Cover Story: How PTSD can affect people's actions
After the Casa Blanca shooting, we talked with a licensed social worker to find out how people with PTSD can get help.
After the Casa Blanca shooting, we talked with a licensed social worker to find out how people with PTSD can get help.
After the Casa Blanca shooting, we talked with a licensed social worker to find out how people with PTSD can get help.
Post-traumatic stress disorder can affect people in so many ways.
“It's not necessarily the event, but how the person responds and interprets the event. And so, it can have a wide variety of impacts on someone's thought processes, the way sensations, how they feel, their perspective of the world, relationships," said Ariella Vanhara.
Vanhara is a licensed social worker and clinical professor of social work at Florida Gulf Coast University. She talked with us about what can go through someone’s head while dealing with PTSD.
“People can experience symptoms such as heightened alert, even flashbacks, even dissociation, feeling like they're detached from their body, altered sense of reality,” said Vanhara.
We have even seen how PTSD can lead to violence right here on the Gulf Coast.
On New Year’s Day, 25-year-old Steve Iglesia Jr. shot and killed his brother, Christopher, after getting into an argument over dinner at Casa Blanca.
“I think this is definitely, I think, more on one of the extreme cases. More so people may struggle independently and lash out maybe with people that they see,” said Vanhara.
Steve and Christopher Iglesia’s dad, Steve Iglesia Sr., tells us Iglesia Jr. was in the military and continues to struggle with PTSD. Still, he never thought something like this would happen to his family.
“I know my boy wasn’t thinking right. I don’t know what happened. I wish I did know what happened. I wish I could have been here to stop it,” said Iglesia Sr.
Vanhara said big parts of PTSD are the triggers.
“If an argument or some type of trigger word or even type of situation reminded them of it, or even the brother resembled something, or there was a sound, smell or taste, whatever it may be, can absolutely trigger that dissociation,” said Vanhara.
Vanhara said having someone there to pull you back to reality can be a huge help.
“It’s like you're kind of losing that thought process. Your body goes into fight or flight mode, and so the adrenaline takes over and that piece of your brain really kind of drives what's happening,” said Vanhara.