快猫短视频

After experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder after being raped, Karestan Koenen made it her career to study the condition. Now at Harvard University, Koenen is leading the largest ever genetic study of PTSD, by sifting through the genomes of tens of thousands of people (see Why women are more at risk of PTSD 鈥� and how to prevent it鈥�). She tells 快猫短视频 how her experiences shaped her career

What was your idea of PTSD before you experienced it yourself?
I would have associated it with men who served in the military 鈥� the stereotype of a Vietnam veteran who has experienced really horrible combat, and comes back and has nightmares about it.

Do you think that is how PTSD is perceived by the public generally?
Yes. People know that PTSD is related to trauma, and that people can have flashbacks and nightmares. But they tend to think it is associated with combat.

A lot of popular images of PTSD come from war movies, and people tend to associate being a soldier with being a man. They are less aware that most PTSD is related to things that happen to civilians 鈥� things like rape, sexual assault and violence, which can affect women more than men.

Is this misperception of PTSD problematic?
It鈥檚 a problem in the sense that women or men who have PTSD from non-combat experiences might not recognise what they have as PTSD, and because of that, may not end up getting help. And if you saw it in a loved one, you may not understand what was going on with them.

When people come to understand that what they have is PTSD, it can take away a lot of shame and stigma surrounding their feelings. They鈥檙e not 鈥済oing crazy鈥� 鈥� it鈥檚 a consequence of a bad experience.

When did you realise you might have PTSD?
I was told I probably had it within a month of the rape, which happened while I was working in the Peace Corps aged 23. When they medically evacuated me, I was sent to all kinds of doctors, including a psychologist and a mental health professional, and she told me I probably had PTSD.

I started getting real treatment after I went home, within a couple of months.

What were your symptoms like?
I had nightmares. I kept having images of the rape come into my mind when I didn鈥檛 want them to. I鈥檇 be trying to read or do something else, but I couldn鈥檛 stop thinking about it.

I had a few flashbacks. The most vivid one I had was when I was on the metro in Washington DC. I don鈥檛 know what triggered it. I remember there were some teenage kids being loud and rambunctious. They didn鈥檛 threaten me, but something about the interaction triggered me. And I remember being on the train, and feeling like I was in the rape again. It was really vivid. I started panicking.

I was very on-guard, always looking over my shoulder feeling very anxious. I had trouble sleeping. And I remember feeling very hopeless about the future. I couldn鈥檛 imagine any kind of life for myself.

Did therapy help with your symptoms?
With cognitive behavioural therapy, the nightmares and the acute re-experiencing symptoms really diminished over six months. But other things like feeling anxious and hypervigilant and on guard, that lasted longer. That took a while for me to overcome.

Learning how to breathe differently made a profound difference. One of the aspects of sexual assault is that you lose control. Someone else takes control of your body. For me, being able to change how I was feeling through my breathing helped me gain mastery over my body again.

How did you become involved in PTSD research?
I started reading about PTSD 鈥� first in terms of my recovery, and then books that were a little more academic. When I left the Peace Corps, I didn鈥檛 know what I was going to do with my life. My therapist recommended I take some psychology courses.

I soon had the goal of becoming a therapist. I wanted to help other people who had had a similar experience to me. So I got a PhD in clinical psychology. I did clinical training at a women鈥檚 division of the VA Hospital in Boston, and most of the people I treated were female veterans. That鈥檚 when I became interested in the differences between PTSD in men and women.

How has the scientific understanding of PTSD changed during your career?
We once thought trauma was rare, but now we know that a lot of people experience it. And we also know that for some traumas, like sexual assault, more people develop PTSD, compared with other kinds of trauma.

But we still have a long way to go in terms of really understanding it, and how it鈥檚 different across different people and populations.

How do you think our understanding will change in the future?
I hope that in the future we will be better able to understand who is at risk for PTSD, and what the biological pathways are. That is a major goal of the study I am now doing into genetics and PTSD.