Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Case Study 2: Hannah, age 55, was in a major car accident 20 years ago during a cross country trip. Ever since, she has been unable to drive on major highways. Although she does drive, she goes to great length to travel only on back roads and scenic routes. She is able to go where she wants but it often takes her much longer to get there than it should.


Hannah's fear of highways after her accident, shows me that she is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This disorder is normally caused by an experience that led to major physical or mental harm to the patient, such as car accidents, wars, and rape. The normal response is for that person to feel helpless and have a great sense of fear of any stimuli that remind them of the event.

Hannah endured a car accident almost 20 years ago, and she still suffers from it. Even though the physical traumas have been healed, her psychological state is still in shambles while driving. Since her experience was on a highway, Hannah is terrified of them. This symptom has gotten to be so intense, that Hannah avoids all highways, choosing to take the back roads that nearly double her drive time. Highways act as her stimuli, and bring back memories of the accident, causing Hannah to believe that it will happen again. This anxiety disorder is very severe. Normally symptoms of PTSD would be gone within 3 months of the event, yet twenty years later Hannah still suffers from them.

My treatment for Hannah would be immediate psychological help. I would recommend that she see a PTSD therapist as soon as possible. Though she may feel embarrassed or like she is weak, it is better for her to get treatment than live any longer with the disorder. She should have see a therapist right after the accident occurred because now it will take a much longer time for her to get over the event. She needs to know that this event is past, and will always be past.

John Nash

John Nash is one of the greatest minds today. He was only 21 when he wrote his 27-page outline of the "Nash Equilibrium". The impact of this theory was amazing. John Nash applied to Princeton university in 1948 with a one sentence recommendation, "This man is genius." And that was all it took. It was here Nash was first introduced to the theory of games. Nash soon turned the theory inside out and took it too an entirely new level. That was not his only contribution, he was also a mathematical genius. As an undergraduate he proved Brouwer's fixed point theorem and broke one of Riemann's most perplexing mathematical conundrums. in 1958 an unfortunate turn of events hits Nash. He is struck with a case of paranoid schizophrenia.

Nash's career was blown out of the water in 1958 when he was struck by paranoid schizophrenia. The disease hit him so hard he was nearly incapacitated. In 1959, his lost his job at M.I.T. and did nothing else for the next two decades. He later ended up back on the Princeton campus and became known as "the Phanton of Fine Hall". Slowly, the disease began to exvaporate in the early 1970's and Nash returned little by little to his mathematical works. Nash continued to work and received the Nobel Prize in 1994, sharing it with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten. He considered the work "his most trivial" accomplishment.

I believe that schizophrenia is a very harmful disease, that can and will ruin someones life. Nash was very lucky to have eventually gotten over it, even though it took more than 2 decades. It almost ruined his entire career, and took 2 decades of his life away from him. What interests me is that he did not take his madness as madness, he took it as a higher level of thinking. He mentioned that it felt as if he was breathing air too rare for mortals, and that by him no longer having the disorder, he could not make original discoveries. John Nash was an ingeous man.

Link 1 http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:John_f_nash_20061102_3.jpg