June: Pride Month and National PTSD Awareness
Let’s talk about how mental illness intersects with different facets of life
The Black Bear community knows that mental illness is invisible and can happen to anyone, anytime. Of course, like any illness, some individuals are more susceptible than others. Genetics can play a role in determining who suffers from mental illness, as can life experiences.
For June, we want to highlight an important area of mental illness that is often misunderstood and is found at the intersection of trauma and mental illness: PTSD.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, PTSD is defined as follows:
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event, series of events or set of circumstances. An individual may experience this as emotionally or physically harmful or life-threatening and may affect mental, physical, social, and/or spiritual well-being. Examples include natural disasters, serious accidents, terrorist acts, war/combat, rape/sexual assault, historical trauma, intimate partner violence and bullying…
Not all trauma survivors will experience PTSD, but victims of severe or repeated traumas are more likely to develop PTSD than…
