Mental illness - in relation to post traumatic stress

studies put PTSD as one of the prevalence being between 45-55%.most holocaust survivors suffer from PTSDwhen mala has postnatal depression -> can use this point as an example once she has died vladek goes into depression himself

Postnatal depression:Postnatal depression is a common condition that affects one in seven women following the birth of their baby. Postnatal depression can be long-lasting and affect your ability to cope with a new baby. In the complete Maus, Anja has postnatal depression once her baby was born. This saw her being sent away to a sanitarium to get better.

PTSD:An increasing number of Holocaust survivors are only now suffering from post-traumatic stress dis-order years after the horrors of the Nazi death camps.Most patients with PTSD like soldiers returning from conflict, develop symptoms within six months of a traumatic event.Few survivors sought psychiatric help soon after the event.While some did suffer early on, experts believe others appeared strong as they set their minds on work, family and a new life, and it is not yet fully understood whether the symptoms are completely new or aggravated forms of a long-suppressed condition.

WHAT CAUSES PTSD?PTSD is a reaction to a traumatic event where we can see that we are in danger, our life is threat-ened, or where we see other people dying or being injured in circumstances out of our control.The symptoms of PTSD can start immediately or after a delay of weeks or months following the event. But in some cases it can even be years or decades before symptoms emerge.

People with PTSD suffer from depression, anxiety, feelings of guilt, flashbacks and nightmares, feeling numb and withdrawn, hyper alertness, and physical symptoms caused by stress.

Once Vladek gets out of the concentration camps he has little patience as the events that had hap-pened left him with traumatic scarring and wanting to have control not only on his life and the oth-ers around him. This is demonstrated when he makes Mala wear the clothes from his late wife Anja, so that he didn’t have to spend any money on clothes. This is also shown when Vladek knocks over his bottle of pills and won’t let Art re-count them. Art goes through a period where he is depressed when he was writing the comic and he thinks he must wear a mask to connect with his father and what his father experienced. After Vladek witnesses the hanging of the Jews during the Holocaust, he later hallucinates these images again while he is driving through a forest with Art and Francoise.