Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Research Papers (original) (raw)

One aspect of the data, one common theme, which should not surprise, but does, is this: every single one of these people is incredibly miserable here. My conclusions in this paper will be drawn not just from the interviews I’ve done with the married residents, but also with the other residents I’ve come to know and have written about in my field notes. Even the nicest, most forbearing, patient, and unfailingly polite among them, JB, summed up the entire experience of being here as “disgusting.” And it’s not the quality of the care, or the staff, or the cleanliness of the building, or the amount of light they receive through the windows, or the food, but rather the very fact that they are not at home, that they are institutionalized, and that they never, ever forget that. The institution repeatedly reminds them of their traumatic experiences, when they were helpless and terrified. Some suffer the pain of watching a spouse deteriorate and die, and all of them seem to feel desolation, isolation, and loneliness, even though they are constantly surrounded by often very noisy people and their machine. But even so, these experiences are not at the heart of the matter. What is the heart of the matter? What is the single most unbearable feeling universally shared by the people who live here? I'm talking about the ones who still have their faculties, who have not gone over into the fog of Alzheimer’s (which is not to say that demented people are content, because they clearly are not, but they are not entirely conscious of their discontentment)? The universal condition is frustration with their diminished autonomy. Each one of them is struggling mightily to hold on to their self-determination and watching it slip, inexorably, away from them. This is the problem. This is what changes marriages. This is how the institution affects marriages. What is a marriage when the married persons no longer feel that they own themselves, that they have given themselves, their decisions, their minds, their bodies, their routines, over to a larger entity, a mostly benign entity to be sure, but an institution all the same, an institution that exists primarily to justify itself, and not to care for the spirit, body, and mind of each resident?
What I am concluding here is that married couples bring their problems and patterns with them into the nursing home, and that marriage is often much more than simply a dyadic experience. When a couple enters a “home,” their children almost inevitably get involved and shape their parents relationship as much as the aides and the nurses do. The staff at SWVA make a concerted effort to protect the privacy of married couples, but the institutional environment and the regulations take a toll. Considering the increasingly long lives of the global population, and the strong possibility that more couples will end their lives in long-term care facilities, it would behoove us to consider whether or not we consider this an ethical and human way for our elders to spend their last years. At the very least, nursing homes ought to dispense with their institutional elements to the greatest degree possible, and strive to create a more home-like environment that would offer the maximum privacy and dignity possible.