How Trauma Caused By War Can Affect An Individuals School Performance (Essay Sample)

Student’s Name
Instructor’s Name
Course
Date
How Trauma caused by War can affect an Individual’s School Performance
Trauma happens to be a matter that is severe, which can largely influence the manner in which a child undertakes studies. War associated trauma can have dire effects on the emotional well-being of an affected child thereby affecting their academic performance. Special education often considers trauma caused by war as a serious misnomer that any child should ever be subjected to. Whenever school going children are susceptible to traumatic occurrences like separation from parents and all forms of harassment, the situation can bear far-reaching consequences on their mental health. According to the US National Center for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), between fourteen to forty-three percent of boys and girls in the country grapple with traumatic events related to war. When children are subjected to traumatic experiences, they develop severe psychological conditions such as PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder, which affects several survivors of trauma that is caused by civil strife. It is proven that a significant percentage of boys and girls who undergo traumatic experience throughout their lives end up contracting PTSD. In fact, the research depicts that the PTSD cases escalate with some kinds of traumas, for instance, a child witnessing the killing of his or her parent and or undergoing a sexual harassment. The PTSD identification is sometimes entrenched on the criterion as described and prescribed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This encompasses at least three symptoms identified from the criterion of avoidant, one symptom identified from the criterion of intrusive recollection, as well as two symptoms identified from the criterion of the hyperarousal (White 17). Consequently, the anxiety disorder together with the psychological impacts of PTSD are known to be deleterious to the brain, thereby causing untold problems in the child’s learning as well as sustaining the required attention. Several studies associated with PTSD pay attention to the war veterans of Vietnam. These studies establish that the more serious the PTSD symptoms are, the lesser the hippocampus is. Hippocampus refers to the region of the human brain, which consolidates short-term reminiscences into long-term retentions. Any damage made to this hippocampus largely affects the capability of the patient in learning fresh information. The serious effects on the brain are usually observed in the patients who would have experienced trauma during their childhood stages. It is, therefore, crucial to identify and address the issues promptly to enhance emotional healing of the victim thereby helping him or her to progress well in school. This research scrutinizes common familiarities that trauma survivors might encounter directly due to a traumatic experience.
Effects of Trauma on the Learners’ Brain
When learners undergo stressful events, the fight-or-flight responses are subsequently activated by the sympathetic nervous system. This reaction triggers cortisol; the stress hormone. In most cases, whenever stressors subside, they pave way for the response of the parasympathetic nervous system thereby normalizing the situation of the body. Conversely, in the case of a traumatic event that emanates from strangely large quantities of traumatic stress, the body will excessively release cortisol as a reaction to that. This excessive cortisol has the capacity to trigger adverse effects to the human brain and consequently causing immense damage to the CA3 neurons that are contained in the hippocampus.
Influence of Emotional Trauma on Learning
The inability of the PTSD patient in forming new memories is occasioned by the apparent destruction of the hippocampus. This condition further affects the ability of the learner to cope with educational programs. Besides, the condition can largely affect verbal learning such that the victim will experience greater difficulties in remembering any information solicited through verbalization in comparison to visual. Another aspect, which negatively influences learning after one undergoes trauma is the ability to sustain attention (Kazmierczak 25). Severe trauma affects a focused and sustained attention, even if it may spare selective attention that is often used during the time of processing the sensory reminiscences into temporary memories. This agglomeration of the trauma associated emotional challenges coupled with the physiological impairment can become an impediment to the performance of the child in school, particularly where the child is not given adequate psychological counseling. The coordination of psychologists with the lesson plans is the best way proven in addressing the difficulties and needs of the PTSD child or any other victim of psychological disorder.
Children who experience traumatic disorder are supposed to be accorded Trauma-informed care (TIC). This care entails a wide comprehension of reactions of traumatic stress and the usual responses to traumatic disorders. The givers of TIC are required to be cognizant of the manner in which trauma affects therapeutic presentations, engagement, as well as the consequences of health services related to behavior. There are certain victims of war display explicit criterion related with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although there are those that will only reveal resilient responses or rather short-lived subclinical consequences or symptoms, which fall out of the diagnostic criteria. The trauma influences are known to be insidious, understated, or downright destructive. The trauma event affects a person depending on several aspects that include features of an individual, the kind and physical characteristics of an event, developmental processes, and the sociocultural factors together with the meaning of trauma. There are some common responses, which emphasize the normalcy of traumatic stress reactions to anomalous circumstances.
Classification of Trauma Reactions
During the reverberation of trauma, the immediate reactions of the survivors are often very intricate. These reactions are always affected by the victims’ own experiences, the approachability of expected support and therapists, their ability to cope, the life skills as well as the response from the wide society where they inhabit. Even though these reactions may range in relentlessness, in most cases the acutest reactions are actual natural responses in managing trauma are not symptoms of psychopathology. The styles of coping differ from those that are concerned with action to those, which are reflective as well as ranging from those that are emotionally expressive to the reticent ones. It is clinically proven that a response style has less significance as opposed to the degree to which the efforts of coping successfully permit an individual to continue essential activities, control emotions, maintain self-esteem, and sustain as well as enjoy relational contacts. Undeniably, previous errors identified in the psychology of traumatic stress, predominantly concerning mass traumas, became the supposition that most survivors are required to express emotions that are connected with trauma. They are also required to deliberate the trauma; as indicated by the most recent studies that the PTSD survivors who decline to process their states of trauma are equally psychologically healthy just as those who process. In the recent past, the approaches of psychological debriefing accentuate respect to the style of individuals to cope and lacking the value of one kind over another.
As regards the foreshortened future, it is proven that trauma can affect a victim’s perception concerning the future through loss of hope, inadequate prospects about life, anxiety that life would abruptly be terminated or early, or rather an anticipation that the usual life events will not happen. The first trauma responses confusion, exhaustion, apprehension, sadness, agitation, dissociation, numbness, blunted affect as well as physical arousal. Most normal reactions also affect certain PTSD survivors, a situation that is highly socially tolerable, self-limited and proven to be psychologically effective (White 53). The indications of responses that are more serious involve incessant distress that is deficient of stages of relative rest and calm, severe symptoms of dissociation, and intensive intrusive memories, which proceed in spite of a safety return. Hindered trauma reactions can include sleep disorders, tenacious fatigue, terrible nightmares, depression, nervousness based on flashbacks, sensations, panic due to recurrence, evasion of emotions, or actions, which are related to the trauma, even remotely.
Shared responses and experience to trauma
Some of the responses to trauma among are always observed and reported after trauma. Mostly, the survivors demonstrate forthwith responses, yet they characteristically steadfastness without undecorated long-term concerns. The reason for this is that most survivors of trauma are largely resilient and can develop suitable strategies of coping, comprising the usage of social supports, in dealing with the effects of the aftermath of trauma. Most of the patients who recuperate with time, exhibit negligible distress and function efficiently across developmental stages in the main areas of life. At the same time, clients who demonstrate little impairment might as well display subclinical symptoms, which may never fit a diagnostic criterion for PTSD or acute stress disorder (ASD). Only a minor fraction of the populace which shows a history of trauma exhibit symptoms as well as impairment, which meets the criteria for stress disorders that are, associated with trauma, for instance, anxiety and mood disorders. Some of the sections that pay ...