Definition Claims/
Category Claims

We haven’t talked yet about different types of claims, so I don’t expect you to readily recognize a definition/categorical claim. On the face of it, it’s clearly a claim about how a term is defined or what category of thing it belongs to.

1. Definition. When you say PTSD is a psychological disorder, in your first five words you’re making a definition claim.
2. Categorical. Your first categorical claim is the naming of several examples of PTSD symptoms. They all belong to the category: Symptoms of PTSD.
3. Causal. Your next claim, that PTSD develops following trauma is a causal claim (Trauma causes PTSD).
4. Categorical/Causal. The question the article raises “Is PTSD contagious?,” depending on how we phrase it, is either a categorical question (Does PTSD belong in the category “contagious conditions”?), or a causal question (Can one human “catch” PTSD from another human?).

Calling PTSD “contagious” also seems like an analogy, doesn’t it? Is a yawn contagious? Is enthusiasm? Only in a poetic sense.

Yawning isn’t spread through bacteria or viruses, so it isn’t literally contagious. Neither is enthusiasm. But it spreads similarly to diseases: one person in close proximity to others transfers a condition: a physical yawn or an purposeful emotional energy to a roomful of other people, for example.

What do you think? What’s the answer? Is PTSD transferred from one person to another? If so, is the process more like spreading the flu, or more like spreading enthusiasm? Or a third way you could explain in a different analogy?

Did Brannan “catch” Caleb’s PTSD? Or is hers an entirely new case?

Below are some admirable observations made by your classmates before noon today, WED FEB 18. Others may have been made later, but you won’t find them here.

thatdude

When Caleb has outbreaks in public, he can be seen as a “normal crazy veteran,” but the reaction is very different when a young girl like his daughter Katie acts out.

tagfcomp2

The author incorporates the repeated phrase, “Brannan Vines has never been to war,” to emphasis secondhand Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The phrase suggests that Brannan hasn’t physically experienced the traumatic events that her husband has from war.

albert

Nevertheless, when the author writes of the“103,200, or 228,875, or 336,000Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and came back with PTSD” and later counts “115,000 to 456,000 with traumatic brain injury,” the disparity of the numbers is so large that McClelland might be suggesting that not all cases are produced by the war experience.

mopar

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a mental health condition that can be triggered by hearing or seeing an event occur.

Doctors are perplexed as to why Caleb suffers like he does. They don’t understand why all the things he’s been through caused him to get PTSD but not the other soldiers he was with. Some hypothesize that it’s because of unhappily coded proteins, misbehaving amygdala or even family history. If family history is a factor in who gets PTSD and who doesn’t, obviously it’s possible for PTSD to in fact be contagious/genetic even.

CptPooStain

A victim of a terrorist attack, or even a bank robbery in which one was involved could open the door for PTSD, the disorder in which, in the aftermath of a traumatic event, trigger events can cause the affected person to relive the trauma and exhibit the physical, emotional, and even psychological symptoms of a fresh trauma.

Maybe PTSD’s blow-back can reach further than previously determined, but what I’ve been reading about the Vines family is just a case of personality mirroring. If Caleb has never been to war, but he acted as he does, terrorizing and abusing his wife and child, the mirroring would be the same.

Thegreatestpenn

The statement that she turns into a snotty rage machine undermines the original statement that she has warrior skills.

Caleb has been home since 2006, way more than enough time for Brannan to catch his symptoms.

After Caleb came home from war, he was diagnosed with PTSD.  The statement that his wife had “more than enough time” assumes that she has been exposed to her husband long enough to catch his disorder, assuming that she can catch it at all.  How does the writer of this article know how long it takes for someone to catch PTSD from someone else, considering it isn’t like a typical disease whereas transmission would be from a physical pathogen.

Hashmeesh

PTSD is a condition that is developed by a person psychologically and is not something that can be spread.

The warrior skills McClelland claims for Brannan—super-sensitivity to stimuli, hyper-awareness, hyper-vigilance, and adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger—are symptoms of PTSD.

Mclelland claims that due to Brannan being exposed a great deal to Caleb’s trauma that she has develop her own case of PTSD.

juggler

Can something without germs be contagious? Can we catch behaviors and mirror others? According to this article you can.

Brannan Vines is the wife of the war vet that has been diagnosed with PTSD. “But she’s got a warrior’s skills: hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers.”

• The writer is comparing Brannan’s skills to the skills or traits of a warrior. This is a clever analogy 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.

She mirrors…she just mirrors” her dad’s behavior, Brannan says. She can’t get Katie to stop picking at the sores on her legs, sores she digs into her own skin with anxious little fingers.

•  The claim that this is a child mirroring the behavior of her father sounds like  pure speculation to me.
• Maybe she is itching due to a rash, right/

skyblue

PTSD is a disease most commonly found in soldiers or people who have been through extremely traumatic experiences.

The old lady counting her change is something a normal person would not think twice about. Instead it causes Brennan’s ears to ring describing the infuriating incident.

With the comment, “The lack of definitive tests for the former, undertesting for the latter, underreporting, under- or over-misdiagnosing of both” Mclelland repeats the prefixes to emphasize how neglected the syndrome is.

Analogy claim: McClelland uses the analogy of a murderer in the  home at night with the electricity out to convey the anxiety and nervousness the PTSD patient feels all the time.

McClelland suggests that a “small town in the southwest corner of Alabama, [as] quiet as a morgue . . .[with ] the cat padding around . . . [where] the air conditioner whooshes, a clock ticks, ” might make someone go crazy.Is that what Brannan really has, and not PTSD?

Definition claim: The word coward is an insult about weakness. Calling a soldier with PTSD a coward shows the ignorance people have about the disease and its seriousness.

Definition claim: Doctors have to go on hunches and symptomology rather than definitive evidence [to diagnose PTSD]. And the fact that the science hasn’t fully caught up with the suffering shows how mysterious the disease is.

Definition claim: Some claim that PTSD is not just an incident that happens to an individual; it’s contagious and affects everyone it contacts. Brannan and Katie exhibit the symptoms of the disease because, as Caleb’s wife and daughter, they spend the most time with him.