Akiko and post traumatic stress disorder

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Comfort Woman, written by Nora Ojka Keller, explains to the imaginary story of two girls, a mom and a daughter, certain by their genes and ripped apart by their varying cultures and experiences. Keller explores not only earlier times experiences of Akiko the mother, a Korean retraite of World War II who is forced to work at a great internment camp as a “comfort woman” to Japanese troops, but also the harming psychological effects ” such as onset of what appears to be ptsd (PTSD)- that these experience include on Akiko, and therefore, the way they have an effect on her incapability to form healthy and balanced relationships later in life.

Akiko displays many indications of PTSD, a debilitating anxiety disorder caused by “exposure to a frightening event or perhaps ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened” (NIMH 1) The key symptoms of PTSD include dissociative symptoms, mental numbness, re-living the terrible experience over and over, and the inability to form healthier relationships following the experience (NIMH 1). Each of these symptoms can be exhibited by simply Akiko by one justification in the story.

Although many different events can cause PTSD, there is certainly sufficient analysis that afeitado, sexual invasion or lovemaking aggression can be described as large risk factor in females (Tuft 1). As a convenience woman, Akiko endured strong sexual mistreatment and through the entire book, uncovers, bit-by-bit, distressing anecdotes about her encounters. For example , Akiko describes a great abortion the girl had while in the camp. Your doctor performing the operation offered her a “choice between rat toxic and the stick” to remove the fetus. Akiko recounts painfully that as the doctor was “digging and piercing” her womb her mouth and hands destined ” he spoke about women, evaluating them to females rats who are managed by man rats and regardless of situations, will “always respond sexually to him” (Keller 22). The doctor after that, “squeezed [her] nipples, pinching until they will tightened” and declared, “See? ” (Keller 22). Terrible for Akiko, not only actually, but undoubtedly mentally as well.

Perhaps the strongest indications of PTSD that affected Akiko are those that are deemed “dissociative symptoms” ” or the ability to block out certain recollections, slip into “trances” or encounter emotional pins and needles. Akiko demonstrates this kind of dissociative behavior repeatedly in the story. For example , she exhibits mental numbness early in the new, when your woman explains that she was “already dead” when her first baby was born (Keller 15). She speaks that the Japanese troops had not only let her insides “too bruised and battered, difficult to entirely heal” but also took her soul, as well (Keller 15).

Akiko also created “trances” which can be only an integral part of the dissociative symptoms of PTSD, but as well show commonalities to the delusions present in many schizophrenics. PTSD sufferers will be, in fact , vulnerable to develop symptoms of mild schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations (Braakman 16). In one analyze, the hallucinations PTSD victims exhibited were mostly relevant to the upsetting event that they suffered from, for instance , “voices of dead pals calling for help” and the delusions were primarily “paranoid/persecutory” (Braakman 18).

Akiko exhibits delusional patterns throughout the book. For example , Akiko is convinced that she actually is able to commune with the useless. When Akiko enters in a “trance, ” she truly believes that she is conntacting the useless (Keller 46). Akiko labels each spirit she communes with and describes each one while having its own unique persona and appearance. A normal “trance” might involve Akiko attempting to summon the heart she named Saja the Death Messenger, and according to Beccah, Akiko might “dance, keeping in her arms raw meat ” chicken, or pig’s feet, or a pig’s head ” calling ‘Saja, Saja’ in a singsong tone of voice. ” Even when Beccah attempted to stop her, Akiko might continue to “waltz” with the pig’s head and ignore her (Keller 47).

Akiko also experienced paranoid delusions. Akiko is extremely paranoid about Beccah and the Crimson Disaster and sal that she is convinced will ruin her child. Akiko therefore greatly feared Beccah to become woman, that she made desperate efforts to protect Beccah from her inevitable entry into womanhood, including wrecking red articles of clothes, not allowing Beccah to attend school field trips as well as visiting Beccah’s school to sal-proof this (Keller 76). Everything in Akiko’s world contained desenfado, and Beccah began to think that “sal seeped from the pores of [her]” (Keller 82). Paranoid delusions like this are common to PTSD sufferers.

Constantly reliving the traumatic celebration is another prevalent PTSD indication, and one which Akiko also exhibited (NIMH 1). Akiko, when the lady first appeared to live with the missionaries, do anything to keep herself occupied. She remembered that she “could not stop washing, washing, preparing food, gluing because if [she] did, the camp appears would wrap [her] and [she] would be back there” (Keller 65). She was terrified that if the girl didn’t keep herself busy, she would begin to re-live or perhaps feel discomfort from the experience. To prevent this, she would leap out of bed every morning and “hurry in to action” mainly because if the girl didn’t, she knew she’d be “delivered into the camps once again” (Keller 65).

There is also a strong correlation among PTSD and depression, with 43 percent to 64 percent of battered women with PTSD reporting depression symptoms too (Tuft 407). Akiko, in respect to Beccah, “tried twice to meet the Death Messenger on her individual terms” (Keller 47). Suicidal thoughts and gestures are easily one of the most dramatic and damaging associated with depression.

Not only do PTSD sufferers put up with bouts of depression, emotional numbness, and fall into “trance-like” states, additionally, they develop issues with intimacy and forming healthy relationships (NIMH 1). Akiko never seemed to develop a usual relationship with her partner or her daughter. Her intimacy problems become evident the first time Akiko has love-making with her husband. The girl with unable to let go and enjoy himself, or truly feel any kind of passion toward him. Akiko stated that “while this individual positioned him self above me, fitting him self between my personal thighs, I actually let my mind fly apart. For then I knew that my body was, and always will be, locked within a cubicle on the camps, caught under the bodies of countless men” (Keller 106).

Another sort of her lack of ability to experience affection or maintain a proper relationship took place when Akiko described a great incident the moment her husband is vocal to Beccah. The vocal reminded Akiko of her husband the moment she first met him, and the way he “lulled and lured” the girls from your missionary property with that same voice (Keller 69). Akiko said that the songs happen to be “silly tracks that my hubby sings to comfort our child, nevertheless I hate them and i also hate him” (Keller 69). It seems that Akiko is unable to enjoy his tone of voice because she gets that while inside the mission house, he seduced the woman about him with it ” and this overloaded sexual tendencies, especially showed by somebody who was supposed to be virginal and loyal to only Goodness ” repulsed her because of her earlier bad sex experiences. Akiko also portrayed her hatred of her husband to Beccah, when ever she openly cursed him for transferring on his sal ” his dirtiness ” to Beccah (Keller 83).

Akiko’s horrifying experience in the internment camp ” which undoubtedly caused her to endure PTSD, with possible schizophrenic symptoms and depression molded the rest of her lifestyle. The injury she knowledgeable translated in every other world of her existence ” from eliminating her mental health, in order to it almost impossible to work in contemporary society, to sabotaging any chance she had of creating fresh, healthy human relationships or retaining old ones.

Functions Cited

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Symptomatology among Girl Victims of Interpersonal Injury. ” Journal of

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and Relationship Hostility in a Test of Girl Flood Subjects. “

Record of Family Violence, versus. 24 issue 6, 2009, p. 389-396.

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). inches NIMH: Ptsd

(PTSD). National Institute of Mental Wellness. 22 Come july 1st 2009. &lt, http://www. nimh. nih. gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index. shtml

Braakman M, They would. “Validity of post-traumatic stress disorder with secondary

psychotic features: a review of the evidence. inch Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, sixth is v. 119 issue 1, 2009, p. 15-24.