Who Is The Most Susceptible To Acute Stress Disorder?

Acute stress disorder is characterized by the development of severe anxiety, dissociative, and other symptoms that occur within one month after experiencing an extreme traumatic stressor, such as a serious accident or a death. It is not the same as the unrelated circulatory condition of shock. As a result of experiencing the traumatic event, the person will develop dissociative symptoms. People with acute stress disorder have a decrease in emotional responsiveness and often find it difficult or impossible to experience pleasure in previously enjoyable activities. They will also usually find it difficult to return to doing normal life tasks as well.

A person dealing with acute stress disorder will usually have difficulty concentrating on things, feel detached from his/her body, experience the world as dreamlike or unreal, and/or have difficulty remembering the exact details of the traumatic event that he/she experienced (known as dissociative amnesia).

Additionally, those who are dealing with this disorder also have at least one symptom from each of the symptom clusters that are present in post-traumatic stress disorder. This includes continually re-experiencing the traumatic event (via dreams, illusions, flashback episodes, etc.), avoiding reminders of the traumatic event (places, people, activities, etc.), and having hyperarousal in response to stimuli that is reminiscent of the traumatic event (difficulty sleeping, irritability, poor concentration, etc.).

The person is usually diagnosed with acute stress disorder when he/she experienced, witnessed, or was confronted by an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury or faced a threat to the physical integrity of himself/herself or others. Additionally, the person's response to that event or events was helplessness, horror, or intense fear. Either while experiencing or after experiencing that traumatic event or events, the person shows three or more of the following dissociative symptoms:

· Numbing, detachment, or absence of emotional responsiveness

· Reduction in awareness of his or her surroundings (what some would call "being in a daze")

· Derealization

· Depersonalization

· Dissociative amnesia (inability to recall important details about the traumatic event or events)

It's important to note that no one type of symptom will usually last for long and that the symptoms will usually resolve themselves within a few minutes, especially if the person is taken out of the environment that caused the symptoms. If this is not possible, the symptoms will usually subside within 24-48 hours and are usually minimal after three days. A person suffering from acute stress disorder will usually reexperience the traumatic event in one of the following ways:

Thoughts
Dreams
Flashback episodes
Illusions
Recurrent images
Sense of reliving the experience
Distress when exposed to reminders of the traumatic event

This disorder will also cause the person to go to great lengths to avoid any stimuli that causes him/her to remember that traumatic event. This can include thoughts, places, people, etc. that even vaguely remind the person of that traumatic event. The person with acute this disorder will also experience anxiety or increased arousal. This can include difficulty sleeping, irritability, exaggerated startled response, and motor restlessness. In many cases of acute stress disorder, autonomic signs of panic anxiety, such as sweating and flushing, will also be present as well.

For a person to be diagnosed with acute stress disorder, the problems mentioned above must significantly cause disruptions to the person's life, including his/her everyday tasks and relationships with family and friends. In addition, the disturbance in adisorder must last for a minimum of two days and up to a maximum of four weeks, as well as be within four weeks of when the traumatic event took place. The symptoms mentioned also cannot be the result any type of substance abuse (such as drugs, alcohol, or medication), be an exacerbation of a general or preexisting medical condition, be better explained by a brief psychotic disorder.

If the victim's disturbance lasts for more than four weeks, he/she may be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder instead. A combination of relaxation, cognitive restructuring, imaginal exposure, and in vivo exposure was found to be most effective at helping people with acute stress disorder. Additionally, cognitive behavioral therapy was found to prevent those who had acute stress disorder from developing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Those people who struggle with acute stress disorder will usually feel detached from life and not show much emotion toward everyday tasks and activities. This also prevents them from enjoying activities that they once took great joy in. People develop acute stress disorder after they experience a traumatic event. They will often replay the event in their minds and try to avoid stimuli that remind them of that traumatic event. By acknowledging that one has acute stress disorder, he/she can receive the best treatment available in order to be able to restore his/her emotions and enjoy the activities that he/she used to enjoy before experiencing the traumatic event.

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