VIDEO: PTSD Awareness Day

(WCBI News) – If you or someone you love has ever faced a life threatening situation, you know that there are ripple effects.

After traumatic experiences, people have painful memories.

Sometimes these memories fade, but other times they stay around.

Today is set aside as PTSD awareness day.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is something that affects millions of Americans.

Some tell-tale symptoms of this illness may range from depression, anxiety, and super-vigilance to name a few.

In the nation, up to twenty percent of our population, almost forty-five million people, have or are currently struggling with PTSD.

Here in the Golden Triangle, employees at the Baptist Behavioral Health Facility encourage those who experience these symptoms to speak to a doctor or psychologist.

It’s important to acknowledge the illness in order to receive the counseling and possibly the medication that is needed to fight this.

“Counseling. Counseling, counseling, counseling, that is that biggest thing; you have to address it. Now there’s different ways, and depending on the level of trauma determines on how you address that. For some people it’s a very deep trauma, and so you want to address the symptoms around it as opposed to the event itself,” said Junauh Allgood, the referral development coordinator for the Baptist Behavioral Health Center.

Following instruction from medical teams can increase the chances that everyday life can move on.

“We get to see the front side but not so much the back end. The success is when we don’t see them come back. We know that we’ve done our job and they are functioning and succeeding because if they weren’t they’d be back here,” said Behavioral Health Director, Rich Freeze.

In Lowndes County, alone, there are nearly ten-thousand veterans.

With awareness being brought to peoples’ attention, hopefully these PTSD statistics can go down.