Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are psychological condition that are basically associated with human response to trauma, traumatic condition or any condition that influence their psychological wellbeing. The response of to terrorism experience by the victim can lead to development of these conditions although various factor my influence the outcome. Here are the predisposing factors to ASD and PTSD and why some victims of terrorism or traumatic situation don’t develop the disorders.
As Bryant & Harvey, (2000) observes, there are various conditions that can expose someone to Acute Stress Disorder prior exposure or experience, prior experience of PTSD or individuals suffering from PTSD and individuals suffering form psychiatric dysfunction. The individual with above condition if confronted with a stressor are more likely to develop PTSD. Tragic accidents, depression and previous psychiatric treatment can all predispose a person to ASD. In this regard a terrorism attack experience could be classified as a tragic accident since it may trigger traumas.
PTSD can also be caused by a range of factors ranging psychological distress caused by stress, anxiety in survivors of situation such as cancer as well as several other diseases in childhood or adulthood, and previous exposure to traumas. The effects of these factors may be catalyzed by demographic factors such as age and sex. Certainly pain and other physical conditions my increase increases the level of intrusive levels that may lead to distress and PTSD. However, psychosocial and psychological factor play the greatest role in the development of PTSD. Traumatic events seem to be the greatest factor leading to this disorder. A combination of past traumatic experience with recent distress can be very dangerous. In this regard, victims of a terrorism attack can easily develop PTSD if they are exposed to other stressing factors. Other psychological risk factors include dysfunction attribution and copying mechanisms, general distress at high levels, and premorbid psychology. Survivors of wars and disasters such as the holocaust survivors experienced PTSD due to this factors (Alter & Axelrod, 1996).
Victims to terrorism attacks are just like the victims to the holocaust. For instance while the terror experienced by the victim may lead to development of ASD and/or PTSD in some victims. Other victims may only experience the trauma and never develop any psychological disorder. These phenomena can be attributed to dysfunctional attribution and copying mechanism in those who develop he disorders as opposed to those who have well developed copying and attribution mechanism (Green & Krupnick, 2000). The experience of a terror leaves a traumatic experience on the victims who may lead to those which poor copying mechanism to develop PTSD and later ASD.