patients who returned a follow-up questionnaire (averaging four years later): Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: childhood stress, seizures
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August 15th, 2010
Continuing the review of the research from Melbourne in the last post (1), the huge flaw is that the paper fails to report on childhood stress experience in patients with PNES (psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, which is a form of stress illness in many cases). Just how big a flaw is made clear in a paragraph from Dr Anna Luise Kirkengen’s latest book The Lived Experience of Violation: How Abused Children Become Unhealthy Adults (Zeta Books, 2010):
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Tags: childhood stress, seizures
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August 12th, 2010
One of the best recent research articles on a form of stress illness (1) has a huge flaw. The study was done over ten years at the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia. They evaluate people who have seizures that are difficult for their regular doctors to manage. Among many other tests, patients have simultaneous video monitoring and EEG (brain wave) for five full days around the clock. This test identified 221 adult patients who outwardly appeared to be having seizures but the EEG showed they were not true epilepsy. These are called psychogenic (meaning “caused by a psychological process”) non-epileptic seizures (PNES). In the few patients I have seen who had these they were a form of stress illness. The patients are not deliberately pretending or faking, they are reacting to overwhelming life stresses.
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Tags: childhood stress, seizures
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August 6th, 2010
I have interviewed thousands of adults about the long-term effects of sexual abuse when they were children but few stories have shocked me as much as one I heard recently from a colleague in another city. The patient was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s Disease and had not spoken for over two years. She had lost control of her bladder and wore a diaper that her daughter, with whom she lived, changed regularly. During a hospital stay, a male nurse changed her diaper and as he began she suddenly said, “No, Daddy, please don’t.”
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Tags: childhood stress, sexual abuse
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July 9th, 2010
…continued from previous post.
There are so many lessons from the story of Patrolman Evans. I think about the many individuals who are first on the scene at traumatic events who have suffered in this way. Only recently has there been some official recognition of these burdens and some change in workplace cultures that previously neglected the need for support and treatment.
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Tags: PTSD
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July 8th, 2010
…continued from previous post.
Many years later, Homer Evans had this to say: “Still today the vision of that little boy haunts me. During my time in law enforcement I saw a lot of people die but that one incident made such a lasting impression on me. For years I had bad dreams recalling that little boy. I would wake from the dreams sobbing and in a cold sweat. I had mood swings that made it difficult for my wife and me. I tried for years to suppress the event in my work with the public, which meant the only place it could come out was at home. I thank God she stuck with me during those years. In those days there was no counseling available. You dealt with your problems. There would have been a stigma if anyone found out you were having issues.”
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Tags: PTSD
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July 6th, 2010
…continued from the previous post.
Evans arrived just after two other officers. As they approached the duplex, Violet burst out of the front door, holding her son. She screamed “take him” as she thrust the boy into Evans’ arms and then said “I shot the little bastard.”
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Tags: PTSD
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July 5th, 2010
When people learn what I do, it is not unusual for them to share a story from their past or present. Patrolman Homer Evans (not his real name) agreed to share the story below in the hope that it might benefit others.
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Tags: PTSD
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July 1st, 2010
One of the most frequent requests I receive is for a way to screen for the presence of hidden stresses. Most of those who inquire are interested in administering a questionnaire to patients/clients as they wait to see their clinician. No suitably brief, scientifically validated questionnaire exists that covers the full range of hidden stresses but I have created a reasonable question set and added it to the Book Overview section of this site.
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Tags: Kroenke, screening, Stress History
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