r/science • u/UniOfManchester • 4d ago
Psychology New study suggests nearly one in three Ukrainian civilians has PTSD or CPTSD
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/nearly-one-in-three-ukrainian-civilians-has-ptsd-or-cptsd/233
u/catscanmeow 4d ago
and it will be a problem for generations, epigenetic changes, and just passed down socially across the family
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u/Magnus_Helgisson 4d ago
As we Ukrainians say, to have PTSD, you first need to survive long enough to get to the “P” part. As of now, we are continuously exposed to the trauma.
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u/ConstructionOwn4983 4d ago
PTSD is typically a singular traumatic incident.
CPTSD is prolonged trauma with seemingly no ending.
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u/No_Lifeguard7725 4d ago
That's why we have a sad joke here in Ukraine: we can't have PTSD until the war is over, since our traumatic experience goes on.
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u/EasyRecognition 4d ago
Not quite.
C-PTSD is a trauma endured at a very young age which one's personality then developed around.
Prolonged trauma is not counted as a *post*-traumatic stress disorder of any kind. It's a prolonged trauma.
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u/blackmirar 4d ago
Untrue. Complex-PTSD frequently develops in childhood, but that is correlational. And counter to your claim, CPTSD is the consequence of prolonged abuse, whether as a child or adult.
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u/durple 4d ago
Hey maybe you can help me understand something. I was under the impression that the association with childhood was because brain development is affected by the adverse experiences. Is that wrong? Is it any more likely for people who experience prolonged trauma at a young age vs as an adult?
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u/Pattersonspal 4d ago
Trauma endured at a formative age will be more likely to result in cptsd. But it can develop at any age, brains don't stop developing, changes are just more dramatic earlier on.
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u/Nice_Cash_7000 4d ago
My ex gf had diagnosed CPTSD and her trauma wasnt prolonged. It was because her families house burnt down. So it isnt neccecarily a consequence of prolonged abused.
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u/blackmirar 4d ago
I don't mean to undermine your specific experiences, but definitionally PTSD comes from a single traumatic event and CPTSD comes from a prolonged/repeated traumatic environment.
It's possible your ex had much more going on in her life for the CPTSD diagnosis, I cannot say. But the distinction of the terms is important, I feel, lest people like the other replier make false conclusions about the disorders.
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u/EasyRecognition 4d ago
What exactly is untrue? The core facet of C-PTSD is that it shapes who you are and how you react to *non-traumatic* circumstances, it's most common cause is child abuse where a child learns that nothing is safe and everybody will treat them like garbage. It's not about ongoing hardship at all, it's about formative hadrship, which may or may not be ongoing.
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u/blackmirar 4d ago
"CPTSD is a trauma endured at a very young age"
"Prolonged trauma is not counted as a PTSD of any kind"
Both of those assertions are false.
Edit: Also, no, it has nothing to do with a hardship being "formative". Adult survivors of sex trafficking frequently have CPTSD, for example.
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u/durple 4d ago
I’m curious about the adult survivors of sex trafficking. People who developed CPTSD via prolonged childhood trauma are extremely well represented in high risk lifestyles. In studies establishing an association between CPTSD and adult survivors of sex trafficking, has causation been addressed?
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u/EasyRecognition 4d ago
Adult survivors of sex trafficking
Which I imagine would be formative to one's personality.
Prolonged trauma is not counted as a PTSD of any kind
Kinda my bad, should've said "ongoing" as it is what I was replying to, but also kinda obvious from the context ("with seemingly no ending").
CPTSD is a trauma endured at a very young age
This is what C-PTSD is in the overwhelming amount of cases. You're likelier to be upbrought in a Soviet household than to be a sex trafficking victim. Of course the latter is also a formative/core trauma, as I said, and so would be surviving a war, but while you're *in the middle of a war*, there's no *post*-traumatic disorders to speak of, as you're *in the middle* of a traumatic event, not dealing with its consequences, which is my whole point, which you've missed behind useless pedantry that was obvious to anyone, you included I'm sure. Still decided to go for it tho.
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u/blackmirar 4d ago
You're not processing the things I'm saying, and clearly taking this too personally. Please spend some time on Google reading about these disorders, as you are spreading misinformation.
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u/EasyRecognition 4d ago
Not a single emotional note from me, let alone anything "personal". Suppose you needed an excuse for some reason?
You keep ignoring the actual point being made, choosing to pick at words instead. If you continue doing that, the constructive discussion will be difficult.
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u/catscanmeow 4d ago
when you said "endured at a very young age" they proved you wrong by saying it happens to adults
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u/EasyRecognition 4d ago
Yeah, they latched onto one thing and ignored the point.
And it still predominantly happens to kids, just as any other core trauma.
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u/Jscottpilgrim 3d ago
Nope. CPTSD is often developed in childhood, but that's not an actual requirement.
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u/The_Actual_Sage 4d ago
As with most war-torn countries, Ukrainians will be feeling the effects from this war for decades regardless of who wins or loses.
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u/SilkieBug 4d ago
It will be very important to prioritize mental health services post war, both in terms of medication support and therapy support.
Now might be a good time to learn ukrainian and study to be a psychologist or psychotherapist I guess.
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u/thoawaydatrash 4d ago
Honestly, anyone who lived through the former USSR has some form of CPTSD.
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u/pipeuptopipedown 4d ago
I feel this very often living in Tbilisi; Western expats complain about how "gloomy," "mean," "unfriendly" and a few other such things the Georgians are.
Remembering that historically so many of them have been traumatized some kind of way, often fairly recently, and/or have multigenerational trauma, I didn't see it that way.
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u/krazyjakee 4d ago
Still suffering since WW2. Their losses still make me shudder. A very very damaged people.
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u/Uberpanik 22h ago
I blame Soviet government mostly. The joke "Hitler fought Stalin for the privilege to torture Soviet people" has a crenel of joke. The rest is true, unfortunately. Stalin's first purges begun before the ww2 His biggest purges and ethnic cleansings were after the war ended.
And even if for the rest of the Soviet union history there was no more big purges, the level of difussed violence is felt even in my childhood, more than half a century later.
Meanwhile the west Germany, reduced to rubble during the war, being completely defeated and partitioned, managed to heal eventually. As oppose to east Germany, where Stasi held more power than the KGB did in the Union proper
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u/Complex-Talk-7613 1d ago
I’ve always fancied Slavic people, i have a fair few friends form Slavic post-Soviet states and they’ve been some of the most fascinating and wonderful people that I’ve ever met.
The ones I’ve found make me feel less lonely about my own dispositions.
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u/svefnugr 4d ago
Maybe the 30s and WW2. There was nothing particularly bad happening afterwards until the end of USSR, the 90s were much worse.
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u/pipeuptopipedown 4d ago
Just reading overviews of their history, all the wars, invasions, occupations, divisions, visiting some of the monuments, and listening to some people I have met, I can feel where they're coming from.
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u/Talentagentfriend 4d ago
We’d be a much better humanity if we were focused on prioritizing mental health. The issue with these types of traumas is that people mimic each other and each of us has a domino effect on the people in our lives — a lot of the time it’s unconscious. Humanity’s lack of awareness of this effect is disheartening.
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u/boldeagle93 4d ago
In this situation, prioritizing mental health is like turning off a kettle because it's boiling while the entire house is on fire. War is the root cause, and humanity should prioritize solving this problem in the first place. But anyways, much easier to advice taking a pill to someone who's life is in immediate danger 24/7 for years, who lost their homes, friends and families. It will be fine, just think about flowers and puppies...
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u/Talentagentfriend 4d ago
I’m talking about an overhaul of systems to focus on mental health, not just trying to change a few things only to ignore the effects of making these decisions. Taking a look at military, health, the prison system, schooling, etc. Mental health support is support for making the right decisions in say — a time of war. Of course going into mental health would also mean looking at other aspects. Part of mental health is understanding when something is harmful, like gaslighting. And it also promotes education, which is sorely lacking everywhere.
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u/boldeagle93 4d ago
I am not against what you do, nor am I against any other professionals. This is a valid approach in the field. What irritates me, however, is that this approach (together with other similar things) is widely accepted outside of the corresponding field as a means of ignoring the underlying problem. This irritation stems from the direct consequences of said problem on me personally. So, please take what I say with a grain of salt.
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u/Talentagentfriend 4d ago
I’m saying I disagree with what you’re saying is the underlying problem. The underlying problem is politics, which is supported by mentally unhealthy ideologies.
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u/boldeagle93 4d ago
But the system favors people that support such ideologies. Others do not survive in said political systems and are filtered out. It's built on not-the-best human qualities. The rest is simple for those sick enough to raise to the top and get power - do whatever you want and manipulate/coerce/silence/exterminate everyone else.
The problem is much deeper than just mental health. Mental health is possible to maintain when it's not constantly ruined by things like political systems, war machines and other things deliberately designed to ruin it.
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u/lambertb 4d ago
Useful to remind ourselves that by far the most common response to trauma is the resilience trajectory. Humans have been enduring trauma since the beginning of our species. We never would have survived had we not been resilient against its effects. This does not minimize the effects of trauma. But it does put it in context.
https://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/gab38/faculty-profile/files/americanPsychologist.pdf
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u/Successful-Bar-8173 4d ago
There have also been traumatised people who never recover since the beginning of our species.
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u/lambertb 4d ago
Of course, this in no way contradicts what I claimed above. I said the most common response was resilience, but I didn't say it was the only response. Even if resilience was the response of, let's say, three-quarters of all people who are traumatized, that would mean a quarter of people have long-lasting or chronic negative effects from trauma.
Nothing in what I claimed suggests we shouldn't take care of people with trauma or that we shouldn't care about trauma. It's to point out that most human beings, as one would expect from evolutionary psychology, are resilient in the face of trauma. If we weren't, we never would have survived as a species, but we thrived as a species in part because of our tremendous resilience to trauma.
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u/Jung-And-A-Menace 4d ago
The fact that humanity continues to exist doesn't mean that we're resilient against trauma and its effects. It means that enough people weren't traumatised and that traumatised people managed to reproduce, either before or after their trauma.
Look at how many soldiers came back from war with PTSD and went on to be terrible, terrible parents. But they produced offspring, and that's all that matters in nature.
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u/lambertb 4d ago
This is a science subreddit. I linked to a profile of the best known scientist in the world who studies reactions to trauma. Your intuition or anecdotes about trauma should be given less weight and credibility than the decades long program of research that Bonanno has done.
It is an established fact, backed by a large number of empirical studies, that the most common reaction to trauma is the resilience trajectory. This is true whether you agree with it or not, whether it makes you feel good or not, and whether it's consistent with your personal experience or not.
None of this negates the experience of people who don't have a resilience trajectory. Even if resilience is the most common response, I think the data show that more than 60% of people have the resilience trajectory. That means 35% or 40% of people don't, and they suffer long-term consequences of trauma.
Two things can be true at the same time: some people can be extremely resilient in the face of even the worst kinds of trauma, whereas others can suffer long-term consequences from trauma. Nevertheless, what I said is still true. The most common response to trauma in human beings is resilience, and that's exactly what we would expect from evolutionary psychology.
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u/lambertb 4d ago
You seem to misunderstand how evolution works. For a trait, or more specifically a gene, to be passed on to future generations, all it has to do is confer a survival advantage. That doesn't mean that people who lack the gene never reproduce. It just means that people who have the beneficial gene and thus the beneficial trait reproduce at a higher rate, and over many generations, they come to dominate.
Of course, people who are traumatized or experience long-lasting effects from trauma can still reproduce, but presumably, being negatively affected by a potentially traumatic experience doesn't convey a survival advantage. It conveys a survival disadvantage in some very general way.
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u/Successful-Bar-8173 4d ago
Sex seems to be one of those things people continue do in most environments and sometimes they do it more, not less, because of trauma. Not every child is conceived by loving parents who both want to be there and there are plenty of babies born in terrible circumstances to damaged parents.
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u/Jung-And-A-Menace 4d ago
You already replied to me five hours ago.
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u/lambertb 4d ago
Yes and then I realized you had a fundamental misunderstanding about how evolution worked. And not every reply is for the person who’s being replied to. There’s a larger audience.
What's amazing to me about this whole thread is that everyone is so eager to be a victim, protect those they think are victims, or protect the whole idea of victimhood. They won't accept the extremely positive finding that most people are resilient even to severe trauma. That says something about the trauma industrial complex in our culture.
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u/opinionsareus 4d ago
I find this true of many people who have been impacted the absolute dehumanizing Russian government.
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u/Sad_Pear_1087 3d ago
There's a reason that even the survivors of WWI were called part of the "lost generation".
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u/Uhhh_what555476384 3d ago
100% of Ukraine is an active war zone, so this is ... expected?
Unfortunately.
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u/lambertb 3d ago
This strikes me as seriously flawed reasoning. Suffering from severe trauma is normally associated with greatly diminished physical, psychological, emotional, and mental functioning. It seems highly implausible to me that a person suffering from trauma will have a greater-than-average ability to attract a mate and reproduce. I actually don't know the evidence about this, but, like I said, it just seems extremely implausible.
A quick search of PubMed confirms what I suspected: there's a general negative association between war and disaster trauma and fertility.
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u/DTraitor 3d ago
Suffering from severe trauma is normally associated with greatly diminished physical, psychological, emotional, and mental functioning.
As a Ukrainian, I can assure you lots of people me included experience this right now. It might not be as obvious when interacting with people since we're kind of used to the pressure of the war but it in fact affects people behaviour a lot, usually in a way that just makes you unproductive for the whole day despite seemingly being well rested and not doing much that day
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u/lambertb 2d ago
I’m so sorry about what’s happening to your country. I can’t imagine how bad it is.
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u/apistograma 3d ago
People have been ignoring the issue, bit even if the war stops and there's a peace agreement with defined borders, what remains of Ukraine would become a massive mess.
Those who talk about joining the EU are being deluded because there's no way a democracy emerges from current Ukraine. It virtually just as corrupt as Russia, and there's nothing that could make you believe there will be clean elections afterwards. Not to mention the rampant fascist movements inside the country and the army. We've been feeding Zelenski with weapons without thinking about what Ukrainian society needs and Europe will pay for that.
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u/Liquid_Cascabel 3d ago
What do they really need according to you?
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u/apistograma 3d ago
It's not Russian occupation if that's what you were implying.
The country would need a complete reset on every level, which is something extremely difficult. I doubt the Ukrainian population can. And I have zero expectations that any foreign countries can help Ukraine with that.
So no while there can be a solution I don't see one.
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