Hello! Hello! Welcome back to diagnosing a killer, the mental breakdown.
That's down.
I have a good mental breakdown for everybody today.
So, as you might remember, if you did listen to the Zachary Bowen case, and if you didn't,
please go listen because it's a very great case.
He suffered from PTSD, so I'm going to be talking about post-traumatic stress disorder
today.
We're going to get right into it.
I'm Kenna, by the way.
I'm Coelle.
If you haven't recognized the difference in our voices yet, it's Kenna speaking.
So post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly known as PTSD, which I'll refer to it as
PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed
a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war or
combat, or rape, or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence, or serious injury.
So there's a lot of other things that can trigger PTSD and cause it.
I'm not saying those are the only things, but those are common things.
So PTSD has been known by many names in the past.
Shell Shock was a really big one.
Yeah, Shell Shock.
That was during World War I that was used a lot, and actually, combat fatigue, which
I didn't know, was used after World War II.
Combat fatigue.
Wow.
Yeah, interesting.
But PTSD, like I said, doesn't just happen to combat veterans.
It can happen from pretty much anything, like any traumatic event.
PTSD can occur in all people of any ethnicity, nationality, or culture, at any age, actually,
which I thought that was interesting.
Now PTSD affects approximately 3.5% of US adults every year, and an estimated one in
11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime.
Jesus.
Actually, women are twice as likely as men to have PTSD, really.
And the top three ethnic groups that include United States Latinos, African Americans, and
American Indians are disproportionately affected and have higher rates of PTSD than non-Latino
whites.
Wow.
Which makes sense because, you know, there are many, many years of segregation.
Disregardation and discrimination.
Oh, depression.
Yeah.
Now, people with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience
that last very long after the traumatic event has ended.
They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares.
They may feel sadness, fear, or anger, and they may feel attached or even estranged from
other people.
People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the event, and they may
have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as like a loud noise or someone
like touching them in a place, a certain place.
So a diagnosis of PTSD requires exposure to an upsetting traumatic event.
It's called exposure therapy.
However, the exposure can actually be indirect rather than firsthand.
For example, PTSD could occur in an individual simply learning about the violent death of
a close family member or friend, and it can also occur as a result of repeated exposure
to horrible details of trauma, such as police officers exposed to details of child abuse
cases.
So police officers that constantly see these things can develop PTSD from it, which I thought
was interesting.
So the symptoms of PTSD actually fall into four major categories, and the specific symptoms
can vary in severity based on the category.
So the first one is intrusion.
Intrusive thoughts such as repeated and voluntary memories, distressing dreams or flashbacks.
Flashbacks can actually be so vivid that the people will actually feel like they're reliving
the traumatic experience or actually seeing it.
Isn't that so scary?
The second category is avoidance.
So avoiding reminders of the traumatic event may include avoiding people, places, objects,
activities, situations that may trigger the distressing memories.
People may try to avoid thinking or remembering the traumatic event, and they may resist talking
about what happened or how they feel about it.
I do that.
Same disease, first warning.
Yeah.
Again, we don't want to go into all these details, but just if you haven't heard the last episode
when I said it in, you know, Coelle and I have both experienced the same traumatic event
a couple of years ago back, and it was very traumatizing.
Trauma traumatic six years ago.
Yeah.
And it's still, let me be real, very real every day.
Category three, alterations in cognition and mood.
An ability to remember important aspects of the traumatic event.
Negative thoughts and feelings leading to ongoing and distorted beliefs about oneself
or others.
An example, I am bad or no one can be trusted.
Distorted thoughts about the cause or consequences of the event leading to wrongly blaming self
or other ongoing fear, horror, anger, guilt or shame.
This also includes less interest in activities previously enjoyed, feeling detached or estranged
and being unable to experience positive emotions.
So having a void of happiness.
And the fourth category, alterations in arousal and reactivity.
So arousal and reactive symptoms may include being irritable and having angry outbursts,
behaving recklessly or in a self-destructive way, being overly watchful of one's surroundings
and a suspecting way, me, hypervigilance, that is me, to a T.
Being easily startled or having problems concentrating or sleeping.
So those are the four categories of symptoms.
This just was interesting to me, we'll do an entire mental breakdown on this, but the
most closely related condition can be called, there's a couple of them, but one of them
that I wanted to note was acute stress disorder.
So acute stress disorder occurs in a reaction to a traumatic event just like PTSD and the
symptoms are similar, however the symptoms occur between three days and one month after
the event.
Okay.
People with acute stress disorder may relive the trauma, have flashbacks or nightmares,
they may feel numb or detached, similarly to PTSD and the symptoms cause major distress
and problems, about half of people with acute stress disorder will eventually go on to have
PTSD.
Okay, I was going to ask you if it not cures itself, but if it eventually fades.
It can, yeah.
And so can PTSD actually, and I'll go into that in a second.
An estimated 13 to 21% of survivors of car accidents develop acute stress disorder and
between 20 and 50% of survivors on assault, rape, or mass shootings develop it, which
I thought was interesting to note because there was just that shooting in Michigan.
Psychotherapy including cognitive behavior therapy can also help control symptoms and
prevent them from getting worse and developing into PTSD.
And then we mentioned SSRI, antidepressants, and the last mental breakdown, that is also
something that they use to treat it.
So yeah, PTSD is very real to a lot of people and I mean, one in 11, that is ridiculous.
Yeah, and that's at any point of anyone's life.
Yes, it can happen at any age.
I looked up some interesting facts about PTSD.
Almost 8 million people in the United States suffer from PTSD.
More women than men develop PTSD, like I said earlier, statistics show about 4% of men develop
PTSD at some point in their life compared to up to 10% of women.
Researchers don't know exactly why more women develop PTSD, but it could have something
to do with the types of assaults and traumatic events that women may be exposed to, such
as sexual abuse as a child or even as an adult.
It can actually take years for PTSD symptoms to begin.
So something can happen years ago and then you won't develop, you potentially won't develop
PTSD for years following.
So you must have PTSD symptoms for at least one month for your doctor to make a diagnosis.
However, it can take several months or even years before the symptoms become obvious enough
to interfere with your life.
Now, men and women actually can have different PTSD symptoms, which I thought was interesting
as well.
So things for women are more often related to avoiding anything or any situation that
may trigger thoughts.
Women can be jumpier and have more difficulty dealing with the emotions that the triggers
or memories invoke.
On the other hand, men actually become often angrier and they may turn to alcohol or drugs
to help cope with their feelings.
That's just statistically speaking.
And like I said earlier about the flashbacks, that's just one aspect of one symptom category,
but some people don't have flashbacks at all.
And that's a very common, you say PTSD, you think World War II veteran that has flashbacks
at the core.
Yeah.
Some people only have the memory without the strong flashbacks and others with no flashbacks
at all.
So I thought that was interesting.
Lastly, you don't have to be a trauma victim to develop PTSD.
I told you many things can cause it.
You can also develop PTSD if someone close to you was in a traumatic situation or if
someone you lost was injured or died.
So you can have, it's almost like PSP.
PSD by proxy?
A PTSD by proxy.
Yeah, exactly.
Again, like I said earlier, it can occur among first responders and other professionals
who work with trauma victims like emergency room doctors and psychiatrists.
Psychiatrists and psychologists actually.
So I did something different for this mental breakdown.
And I looked up celebrities that suffer from PTSD.
Wow.
Right?
What are the unique things to bring to the table?
So number one who I love and adore, Ariana Grande has PTSD.
She opened up about her struggles, her trigger for her PTSD.
She was at a concert in Manchester United Kingdom in 2017 and there was a suicide bomber
actually at her concert and it killed 22 people.
And she developed PTSD.
I didn't hear about this.
Yeah.
It was a big thing.
She like didn't perform for a while after that.
She actually got a brain scan done.
It showed the physical impact of the PTSD on her brain.
And she publicly shared the brain scan with her fans on Instagram and she famously stated
that therapy saved her life.
Wow.
I love her so much.
I literally have goosebumps because I love her so much.
Whoopie Goldberg.
I love Whoopie.
She's also ADHD.
That's part of the reason I love Whoopie is.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, because she was like, her and Robin Williams were like people I looked up to when I was
a kid because they were both diagnosed with ADHD and I had ADHD so I have ADD.
So she actually said that she has a panic attack every time she boards a plane.
Well she flies all over the world all the time, right?
I know.
She said in 1978 she was standing on a balcony in San Diego enjoying the view when she witnessed
a plane crash mid-flight.
Oh my god.
Since then she's been terrified ever since.
Oh my god.
She says, quote, if I see it, it lives in my brain due to being a visual person.
Yeah.
Number three, Mick Jagger.
Got the moves like Jagger.
Yes.
I like got the moves like Jaeger.
Have you seen those names?
No.
It's just like people passed out drunk.
Oh no, that's terrible.
So Mick Jagger developed PTSD after his 49-year-old long-term partner, Loren Scott, took her
own life.
After one month of acute traumatic stress disorder, he got diagnosed with PTSD.
He was reportedly, quote, deeply upset when his mental condition was shared with the world.
And it was noted here that it says, for the rest of us, it's good to see that nobody's
immune to suffering from PTSD.
Jacqueline Kennedy?
Or Jackie Kennedy?
Jackie Oh.
Yes.
Well, she witnessed JFK's assassination.
So of course she's going to tell.
Yeah.
How do you not have PTSD?
I'm sorry.
But like, ugh.
She suffered in silence and little was known about her struggles until Barbara Lemming
wrote a book about her story and outlines her emotional struggles that were hidden behind,
you know, glamour, media and stuff like that.
Monica Sellis.
She was a tennis player, or she's a famous tennis player.
And by the age of 16, she was actually the Grand Slam winner, which is awesome.
She was literally stabbed in the back with a nine-inch kitchen knife at the age of 19
at a match in Hamburg.
What?
This event?
Is this an event killer?
Yes.
I don't know if they tried to kill her.
Just injure her.
This event combined.
It's like that's a pretty big knife to a knot.
Nine-inch knife.
So this event, getting stabbed, combined with learning that her father actually had terminal
cancer around the same time led to her developing PTSD and also an eating disorder.
She said she's learned to, quote, live in the moment and had a comeback before retiring
from tennis.
She worked through the loneliness and stress by herself and she learned to love herself
again.
So she had mentioned that she gained a lot of weight during these two years after her
traumatic event, and she actually wrote a book about self-image called Getting a Grip
on My Body, My Mind, Myself.
So I'll have to look into that.
Shia LaBeouf.
Running for your life from Shia LaBeouf.
Shia LaBeouf.
Press the link in my face.
Shia LaBeouf.
Literally.
If you haven't heard that song, please listen to that song.
It's Rob Cantor's Shia LaBeouf.
And Shia LaBeouf is in it, so he's in on that joke.
Yeah, he's not being exploited.
Well, not in that song.
It's not in that song.
In 2018, Shia LaBeouf opened up about his struggles with PTSD.
He said his parents separated when he was just three years of age, and at this time,
he actually overheard his mom being raped.
Yes, at three.
Oh my God.
His emotional battles were very much hidden, of course.
Became very apparent when he was, you know, of course, arrested for public drunkenness
and disorderly conduct.
We all heard about that.
Since he was a child, he's always lived with the fear of someone coming after him or his
mom.
And he says, quote, I've always thought somebody was coming in.
And while he was in rehab for his substance abuse, he found out that he was diagnosed
with PTSD.
If nobody's seen Honey Boy, you have to watch that movie.
We haven't seen that.
It's based off of his life, loosely.
I wouldn't say loosely even.
I feel like some of the accounts are very real, but he plays his own father.
And it's haunting.
Yeah, I bet.
It's just, it really gives you a lot of insight into the way that he's thinking.
I feel like he gets a bad, I don't want to say he gets a bad, I feel like he's done some
pretty bad things and things that he should be held accountable for.
But again, when your mind is affected by a disorder, and you don't know it, then it's,
again, when we talked about obsessive-compulsive disorder, we talked about how if you have
a good affair or a poor insight of what your disorder is, then it can affect how you approach
it and to recognize it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Again, if it goes undiagnosed or untreated and you don't know how to deal with your
disorder, it can exacerbate the problems.
Of course.
Another one that I have is another one of my favorite celebrities, singers, Elana Smorset.
Oh, Elana!
I know, so she is a self-confessed attention junkie.
However, her sudden unexpected rise to fame actually left her suffering panic attacks
and depression.
She said as an isolated person, people observing her every move becomes intolerable, and she
also was quoted as saying, it's taken a lot of work and therapy to not be suicidal.
I know, and I love her.
She also struggled with addiction and therapy.
She said that she worked through love addiction, sex addiction, and addiction in general.
I think just that sudden rise to fame was kind of what triggered her PTSD.
I feel like we hear this name a lot in these mental breakdowns.
Lady Gaga.
Yeah, she struggles with so many different diagnoses.
Man, I really feel for her.
She is fucking phenomenal.
She opened up about her PTSD.
She said that she suffers from it because she was raped by an older man in her Catholic
school when she was 19.
Oh my gosh.
She opened up many times about how the trauma has long-lasting effects, where she relives
the experience, like we said, the flashbacks.
She has therapy that helps to work on her symptoms, and the symptoms of PTSD were actually
affecting her work at that point.
Yeah, PTSD is a threat, man.
It really is.
And she actually won an award at the SAG, After Foundation's third annual patron of
the artist.
During her speech, she called the mental health epidemic a quote, crisis of epic proportions,
which I completely agree with.
Lastly, I have Charlize Theron.
She said that she had a traumatic experience during her childhood that has haunted her
throughout her life.
Now when she was 15, her father, who was an alcoholic, threatened to kill her mother,
and she shot him.
Charlize did.
Charlize did?
Yeah, killing him in self-defense.
Wow.
The trauma led to very hard drug use, including molly, acid, mushrooms, and cocaine.
And she used to explain herself as a quote, wake and bake her.
I mean, like, who isn't?
She's so cute.
Theron, now 43, and a single mother of two says that therapy has helped her create a
great life for her kids.
That's great.
She's the one that plays Eileen Warnows in Monster.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And they, I mean, she just doesn't look like Charlize Theron.
Yeah, no.
I love Theron from Methus.
I love her, Methus.
So good.
This was a little bit of a shorter, little tiny little nibble mental breakdown, but
I thought it was appropriate to do PTSD just because you know, Zachary Bowen, again, if
you have a listen to that episode, please do so, because it's very interesting.
And I think I did a good job.
I think it's definitely important to raise awareness for that, especially, not, especially,
not discounting anybody's post-traumatic stress disorder, but for veterans, it's so
huge.
Yeah, of course.
Of course.
It's so huge out to actually get a sign in your front yard that you can post 4th of
July and for New Year's.
And it's kind of just like a, hey, heads up, a veteran lives here, like, be kind with
your fireworks or things like that.
Yeah, wow, that's really cool.
It is really cool.
And that's something that's definitely needed to piggyback off of that.
There's actually a veterans crisis hotline that I want to give you guys.
It's 1-800-273-8255.
And it says to press 1, I guess that's the extension.
It probably navigates you from there.
But that is a veteran's specific hotline.
If you're, of course, if you're having an emergency call 9-1-1.
Yeah, of course.
But yeah, to speak to somebody about your PTSD.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's also run by veterans.
So it's veterans talking to veterans.
Okay, cool.
Cool.
Yeah, it's an awesome support option.
Safe space for sure.
So I'm sure that you guys have noticed when you've been watching the episodes, if you
read the show notes, but I did want to bring it to light just because I haven't said it
on the podcast yet.
But we are now going to be posting the National Suicide Hotline and the Trevor Project numbers
on every single one of our shows on the show notes.
So please utilize those if you feel like you're in a situation that you need to.
But we do want to have a constant reminder out there that we love you guys.
You guys are so loved and we really appreciate everybody listening to us.
And we want everybody to feel like they have a safe space that they can run to if they
feel like they're in crisis.
I think especially with us doing this, it's honestly allowed me to be a little bit more
introspective into what I feel like my own mind has to offer me.
And then it also starts a conversation with me and friends too.
So I'm really thankful and grateful for that because it's conversations that I might not
otherwise be having.
And so I think I would hope that this could also help facilitate that.
We spread more awareness about mental illnesses and mental disorders and that we, again, it's
opening the gate to talk about it.
So yeah, I love that those numbers are out there.
Again, if there's an emergency, call 911.
Don't call the hotline.
But if you need somebody to talk to or you need references, you need to know where to
go to find the best therapy for you or even if it's a group therapy, they have those resources
there.
You need to call someone, call them.
Yeah, of course.
And please, I said this before, I think the last mental breakdown was the one before,
but please reach out, utilize your free resources, talk to your friends, talk to your family.
People are not as off-putting as sometimes that your anxiety can make you believe because
I feel like I sound like a broken record a lot, but I'm always reassured by you guys
and your friends and that's not true.
It can feel isolating.
Of course.
So thank you guys all for listening.
Yeah.
I hope you guys have a new case coming out next week.
I already started researching and it's a good one.
Excline it.
And yeah, so we'll see you guys soon.
Yeah.
If you want to follow us on Instagram, we are at Diagnosing a Killer.
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No.
We'll use.
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If you want to talk to us, please.
And yeah, I think that's all I have.
Love you.
Bye.