sophiaserpentia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophiaserpentia) wrote2005-06-21 12:16 pm
sophiaserpentia) wrote2005-06-21 12:16 pm
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and oppression
Over the past few days I've been tagging the entries in my journal (I'm back to Nov. 2004 now, what a wonderful tool tags are!) and have noticed a pattern -- a few contentious journal entries aimed at Christianity and usually inspired by anti-queer agitation in the news, followed by a resolution not to let myself get drawn into posting divisive comments. Then a month (or even a week) later, I'm doing it again.
I've been wondering over the past few days whether it is possible to examine the question of power inequality without getting drawn into divisiveness. The prime examples often cited are from exemplary people -- MLK Jr. and Gandhi and a brave few who are able to speak about racial or sexual or religious inequality while remaining completely unflappable. They've set a standard of perfection and dignity which is admirable, but which sets the bar uncomfortably high for the rest of us to meet in a healthy way.
Then this morning it came together when a friend mentioned in a locked entry that even things like reading a newspaper can trigger a PTSD response -- fear and anxiety. I haven't been able to find online an article outlining a clear exposition of this link, but many times the advice given to people being treated for PTSD includes avoiding the news media.
I began to wonder if maybe PTSD makes oppression possible. If people of a given class are more likely than average to suffer from abuse, then a random person from that class is also more likely than average to respond with fear and anxiety to news about similar things happening to others in the same class.
Figures for the prevalence of depression in our society are estimated at 5-7%, with higher percentages for women than men. The one-year prevalance for generalized anxiety disorder is 3%, again with higher percentages for women than men. Compare this to the figure of over 40% of people in the GLBT community at any given time I cited a while back.
Now, depression statistics are not proof of PTSD, but they might be suggestive of it. Other evidence which I've cited before show very high percentages for major disruptive or traumatic abusive events in the lives of GLBT people. So it does not seem out of line to suppose that much of the depression or anxiety experienced by GLBT people is due to (mostly undiagnosed) PTSD.
One line of research has suggested a link between racism and PTSD response.
The picture is starting to become clear. I noted above the higher depression and anxiety figures for women because the typical explanation is to suppose that there is something about women's biochemistry that makes them more prone to mental illness. In light of sexism, could it be that women are simply traumatized more often then men?
So, news of intolerance-inspired abuse spreads like fire through an oppressed community and generates fear and anxiety not because they can imagine it happening to them in an abstract way, but because on a mass scale it triggers a PTSD flashback. In the GLBT community, this response can also be triggered by anti-gay comments styled in Christian language because so many of us were traumatized with this language as the soundtrack; for example, one fourth of us have been expelled or alienated from families or homes, often because the parents could not accept their child's "un-Christian" lifestyle.
Anxiety, fear and depression dampens one's will and lessens one's access to political and economic resources -- creating an advantage in someone who does not have it. Therefore PTSD is an effective tool of exploitation and therefore of oppression. Furthermore, in a typical victim-blaming pattern it is often cited as "proof" that there is something inherently inferior or unclean about women (feminists)/racial minorities/religious minorities/queer people or the way they live.
This thought doesn't give me a lot of optimism for the question I posed at the outset.
I've been wondering over the past few days whether it is possible to examine the question of power inequality without getting drawn into divisiveness. The prime examples often cited are from exemplary people -- MLK Jr. and Gandhi and a brave few who are able to speak about racial or sexual or religious inequality while remaining completely unflappable. They've set a standard of perfection and dignity which is admirable, but which sets the bar uncomfortably high for the rest of us to meet in a healthy way.
Then this morning it came together when a friend mentioned in a locked entry that even things like reading a newspaper can trigger a PTSD response -- fear and anxiety. I haven't been able to find online an article outlining a clear exposition of this link, but many times the advice given to people being treated for PTSD includes avoiding the news media.
I began to wonder if maybe PTSD makes oppression possible. If people of a given class are more likely than average to suffer from abuse, then a random person from that class is also more likely than average to respond with fear and anxiety to news about similar things happening to others in the same class.
Figures for the prevalence of depression in our society are estimated at 5-7%, with higher percentages for women than men. The one-year prevalance for generalized anxiety disorder is 3%, again with higher percentages for women than men. Compare this to the figure of over 40% of people in the GLBT community at any given time I cited a while back.
Now, depression statistics are not proof of PTSD, but they might be suggestive of it. Other evidence which I've cited before show very high percentages for major disruptive or traumatic abusive events in the lives of GLBT people. So it does not seem out of line to suppose that much of the depression or anxiety experienced by GLBT people is due to (mostly undiagnosed) PTSD.
One line of research has suggested a link between racism and PTSD response.
People who are victimized because of their race share an unfortunate legacy with victims of terrorism. Both suffer the effects of violence inflicted on them because of factors beyond their control—effects that are often both severe and chronic.
This is the contention of Chalsa Loo, Ph.D., a clinical research psychologist at the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’s Pacific Islands Division. The center is a project of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
... She noted that her findings on the relationship of racism and PTSD are in line with those of studies done in the mid-1980s that showed that African-American Vietnam veterans showed more psychological problems and adjustment difficulties than Caucasian soldiers. She suggested that a major factor in the postwar problems experienced by African-American veterans may have arisen from guilt and rage related to emotionally identifying with the "devalued" and oppressed Vietnamese people they were fighting.
"This finding tells us that the personal experience of racism is a potent risk factor for PTSD," she stated, and one to which clinicians and researchers have rarely paid attention.
The message for psychiatrists, Loo suggested, is that clinicians who fail to account for and discuss possible race-related stressors with their non-Caucasian patients are potentially missing a major cause of PTSD symptoms. (from Race-Related Stressors Can Trigger PTSD)
The picture is starting to become clear. I noted above the higher depression and anxiety figures for women because the typical explanation is to suppose that there is something about women's biochemistry that makes them more prone to mental illness. In light of sexism, could it be that women are simply traumatized more often then men?
So, news of intolerance-inspired abuse spreads like fire through an oppressed community and generates fear and anxiety not because they can imagine it happening to them in an abstract way, but because on a mass scale it triggers a PTSD flashback. In the GLBT community, this response can also be triggered by anti-gay comments styled in Christian language because so many of us were traumatized with this language as the soundtrack; for example, one fourth of us have been expelled or alienated from families or homes, often because the parents could not accept their child's "un-Christian" lifestyle.
Anxiety, fear and depression dampens one's will and lessens one's access to political and economic resources -- creating an advantage in someone who does not have it. Therefore PTSD is an effective tool of exploitation and therefore of oppression. Furthermore, in a typical victim-blaming pattern it is often cited as "proof" that there is something inherently inferior or unclean about women (feminists)/racial minorities/religious minorities/queer people or the way they live.
This thought doesn't give me a lot of optimism for the question I posed at the outset.
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I see a big problem with the way our society addresses the issue of abuse and discrimination. Typically that response comes down to focusing on the victims and ask what it is about them that makes people more likely to abuse them, when really, we should be asking why the abusers abuse. The net implication of this is that we take for granted that some people are just inclined to abuse others.
For example, we frequently see abused spouses asked, "Why do you stay?" when the real question should be, "Why are you hitting someone you claim you love?" This attitude goes all throughout our way of dealing with abuse. Victims of bullying at school are told that if they were "more normal" they wouldn't be bullied, and basically the same thing is said to gay people.
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I'm with you, I think we need to work harder at understanding the motivations for the abuser. I think, though, it's a very hard question to ask.
I attended a mostly excellent course on dealing with abuse last year but remember one question time when we were discussing various issues and how people respond. One of my peers asked:
"how do we help the man who feels so frustrated by what appears to him to be his wife's constant criticism so that he hits her?"
It was a valid question - some people simply don't know how to respond in those situations and lash out. The answer was "it can't be tolerated". Just didn't address the deeper issue.