Abuse Victims Misdiagnosed, New Author Says

Sumter, SC (PRWEB) November 17, 2006 A new author asserts that many psychiatric patients, both in-patient and out-patient, report childhood histories of

Post Traumatic Stress After Child Abuse

Sumter, SC (PRWEB) November 17, 2006

A new author asserts that many psychiatric patients, both in-patient and out-patient, report childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse or both. But they do not know what their real problem is because they have been misdiagnosed.

Worse, says Dr. Heyward Ewart, they can receive the highly insulting diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

Psychologists and psychiatrists know what to expect in the way of symptoms with war veterans: PTSD. It is known fact that the experiences of war can produce in even the strongest individual the constellation of symptoms that therapists should recognize as trauma. But for some reason, he says, we have only begun to make this same connection with people whose very lives have been a "war."

One woman, who spent nearly 20 years in therapy, first with an educational counselor, then three psychiatrists, plus a family therapist, found herself with suicidal feelings right up to the time she entered a therapy group for domestic abuse. One psychiatrist, an analyst, spent two years asking her, "What do you think?" Another psychiatrist gave her open prescriptions for highly addictive drugs, and the third psychiatrist wanted to use electroconvulsive therapy, probably the worst possible treatment for trauma survivors. The family therapist ordered her to draw a family geneology chart.

None of the above professionals seemed determined to find the cause of her suffering; they just had their favorite ways of treating symptoms, Ewart says. Her real problem had been nightly incest at the hands of her biological father, the rejection by her mother as a result, and constant debasing comments by both parents and both sisters all of her life. Not even her head-banging, a dead giveaway for sexual abuse, was noticed.

Another woman was in treatment for thirty years for depression and a "borderline personality disorder," ten of these years with the same psychiatrist. When the decade had

Goal Setting Stranger Danger Deployment Separation Anxiety Child Abuse ...

... victims of childhood physical abuse are more than twice as likely to

Workplace bully victims struggling to cope with fatal stress ...

... to be victims of physical abuse and violence 3 less likely to change

Source : http://imentalhealth.net/mental-health-disorders/personality-disorders/abuse-victims-misdiagnosed-new-author-says

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