Trauma victims and their reactions
Trauma victims react differently to their circumstances. The manner in which an individual deals is determined by the future occurrences in their lives. The best case scenario for a person willing to deal with the circumstance is one who wishes to try to acquire the proper aid that may help them deal with the matter faster. Yet, research show that having a traumatic historical event increases the likelihood of suffering from horrible disorders like chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder. On the contrary, research indicates that moderate stress levels may be good to humans (Cremeans-Smith, Greene, & Delahanty, 2015). The objective of this article is to investigate whether the prior historical experiences may serve as a resilience factor or rather as a risk for patients recovering from surgeries involving total knee replacement surgeries (TKR). The research bases its focus on the emotional and physical outcomes of the historical event and the current perception they hold towards their surgeries and recovery progress.
Connection between PTSD and past experiences
There is a close connection between an individual’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and their lifetime past. Exposure to dire traumatic events may most likely make one vulnerable to PTSD. The connection is because the painful, traumatic experiences they went through in the past may always be at the back of their heads, and hence, it worsens their PTSD conditions (Cremeans-Smith et al., 2015). A case scenario is a road carnage, in which the person was involved in during the past years in their lives; their minds apparently tend to recall such events, making them always to feel insecure that the tragic occurrence may take place again. Also, there may be the instance, where a person was involved in a sexual abuse scenario. Such individuals find it hard to be happy in either their relationships or marriages, because every time they think of having intercourse with their partners, they envision them as being their past offenders.
Traumatic experiences of soldiers and knee arthroplasty infections
However, research shows that a huge percentage of the people, who often find themselves having PTSD issues, are soldiers, who have been to combats. Soldiers get exposed to situations that are inhumane and which they have no choice, but to obey orders. The latter is independent of whether it’s in line or against the principles they believe and stand for in their lives. Such circumstances do come back to haunt them, making them lack sleep. Such traumatic experiences are quite painful, since the images of the events have a playback in mind and keep replaying themselves in their minds (Cremeans-Smith et al., 2015). This study narrows down to the victims of knee arthroplasty infections, which, in turn, result into the replacement of their knees. The ability of such people to walk again depends on their mental and physical recovery from previous events that led to their conditions.
The connection between index events and prior traumatic experiences
There is a major controversy over whether the index events that confer vulnerability may be similar to prior traumatic experiences. The article gives the finding that at least one percent of the girls or women, who had fallen victims of sexual assault, would be at the frontline at developing PTSD in the late stages of their lives. The link between the two is due to the development of a psychopathology, which may be a resultant of the previous dissimilar traumatic experiences, which foster both psychological and physiological vulnerability. The latter boosts the chances of undergoing a PTSD as an aftermath after being triggered by a future occurrence. In comparing the experience underlying non-traumatized controls with that in persons having a history of traumatic experiences, the latter have a higher chance of PTSD psychological risks. The conclusion is determined by comparing dissociation and anxiety sensitivity levels in the two groups since they form the basis of the markers of PTSD disorders that are psychologically related (Cremeans-Smith et al., 2015).
Views on PTSD vulnerability and its relationship with prior life events
Most of the articles on PTSD and their causes are for the fact that having a history with a traumatic experience may pave the way for PTSD. However, others support the contrary; inoculation of the vulnerability factors in individuals against the effects that traumatic encounters may pose is due to the prior life events in the victim’s life. A good example is a person with a history of abuse; they may most likely report acute pain in their lower abdomens other than talk of their abuse with the medical practitioner involved (Cremeans-Smith et al., 2015). Under such a circumstance, there may be two thoughts; one is the fact that they may have reported their past encounter, but only served to make it worse other than help, and the other is that they may be ashamed of putting themselves into shame by talking about their nasty experience.
Pain, follow-up checkups, and traumatic experiences
Reporting abuse in a health institution typically does not end by the practitioner taking notes and medical examination; the victim has to undergo a couple of follow-up checkups that may only increase their pain, and that is why most of them prefer to keep their suffering to themselves. Talking of the patients, who have to undergo total knee arthroplasty owing to infections they had, reveals that such people have a combination of both past and current traumatic experiences. They have trouble getting over the issue of them having to take walking sessions for their knees to function properly to enable them to walk again. They undergo the pain of coping up with their current situation and the one that caused their current condition (Cremeans-Smith et al., 2015).
Implications for nursing practices and PTSD treatment
Such discoveries may be useful in nursing practices mainly pertaining to the cases involving PTSD patients. Knowing that a patient's history may be the leading cause of their emotional distress as well as a vulnerability factor assists nurses to come up with the diagnosis that may be critical in making treatment recommendations of the person. Following arthroplasty surgeries, current research findings may be the best way to examine the resilient risks regarding prior traumatic events. The aforementioned coupled with the Shared Vulnerability Model suggests that the predisposition to the development of PTSD in individuals may be as a result of the alteration of the physiological and psychological processes by their development (Cremeans-Smith et al., 2015).
Resilience and the role of traumatic experiences
Conclusively, traumatic historical experiences may often be mistakenly taken for vulnerability instead of the vital source of resilience for they form. Getting through post-operative trauma encounters highly depends on the victim’s individual to get through the painful experience and be back to their feet and not their history. The article gives an assessment of the depressive symptoms and their causative agents, which conclude that the past traumatic experiences only contributed to moderate effect towards the recovery of the patients dealing with total knee arthroplasty infections (Cremeans-Smith et al., 2015). Concisely, the ethical considerations that are based on the study help to come to terms with the fact that the treatment of total knee arthroplasty infections relies on the perception of the patient towards the form of therapy involved and not the treatment itself.
Reference
Cremeans-Smith, J. K., Greene, K., & Delahanty, D. L. (2015). Trauma history as a resilience factor for patients recovering from total knee replacement surgery. Psychology & health, 30(9), 1005-1016.
