Post Trauma Stress Disorder in Australian-Vietnam Veterans

Running head: AUSTRALIAN-VIETNAM VETERANS 1
Post Trauma Stress Disorder in Australian-Vietnam Veterans
Student’s Name
University

AUSTRALIAN-VIETNAM VETERANS 2
Post Trauma Stress Disorder in Australian Vietnam Veterans
Australian Vietnam Veterans are a group of approximately 61,000 men and women who
served in the Royal Australian Navy, Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)
in Vietnam, or in the waters adjacent to Vietnam during the conflict between the two countries
between the years 1962 to 1975 (McLeay, Harvey, Romaniuk, Crawford & Young, 2017). These
people have a hard experience form the war where most of them were wounded while others died
due to the war. This means that the survivors of this war have post-traumatic stress disorder due
to the events that they went through. This cohort requires special attention since the people have
suffered since the end of the war. PTSD relates to someone who experienced a traumatic event or
suffered physical harm develop this condition because they feel strong reactions like fear, anger
or sadness which come to them when a flashback of the memory comes to them (O’Toole,
Dadds, Outram, & Catts, 2018).
The symptoms of the condition can interfere with one’s ability to perform their daily
activities. The most common symptom of this problem is seen in intrusive memories or
flashbacks of the traumatic event through intrusive memories or nightmares. This means that
some people may have nightmares and sleep disturbances while others may have strong
emotions which show some physical symptoms like sweating, panic attacks or heart palpitations.
According to Smit, Smith, Violanti, Bartone, & Homish (2016), these symptoms relate to the
cluster Arousal/reactivity where the individual has sleep disturbance, jumpiness, irritability and
sometimes problems with concentration. Such patients have varying episodes of the symptom
which vary from situation to situation and individual to individual.
Post-traumatic stress disorder patients experience flashbacks of the traumatic event
through intrusive memories or nightmares which makes it difficult for such people to adjust and

AUSTRALIAN-VIETNAM VETERANS 3
cope with the other people in the society. Such patients have intrusive memories where they
experience recurrent or unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic experience that they
went through (Foa, McLean, Capaldi, & Rosenfield, 2013). Sometimes that people have
flashbacks where they tend to relive the events as if it is happening again. Some also have
upsetting nightmares and dreams about the event and may have difficulty sleeping. When such
events happen, the people experience emotional distress when they face any physical reactors
that remind them of the event that they went through. This means that for the Australian-
Vietnamese veterans, they may face different triggers in their public life especially as they
struggle to fit into public life.
During the research, eligible articles were identified from various databases like
Cumulative Index of Nursing, NCBI, MDA online, PubMed and Allied Health, Cochrane
databases, British Journal of Nursing and Medline. The research was based on the use of
keywords like PTSD and Intrusive memories. To narrow down the research from a large number
of articles that were found, the search was narrowed down to PTSD and the Australia-
Vietnamese veterans. Since search terms influence the results and the identification of the
articles the search worked on one database to another while focusing on the results to understand
how the databases had explained the symptom of shortness of breath for the condition. The
purpose was to find articles that had analyzed the symptom to give an understanding of the
relationship between the symptom, the condition and implications for practice.
The essential features of intrusive memories as the symptoms of PTSD include recurrent
of stressful memories of the traumatic event that the individual witnessed which occur every time
now and then. In most cases, traumatic events take a lot of time before the individual can
overcome them thus the reason why the Australian-Vietnamese veterans will experience these