Currently I am working with a girl who has a diagnosis of PTSD. When she was suicidal she put herself into the psych ward. She got a BiP diagnosis then.

At school she gets easily frustrated, doesn't care about a whole lot, and occasionally goes into a real downer and lashes out. Things ( relationships/ situations ) in her life can really put her in the deep end.

She tells me that she can read words but not for meaning and seems to also have some memory difficulties. She seems to like math the best. I have read the factoid sheets on the disorder but was hoping there was someone on the board who could explain this better.

I can say as someone who was dx'd ADHD then bipolar (after series of events won't go there all types of abuse involved prolonged) due to mothers denial (insisted abuse wasn't in picture at all) just now at age 25 am getting help for the PTSD (complex???) and the main helper was NO MOOD STABILIZING MEDS... I think ptsd needs to be thoroughly assessed before a bipolar label gets slapped on more molested and abused children and the meds just sedate and retard their learning and help them "numb out" rather than processing trauma ( i apologize for the reactive behavior but this is a sore issue for me)... does the girl have ADHD I know that PTSD can cause adhd symptoms or in my case "tantrums" which were labelled mania and Haldol shots in the butt after being abused repetitive and severely for 4 years wasn't helping my ADHD or PTSD but I know as a (well not quite survivor) person who is working through trauma taht the bipolar label just creates a life of invalidation for what has happened to them and she should have validation whether the bipolar is legit or not sedation will not help and again I apologize for the reactive behavior but it hit me close to home...

I guess I'm suffering from PTSD... my mood is labile, but only downwards. doesn't take much to make me feel like wanting to d**. When she doesn't seem to care about school: I was also able to "distance" myself from nearly everything. It might also be self-sabotage.
Sometimes I try to be a bit hyper, just to prevent falling... but I'm surely not manic. I'm quite sure I've ADD...
I agree on trying first to work on her PTSD issues. I think one starts to feel a lot better when one recognizes that ones reaction is "normal in an unnormal situation" and that all those feelings have a reason and need to be expressed, as she probably had to denie and suppress her every feeling.
Try not to compare, not telling how others feel, not to make her think of better things... she probably needs someone with whom she can safely express her feelings, who does not belittle them. Probably she was made responsible for the feelings of adults, so she needs to focus on her feelings, to break the walls she had to erect around her emotions to keep them at bay. Then she'll live again...

That's what's helping me... don't know....

Hope it helps

yes and I must apologize for my reactive behavior if I came across as rude I am sorry I know that I cannot continue to equate my past experience and all mental health professionals and I apologize to anyone that I may have offended

My diagnoses is ADHD/PTSD/OCD/Depression. I'm not sure what the girl has gone thru but I have no trouble speaking about my past anymore in mixed company. I have set it behind me most days. My PTSD is from being abused verbally, mentally, physically and sexually at a young age.

My coping mechanism was to hold it all inside and never tell a soul. It took my mother a long time to figure out that I had been raped on more then one occasion by my step father's drunken buddies. Just kept burrying and erecting more and more walls until NOTHING and i do mean NOTHING touched me.

Grade school was hard. Whether it was the ADHD or the PTSD words had absolutly no meaning to me from the time I was 4 until I was probably around 16. I could hear them, I could read them, I could write them but as far as their meaning...NOTHING. People say a lot of things they don't mean, make a lot of promises they do not intend to keep *speaking as my inner child* especially adults.

The first step is to ensure this child is getting the proper mental diagnoses and support she needs thru a lot of talk therapy and support at home. My advise to you on a personal level is to tell her exactly what you mean and mean exactly what you say. No false promises, no false hope, show her that many adults do take their honor seriously.

The girl needs hope, she needs someone to believe in but most of all she needs to believe in herself. It will come with time and patience and a TON of positive reinforcement.

Good luck its a hard task you've been handed.
Cherity

ps. Sometimes I slip away and words once again lose all meaning to me and my college courses got very difficult. I found that having my husband *the ONE person I trust with everything I am* read my notes out loud over and over while taping them helped me absorb what I needed to know. Just popped my headphones on whenever I had a spare minute or when I went to bed.

I have PTSD, but after years and years of counselling, and support from friends and treatment I'm much better at dealing with it.

If something happened really recently and she's still in shock, then really the best thing to do is try to help her deal with those issues, like other people have said.

When I was a teenager, I got raped by a stranger outside a subway station, then 6 weeks later had a miscarriage as a result (i didn't know i was pregnant until that happened) then my dad died unexpectedly a week after that.... among other things..

Living for a long time after that was the equivilent of "in one ear and out the other". I functioned, but I wasn't actually thinking about any of my actions. So I was able to be really productive at my part time job, for example... but it was productive in the way a robot can be really productive if you set it to it's maximum... the robot does the job but it doesn't have an insight or character.. you know?

When you said "She tells me that she can read words but not for meaning and seems to also have some memory difficulties." That sounds like me, and fits with the description above I just gave.

In my opinion, part of dealing with PTSD you have to wait it out, no matter how much support and help you have.

I know a lot of people are against medications, and for a while I was prescribed wayyyy too many benzodiazepines, but if the PTSD is *really* severe, they can be appropriate to take.. My work allowed me to take Ativan during my shifts (although Ativan is the devil.....) in the sublingual form if I had any major mental crises. That definitely helped...

And just talking about the stuff helped. Things like death, and rape and other types of trauma are less difficult to deal with once it doesn't feel like it's a secret.. and I started to feel like I had more control over everything.

hope that helps:)

-Leora

Well, I have been diagnosed with ADD/PTSD. I guess I will just say what my PTSD comes from...my ex used to abuse me verbally, mentally, physically, and sexually. Then, he tried to kill me, I lived but the baby I was pregnant with didn't make it. That is when I finally left him. It took me years to trust any men again and it took years to discover what reality was after being so extremely manipulated for so long. The PTSD is really hard to deal with.

There are some things that really help me personally: music, lighting candles, cleaning, but, most of all, journaling. Oh, meditation and yoga work well for me too. But, seeing a counselor on a regular basis is the most important. I know that, for me, when the PTSD is at its peak, it feels impossible to learn.

I agree too that, it is really important for her to get lots of positive reinforcement and feedback. Feeling important and/or appreciated eases some of the pain.

Wonderful posts and insights.

Thank you.

Traumatic stress in childhood affects the development of many brain parts to do with memory and learning, such as the Hippocampus. Emotional regulation centres are also affected, such as the Limbic System.

Traumatic stress is also implicated in Mood Disorders and Psychotic Disorders. Traumatic stress in early childhood (www.acestudy.org (http://www.acestudy.org/)) has shown to increase the risk of psychosis by 7x. [Bipolar, which you mention is a mood disorder and a psychotic disorder.)

I'm surprised the girl is doing as well as she is. (From what i recall in my educational psychology and learning/memory psychology courses.)

I'd suggest keeping things light and fun; let her have choices/control over a few things/decisions; do tasks in small 'chunks' so as not max out her likely "low frustration tolerance" [which most of us ADDers have]; use methods that use her learning strengths.

Emma