Is PTSD Contagious?
What is PTSD? – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a group of words with individual meaning. “Post” meaning after, “Traumatic”- wound or something horrible has happened, “Stress” – pressure or strain and “disorder” meaning disturbed.

What is “Contagious?”– The word contagious means capable of being transmitted or spreading germs of some sort. Can something without germs be contagious? Can we catch behaviors and mirror others? Yes.

Brannan Vines, the wife a war vet has been diagnosed with PTSD.  She is showing signs of a warrior: hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers.”

• The writer is comparing Beannan’s skills to the skills or traits of a warrior. This is a clever way to lure the reader in and feel the tension and danger of what she is going through.
• Like she is some crazy psycho, scanning for danger, and triggers to make her go off the deep end.

“Hypervigilance sounds innocuous, but in fact is exhaustingly distressing, a conditioned response to life-threatening situations. Imagine there is a murderer in your house. “

• Imagining there is a murderer in the house 24-7 is insane.
• This is a good analogy, makes for a really strong claim as to what a person with PTSD is feeling.
• The word, “murderer” is exhausting and scary.

“Sometimes I can’t do the laundry,” Brannan explains, reclining on her couch. “And it’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m too tired to do the laundry,’ it’s like, ‘Um, I don’t understand how to turn the washing machine on.’ I am looking at a washing machine and a pile of laundry and my brain is literally overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to reconcile them.”

• Laundry is a mindless and mundane chore.
• Could it be that Brannan is just lazy and doesn’t want to do the laundry, could be.

Katie mirrors her dads behavior.   Brannan says, she can’t get Katie to stop picking at the sores on her legs, she digs into her own skin with anxious little fingers.  According to Brannan,  Katie is not a normal carefree six-year-old.
• How can we blame her father? This sounds like  pure speculation to me.
• Maybe she is itching due to a rash, right?

My time is up, thank you once again for challenging my thoughts and I hope I completed that assignment correctly.

I do believe that PTSD is contagious and wish there is something we could do to help the veterans that fight for our freedom.  I’m able to take this class and speak my mind because of those brave souls.  Thanks again for the challenge.