PTSD and Mal. Really?
POSTED BY: Bytemite
UPDATED: Monday, January 27, 2020 20:08
VIEWED: 36442
PAGE 7 of 12
A bit of the same, actually, and I'm REALLY glad the conversation here brought in Zoe a bit. I'm getting a much better idea of her character, and it's helping me with some of my own writting...
I'm even starting to see where the dividing line might be, I think... Being that she was raised on a ship, her thinking that she and Wash could raise a child on Serenity isn't really so unbelievable. But I suspect that the ship that served as her childhood home wasn't in nearly so much danger, almost all the time. Serenity seems to be a magnet for trouble. It's that willingness to go along into danger, despite her worries and everything she has to live for that could be the unnatural part of the equation that the war put into her.
And speaking of Serenity as a trouble magnet, I wonder about the coping mechanisms of the other characters on board. Kaylee could be traumatized fairly easily, and she seems to have some sort of wall up, she recognizes they do crime, but there's a disconnect there too. Like she's not letting herself follow through the crime part to the consequences of the crime, that they're hurting and sometimes killing people. Wash too, for some reason, is aware how dangerous it is for Zoe, but in War Stories, I don't think he really expected to get into danger himself.
Inara... She seems to alternate between being horrified by what they do but having to accept it, and trying to tell herself that Mal is a better person than he is/thinks he is.
I think Mal shields Kaylee ( and to some extent, Inara) as best as he can, and Zoe shielded Wash. What gets through, they have to cope with.
Now, with Wash gone, I wonder if Zoe will become more aware of the dangerous aspect of their lifestyle, and decide she wants to do something about it.
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Maybe this will shed some light on the difference in Mal and Zoe's reaction to chronic stress and coping mechanisms:
UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN
By Gale Berkowitz
A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special.
They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.
Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down. "Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact," says Dr. Klein,"it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone---which men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded", says Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something."
The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.
It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increase d their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.
Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers conclud
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Now there is an aha moment for me! Our success at small team combat is similar to the feminine coping mechanism! Bonding, Team reliance, tending to, and for, each other, learning to communicate on multiple levels, planning, preparing (tending to the little personal routines that help with state of mind). It's an onion, keep peeling!
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I am adding this to the PTSD thread even though it may be misplaced and maybe it deserves its own thread, but in the beginning of "Safe," River as a child says to Simon as a child that they've been cut off by the independent squad using dinosaurs, and that they would have to resort to cannibalism. This is obviously a personal foreshadow of both Simon and River, but what is not obvious is its meaning. Is River confusing the battle of Serenity when Mal’s unit was cut off, to the ship Serenity which had plastic dinosaur toys in its bridge? What did she mean, when River said they would have to resort to cannibalism? Did Mal and Zoe have to resort to cannibalism while fighting in the Battle of Serenity, or was she referring to the Reavers?
http://www.swyzzlestyx.com/index.html
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I am adding this to the PTSD thread even though it may be misplaced and maybe it deserves its own thread, but in the beginning of "Safe," River as a child says to Simon as a child that they've been cut off by the independent squad using dinosaurs, and that they would have to resort to cannibalism. This is obviously a personal foreshadow of both Simon and River, but what is not obvious is its meaning. Is River confusing the battle of Serenity when Mal’s unit was cut off, to the ship Serenity which had plastic dinosaur toys in its bridge? What did she mean, when River said they would have to resort to cannibalism? Did Mal and Zoe have to resort to cannibalism while fighting in the Battle of Serenity, or was she referring to the Reavers?
http://www.swyzzlestyx.com/index.html
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Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:Quote:Rape is indeed a cause of PTSD. Ecstasy is not, as far as I know. (Your wording is a little unclear, so I'm not sure what you mean.) I wouldn't worry about it being prescribed. This research is fringe at best.
Originally posted by rallem:
I followed the link to an article for PTSD sufferers to take Ectessy, and I am opposed to recreational drugs being taken for any type treatment. Are they now going to precribe Ectasy for victims of rape? Wouldn't that be a form of PTSD?
Still, MDMA (ecstasy) has been used on-and-off by psychiatrists through its history. Without going too far TMI, my own use of MDMA (well researched in advance and carefully done) was the starting point of dealing with my own PTSD. If I knew a local psychiatrist who made use of it, I'd be there in a second.
Not that I'm recommending it to anyone - mind altering drugs certainly can be dangerous. Thing is, all kinds of anti-depressants and such are used in massive amounts, and that's acceptable, right? So the fact that some dumb teenaged ravers misuse and overuse MDMA is tragic to me, because it could do great good. It's so random, like how alcohol is A-OK because it's legal, even though it destroys countless lives of those who abuse it.
Anyway, my point in posting the article here is that it relates to certain scenes in my fic. If you haven't read it, this will make no sense to you. No big.
Bytemite: makes perfect sense about Zoe. I'm having the problem that I can't separate what I see as her upbringing and basic personality from the effect the war may have had on her.
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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
From what I wrote, did you think I was saying Ecstasy was a cause of PTSD? I don't understand how you got that from what I wrote, but let me assure I do not think that at all. It was mentioned that in someone's opinion there was no difference from the recreational drugs and the prescribed drugs, but there are differences. I am sure some of the prescribed drugs meant to treat mental illnesses can be as potent as their recreational counter parts, or have side effects as debilitating, but the difference between the prescribed drugs of choice and taking recreational drugs hoping for the best is that the prescribed drugs have very specific purposes. When a doctor prescribes a certain medicine to a patient, he or she does not just give just any medicine to their patient and then pray for the best. The doctor would list the symptoms suffered by the patient and try to quantify which are most important to cure and then weigh the list of medicines capable of helping the patient to the possible side effects known to those medicines. Personally I think the doctors who are helping our young soldiers and other victims of PTSD deal with their trauma want the victims to not take any form of mind altering medicine so the patients would be lucid while trying to sort out their issues.
http://www.swyzzlestyx.com/index.html
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rallem: I always took that scene as just an in-joke flashback--what with the dinosaurs etc. As well as foreshadowing that the Mal-Zoe and River-Simon storylines were destined to cross. A reminder for the audience of the connectedness of the 'verse.
I don't think series-River is confusing anything--I actually saw the whole thing as *Simon's* flashback that happened to feature River because that's the two things he's thinking about--there was the beginning of his doctor career, and how they used to play together, and now how everything is utterly, irrevocably different.
Flashback-River COULD be getting garbled Alliance reports and using them in her scenario--any Alliance brutality on Hera could easily be twisted to be the fault of the Independents.
I don't know...maybe there's some deep meaning, and maybe there isn't. Could be the difference between understanding and comprehending, or just the difference between cows and beagles.
I don't think she was getting mental messages from the future, if that's what you mean there.
EDIT: YES PLEASE CAN WE GET THAT PTSD DOCTOR ON HERE IF THEY HAVE THE TIME AND INCLINATION? THANKS!
"I think we lost our fuzzy dice back there."
"Going for a ride."
another sky
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Rallem: Well, that's if the FDA does their job, which, at this juncture, I'm leaning towards not. With every new pharmaceutical drug that comes out on the market, and the minimum amount of testing they do, you're really making an assumption that drugs'll do what they're advertised short term and long term. Doctors aren't much help either, because lots of them are pressured into pushing specific drugs.
As for young River's scene, I've heard people connect it to Mal and Zoe, but the thing that confuses me, if that's what was intended, why River is taking the Alliance's side. She and Simon were cut off by the Independents, not purplebellies.
AnotherSky: Ooh, I like your idea about the Alliance propaganda, though, could be she's seeing right through it and making fun of it with implausible scenarios involving dinosaurs and cannibalism accusations.
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I don't want to stray too far from Mal and Zoë or from PTSD as it is the topic of this thread, but I was thinking the scene with River and Simon as children showed River's potential as a reader before she was "trained" by the Alliance. Could River's story be an analogue of someone with PTSD who is treated with pharmaceuticals?
I suppose you’re right with the doctors being pressured to prescribe some drugs over another, but I don’t know for certain because I visit a V.A. hospital where the brands of drugs are constantly changing so there can’t be any pressure to one type of drug or another. The constantly changing of drug brands in the VA does save the government money in the long term, but when the veterans receive yellow pills with a different name from the white pills they usually receive then they tend to get confused. Was it just a change in drugs, or did the VA mess up again, and should I take these?
http://www.swyzzlestyx.com/index.html
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
As for young River's scene, I've heard people connect it to Mal and Zoe, but the thing that confuses me, if that's what was intended, why River is taking the Alliance's side. She and Simon were cut off by the Independents, not purplebellies.
AnotherSky: Ooh, I like your idea about the Alliance propaganda, though, could be she's seeing right through it and making fun of it with implausible scenarios involving dinosaurs and cannibalism accusations.
Or she's jus a little five-year-old playing a simple game based on the world she knows and her own morbid imagination. :)
I vote she heard stuff on the news (War! Alliance vs. Independents! Battles!), added the undiminishing allure of dinosaurs and the creepylegends of cannibalism and - viola - game! She's a genius and highly intuitive but I doubt she was making political statements. To me, the scene is supposed to show us what they were both like as children - actual children, to better contrast the scene of broken semi-adults that follows.
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