Birdy

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Birdy

• Stars
• Nicolas Cage
• Matthew Modine
• Director Alan Parker
• Angela's Ashes, Evita, Bugsy Malone
• The Road to Wellville, The Commitments,
  Mississippi Burning, Midnight Express,
• Pink Floyd The Wall, Fame

 
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Birdy

• Based on 1978 Novel
• By William Wharton
• Born Albert William du Aime
• UCLA B.A. ArtPsychology Ph.D.
• Died 10/29/2008
• Novel about World War II Veterans
• Movies from other novels
• Dad and A Midnight Clear

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Agenda

• Have fun
• Watching movie
• Learning
• Joining conversation

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After the movie..

• PTSD Clinical issues, day-to-day veterans
  issues, cinematic considerations
• Matt Miller, LCSWVeterans Administration
• --Clinical considerations 
• Tom Price, LCSW,Veteran, St. Patrick Center
• --Realities for returned veterans

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History of PTSD

• DSM
• posttraumatic stress disorder
• ICD
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• Elsewhere,
• post traumatic stress disorder

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PTSD

• Term created in the mid-1970s,
• Officially added as Anxiety Disorder DSM-III
  (1980)
• DSM-5 (2013) created new category
• Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

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PTSD-like descriptions

• Ancient Egypt
• Greece
• Rome
• India
• Elizabethan England

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Herodotus

• In battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.
•  
• Athenian warrior went permanently blind
• although wounded in no part of his body.
• When he saw nearby comrade killed

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Oddysey

• 3-week trip home from the Trojan War
• becomes a ten-year journey
• To avoid dangers of Scylla and Charybdis,
•  
• do not resist the dangers (much as modern trauma
  sufferers must overcome their resistance to
  memories of the traumatic stressors).

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Oddysey

• Sorceress Circe admonishes him,
• "Do the works of war concern you still, and toil?
  
•  
• He is tempted by Sirens
• and the addictive lotus fruit

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First Medical Terminology

• Swiss Military Physicians-1678
• melancholy
• incessant thinking of home
• disturbed sleep or insomnia
• weakness
• loss of appetite
• anxiety
• cardiac palpitations
• stupor
• Fever

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First Medical Terminology

• Nostalgia

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Nostalgia

• 1863
• Public outcry about numerous insane soldiers
  wandering around
•  
• First military hospital for the insane
•  
• Most common diagnosis Nostalgia.

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• French Doctors maladie du pays, (Disease of the
  Country)
• German doctors heimweh (Homesick)

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American Civil War

• military physicians diagnosed
• paralysis
• tremors
• self-inflicted wounds
• nostalgia

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American Civil War

• Jacob Mendes Da Costa-1871 Study
• Identified Soldiers Heart
• (DaCostas Syndrome)severe palpitations an
  ailment of the sympathetic nervous system
• Soldiers on normal leave often collapsed with
  emotional illness at home, even when asymptomatic
  on duty

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1901 Schreckneurosen

• Bruns and Stierlin studied the symptoms of
  survivors of volcanic eruptions and mining
  accidents
• they coined the term "Schreckneurosen"- the
  terror neuroses.

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Russian Army of 1905

• First army to determine that mental collapse was
  a direct consequence of the stress of war and to
  regard it as a legitimate medical condition
• German physician Honigman served with Red Cross
  there, and coined the term war neurosis
  Kriegsneurose

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World War I

• High psychiatric casualties attributed
• to the new large-caliber artillery.
• Believed the impact of the shells produced a
  concussion
• Thus the term shell shock
• Freudwar neurosiscaused by conflict between a
  soldiers war ego and his peace ego.

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World War II

• 1945, Grinker and Spiegel
• Combat or Battle Stress
• Combat Exhaustion
• Acute combat reaction"
• Battle Fatigue

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1952 DSM-I

• Gross Stress Reaction
• exposed to severe physical demands or extreme
  emotional stress, such as in combat or in
  civilian catastrophe (fire, earthquake,
  explosion, etc)
• may be previouslynormal
• The particular stress involved will be specified
  as (1)combat or (2) civilian catastrophe

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DSM-II -1968

• 307.3 Adjustment Reaction of Adult Life
• different coding for different life stages
• Example Fear associated with military combat and
  manifested by trembling, running, and hiding.

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First Medical Terminology

• Nostalgia

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PTSDBack to Today

• Term created in the mid-1970s,
• Officially added as Anxiety Disorder DSM-III
  (1980)
• DSM-5 (2013) created new category
• Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

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Clinical Considerations

• In what ways was Al prepared and unprepared for
  the stress of combat before he joined the Army?
• How should we diagnose Al, if at all?
• How should we diagnose Birdy?
• Does Birdy's behavior in the asylum correspond
  with dissociation, or is it more like a form of
  catatonia?

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Clinical Considerations

• How does Birdys pre-military behavior relate to
  his post-deployment behavior, if at all?
• Did the movie portray Birdy's pre- and
  post-deployment behaviors as maladaptive coping,
  or someone "being himself?"

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Clinical Considerations

• How does the movie portray the treatment options
  available to these two veterans in the Vietnam
  era, and how has that changed today?
• What's up with that ending?!  What does it mean,
  what does the writer imply about the two men, and
  what's going to happen to each of them?

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Cinematic Considerations

• Chris Clark, BA, Cinema St. Louis

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You!

• Your comments.
• Your questions for panel members
• Fill out evaluations

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You
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Us