Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental illness that can cause severe anxiety or depression – or both – to those who experience it. It can be the result of having something violent or unexpected happen to you (car accident, mugging, military service for example) or something that you feared may happen to you. It may also be the result of you seeing something happening to another person. In other words, it’s caused by a psychologically traumatic event.
To understand a bit more about PTSD, Karen J. Erickson, an alternative health practitioner, answers some questions for us.

It took a long time for post-traumatic stress disorder to be classified as a real diagnosis and even longer to find ways to help people who were experiencing it. You can have a mild version of PTSD or you can have life-affected PTSD, making it almost impossible to live as you would like.
Sadly, many people who live with PTSD are returning service men and women. Regardless of their work in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the events they see, hear, their experiences, have an enormous impact on them once they return home.
While some veterans are able to cope with counseling …read more

Mental health is important to every individual, whether you have a serious condition such as cancer or not.
Sometimes, I believe that one’s mental health is overlooked even though it too play a critical part how a patient manages to live with the disease or how survival is willed.
May is Mental Health Month and here at the Health and Wellness Channel, we focus on mental health.
Just one example why mental health is important in cancer patients:
Breast cancer patients who have a prior history of mood and anxiety disorders are at a much higher risk of experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder following their …read more