Logotherapy in Military PTSD Treatment
Document Type:Research Paper
Subject Area:Psychology
It affects the brains and goes deep into the thought of a person sometimes characterized by depression and awful imaginations. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a condition that is known to come from a condition that is considered very stressful (Nievergelt, Maihofer, Dalvie, Duncan, Ratanatharathorn, Ressler & Workgroup, 2018). A person must have been involved in a situation that they cannot seem to forget. Sometimes, mental pictures tend to flash in the minds of such victims and they fight its way too hard to handle their situations. What this means and results to is the loss of straight thinking. Logotherapy is best used especially for this group of people. Sometimes, post-traumatic stress is referred to as moral injury because a person loses their ability to behave in extreme situations (Lantz, 2014). Cases have been witnessed where soldiers experience a lot of anger issues to an extent that they cannot deal with them because of the mental pictures or images that keep on flashing across their minds.
Such thoughts are not very easy to deal with. A post-traumatic stress disorder is a scientific problem and only scientific ways can be used to deal with it (Lehrner, Yehuda, 2014). However, it is impossible to escape death because, at the end of the day, every person has to die but before it happens, a person has to find their purpose and live a life that is fulfilling. As far as it is concerned with the treating of post-traumatic stress, it is possible that logotherapy helps the soldiers to redefine and find their real purposes unlike after they are done with the service (Chevalier & Richards, 2017). The service itself is a dedication and a purpose in life. during their training, they are made to understand that their main purpose in life is to serve their country.
When on duty, what they fear most can as well happen. Some people may isolate themselves in an attempt to find their purpose in life. while this may work for a very normal person, it cannot work for a person who is suffering from trauma because every time they feel isolated, they are traumatized (Steenkamp, Litz, Hoge & Marmar, 2015). This is why it is important that ex-servicemen and women should be kept busy even after the service. At the same time, every human being wants to experience some sort of freedom. The service men and women do not have as much freedom as the civilians because, for them, there is a way in which they are expected to carry themselves (Southwick & Gilmartin, 2014). Logotherapy is also based on the belief that people can readjust their attitudes and turn their adversity straight into opportunities.
This is a very important principle because it is the manner in which soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress are helped. Trauma is an adversity and may slow a person down (Foa, McLean, Zang, Rosenfield, Yadin, Yarvis & Fina, 2018). It hinders these soldiers from finding their purposes in life because at one point, a person is doing very well then within no time, they are suffering a great depression out of their past experiences especially in wars. Logotherapy is used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers by helping them see a bigger picture out of their suffering situation. When this happens, they tend not to forgive themselves (Schnurr, Spiro III & Paris, 2016). This means that the guilt they feel cannot be removed or erased from their heads. Guilt is a sure way of suffering and this is why most military men and women suffer a lot from the activities that they witness.
An example of things that may happen that the human brain may not forget easily is a scene where very many people have been killed all at once. The most common cause of guilt that some soldiers witnessed their colleagues die at war without helping them when they feel that they would have done something to help them. This is normal because the veterans go through also during their training and the periods in which they are deployed to perform. The environments they are used to are just too hostile and this affects their thinking. Whenever they go into a state of depression, close friends and family have disclosed that the veterans tend to forget that they have people depending on them. they are more inclined to what is happening to them (Owens, Steger, Whitesell & Herrera, 2015).
Logotherapy at this point does not make them do the things that they fear doing because most of them fear to do awful things such as committing suicide. Veterans have always reported cases whereby they cannot sleep peacefully because they feel disturbed every time they have to lay down and sleep ("NIMH » Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder", 2018). This is as a result of the attacks faced during wars. Such attacks are known to be done mostly during the nights. Logotherapy challenges the veterans to go to sleep without having to be made to take sleep-inducing drugs (Fabry, 2014). Every time they sleep and wake up safe, their anxiety tends to reduce hence they recovery process begins. Facing their problems helps them to appreciate that they are suffering and they need to be helped to come out of their conditions and recover on their own but with little help.
This method has been used and proven to be very effective because logotherapy tends to allow veterans to create opportunities out of their sufferings. The more a post-traumatic stress disorder patient thinks about themselves and their condition, a form of depression immediately takes over (Guttmann, 2016). This is a good thing because the patient will not want to feel that way ("Logotherapy | psychology", 2018). This means that the veteran, in this case, will do everything to ensure that he or she stop feeling the way they do. It is possible that measuring the effectiveness of the process is a problem mainly because it has different effects on clients. It could also be that people respond differently to the medication they are given. Because if these factors, there is no way anyone can measure the effectiveness of the treatment process.
Conclusion In conclusion, many veterans have been helped through the process and they recover from their post-traumatic stress disorder. Those who cannot recover completely are usually well trained on how to manage their conditions whenever they feel depressed and this has helped every many veterans manage their lives (Yalom, 2015). de los Angeles, C. Abu-Amara, D. Li, M. Qian, M. Marmar, C. A. STAIR for strengthening social support and relationships among veterans with military sexual trauma and PTSD. Military medicine, 181(2), e183-e187. Dave, V. E. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Foa, E. B. McLean, C. P. E. The will to meaning: Foundations and applications of logotherapy. Penguin. Frankl, V. E. Springer Publishing Co. Jacobsen, B. The life crisis in an existential perspective: Can trauma and crisis by seen as an aid in personal development?, Existential Analysis, 17(1) 39-53.
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