Reign Over Me is a 2007 movie about friendship and loss, Charlie Fineman, who suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following the loss of his family in the 911 attack. He reunites with his former college roommate, Allan Johnson who tries to help him.
Allan Johnson is living a good life; he has a well-paying job as a dentist, he is married to the love of his life, and they have two children. As his responsibilities have increased, he has been unable to find a balance between work and personal life with no one to share his feelings but his wife. Charlie, on the other hand, had a good life, family and a good job, until he lost his family, his wife, three daughters and the family dog, during the September 11 plane attacks leaving him with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); he constantly gets flashbacks about his family, suffers severe anxiety when his family’s pictures are shown to him, sweats excessively, is frequently aggressive, is hopeless and avoids anything that reminded him of his wife and their three daughters.
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The first time Allan runs into Charlie; he is wearing headphones and does not hear him. They, however, run into each other again and even though Charlie does not remember Allan, he likes him because he does not speak about his family since he does not know about what happened. Eventually, when Allan asks about his family, Charlie becomes aggressive. Allan, however, tries to help Charlie deal with the Trauma. Angela, the psychologist, also tries to help Charlie open up during their sessions.
The emotions in the movie feel real, especially when Charlie tells Allan about his family; you can feel his pain. The fact that Charlie does not give up until he fully recovers is commendable. Allan standing by Charlie throughout his recovery process is a picture of true friendship. The mental condition is accurately portrayed in his character with sudden eruptions of aggravated anger when reminded of his family. Also, he tends to escape reality through binge listening to music or being irritable when asked about his family. Among the essential characteristics for Post, traumatic disorder includes irritability, avoidance, and re-experiencing of events.
It should be noted that these symptoms need to be present in the patient for at least a month and should cause clinically significant stress. Irritability occurs when the patient seems to become acutely stressed and aggressive when prompted on stress, causing event. Such hyperarousal can also be seen in difficulty in sleeping or concentrating on a single event. Also, avoidance manifests itself in the patient’s life with their efforts of escaping anything that brings up the Trauma once faced. A patient may take any action to avoid being confronted on the specific subject that causes distress.
Similarly, avoidance can be portrayed in the patients with through numbing of the pain. They may numb their pain through escapism methods or binging on anything that drives their thoughts of the traumatic events. Furthermore, patients undergoing such predicaments have frequent flashbacks that bring them intrusive recollection of the Trauma. They may experience an event that drives them back to the life they had or the event causing the distress; this can also be manifested through frequent and severe nightmares.
PTSD in the DSM is categorized under Trauma and stressor-related disorders. All the conditions under that specific classification require that the patient has been exposed to a stressful or traumatic event. Hence the first criterion for the diagnosis is the identification of the stressor. The person should have been exposed to a life-threatening condition either through direct participation, witnessing, or indirectly through observing details of the traumatic event, for example, medics. The second criterion followed is intrusion; which requires that the patient constantly re-experiences the events either through nightmares, flashbacks, or incessant disturbing thoughts. The third criterion followed is the avoidance of the Trauma through averting from Trauma-related thoughts or events that may trigger memories. The fourth criterion is observing any altered behaviors and mood. For instance, the patient may show signs of feeling abandoned, losing the ability to remember key events in the trauma causing event, and exaggerated self-blame. The fifth criterion considered changes in arousal activities. The patient may have become overly irritable, has difficulty in sleeping, and displays destructive behavior. The sixth criterion is that these symptoms should have lasted for than a month. The seventh criterion is that these symptoms should cause social dysfunction. And lastly, none of these symptoms should occur due to medication, diseases, or drug abuse.
A Research on proton GABA in veterans with PTSD was done to answer the question whether there is a difference in the amount of Gamma-aminobutyric acid a neuro inhibitor. The research focused on veterans, those who had PTSD, and those without. Using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy 27 veterans with PTSD and 45 without completed the scanning protocol. The veterans were aged between 24 and 54 the results showed that the veterans without PTSD had a significantly low amount of GABA in the anterior cingulate cortex as compared to the veterans who were not suffering from PTSD. Thus it proved that there is a role played by GABA alterations in the veterans suffering from PTSD (Blessing et al., 2018).
Another research focused on the relationship between alcohol use, PTSD, deployment, and male and female veterans. It sought to understand who were more vulnerable to alcohol abuse after a traumatic deployment experience. The study looked at the connection between deployment stressor and post-deployment stressors among 2344 female veterans and 1137 male veterans. The researchers discovered that intense warfare and military sexual trauma were linked to diagnosis with PTSD. The problem consequentially led to an acute abuse of alcohol. Also, the issue affected more women than it did men (Banducci, McCaughey, Gradus & Street, 2019).
Lastly, research was done to find the association between diagnosis with PTSD and the risk of cardiovascular disease in aging veterans. A total of 138,341 veterans aged 55 years and older participated. All of the participating veterans had not been diagnosed with any cardiovascular condition at the beginning of the study in the year 2000 - 2003. The researchers measured for cardiovascular diseases such as congestive heart failure, myocardial infarction, and peripheral vascular disease. A follow-up study on the participants was done from 2004 to 2011. The study showed that at the baseline of the research, 3% of the veterans had already been diagnosed with PTSD (Beristianos, Yaffe, Cohen & Byers, 2016). Aging veterans with PTSD were found to have a 45% risk of developing cerebrovascular diseases, 26% at risk of being diagnosed with congestive heart failure, a 49% risk of acquiring myocardial infarctions and 35% chance of getting diagnosed with peripheral vascular disease. It showed that PTSD increases the chances of aged veterans acquiring heart diseases (Beristianos, Yaffe, Cohen & Byers, 2016).
References
Banducci, A. N., McCaughey, V., Gradus, J. L., & Street, A. E. (2019). The associations between deployment experiences, PTSD, and alcohol use among male and female veterans. Addictive Behaviors , 106032.
Beristianos, M. H., Yaffe, K., Cohen, B., & Byers, A. L. (2016). PTSD and risk of incident cardiovascular disease in aging veterans. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry , 24 (3), 192-200.
Blessing, E., Maron-Katz, A., de los Angeles, C., Abu-Amara, D., Li, M., Qian, M., ... & Marmar, C. (2018). F25. PTSD is Associated With Reduced Anterior and Posterior Hippocampal Connectivity in Combat Veterans. Biological Psychiatry , 83 (9), S246-S247.
