Subjects with affective or anxiety disorders who enter clinical trials have significant quality-of-life impairment, although the degree of dysfunction varies. Diagnostic-specific symptom measures explained only a small proportion of the variance in quality of life, suggesting that an individual’s perception of quality of life is an additional factor that should be part of a complete assessment.
Read the abstract: Quality-of-Life Impairment in Depressive and Anxiety Disorders -- Rapaport et al. 162 (6): 1171 -- American Journal of Psychiatry.
59% of people who are diagnosed with PTSD were found to have clinically severe impairment in quality of life. That's huge. The study did not include any statistics on the number of ill-informed, but supposedly well-meaning, people who tell people who have PTSD to "just get over it." I've always wondered if those well-meaning people have any idea how miserable it is to experience severe PTSD. If they did have any idea, or even enough of a heart to try to imagine it, they'd know that if a person could get over it, they'd do it in a heartbeat rather than to go on living in that hell. I hope that some of those people will read this and take at least a couple moments to consider how hurtful their suggestions are.
Amen!
Posted by: Simone | June 07, 2005 at 12:41 AM