Students at COD may be experiencing disabilities due to various reasons

by Daniel Ferretti
Staff Reporter

Students may have physical and mental disabilities due to a past experience. A disability is any type of inability to do something adequately, whether physical or mental. At COD, a service called DSPS (Disabled Students Programs and Services) provides service to disabled students. “College of the Desert is committed to providing students with disabilities equal access to a community college education.”

Dr. Nathan Church, director of DSPS, noted that currently at COD there are an estimated 2000 students who have a disability, which includes reported disabilities and unreported disabilities. There are approximately 500-600 students who have disabilities reported to the school. Sometimes students encounter health issues, disorders, stress, and financial problems that hinder their ability to enroll in the program.

Something that is traumatic to a person occurs when he or she is either wounded or shocked in a sudden fashion. When a person has experienced something traumatic such as a car crash, birth loss, personal injury, or a person’s death or dismantlement, they have experienced something that will stay with them for a long time..

A term that is often used in society is the term stress. Stress has several meanings. In one sense it means to emphasize a point while speaking or writing, and in another sense it means physical or psychological pressure being felt by an individual.

A disorder occurs when there is a dysfunction in physical or mental health.

When we combine all of the formerly described terms together, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, better known as PTSD, creates a challenge for a human to be able to function normally. PTSD can be diagnosed in a person when he or she has experienced something traumatic, such as being hospitalized, having a psychiatric break, being in a car crash, watching a human being die or become dismantled, causing a disturbance in a persons life. While some people may experience a minor event that causes him or her to react in a disproportionate manner.

PTSD can affect persons differently. For example, two people could experience the same event, although one person has decided that he or she has is mentally fine, the other person is living a life of denial.  A triggered event is an event that a person encounters that brings back their possibly haunting memory.

If a person’s mental and physical health has been impaired and that person denies abnormality in social settings, that person is handling their symptoms of PTSD in an irrational way. An irrational way of handled PTSD can cause a person to have sleep disorders, nightmares, and high levels of stress.

A healthy approach to dealing with the symptoms of PTSD is to talk about the disorder the person is having.

Dr. Church said that students experiencing PTSD usually have symptoms of being overwhelmed, have extreme anxiety, have panic attacks, experience a rise in heart rate, and breathe shallower.

An example of a panic attack a student may acquire due to his initial traumatic experience, could be a beaker falling on the ground and shattering. The student may run outside of the class due to the sound of the shattering beaker glass, triggering the memory of the traumatic event the student had experienced.

Students experiencing symptoms of PTSD are encouraged to seek help within a 72 hour period of when the initial traumatic experience occurred.

Currently at COD, PTSD falls into a miscellaneous disability, encompassing 33 percent of the enrolled number of DSPS students.

Dr. Church says that anyone can help a person encountering symptoms of PTSD. Faculty, students, and family members can help a student experiencing symptoms of PTSD by initially becoming aware of the life-long issues PTSD can cause. A person can practice an exercise that includes deep breathing techniques. A slow, deep breath can open up a person’s diaphragm, allowing a person’s lungs to expand, resulting in greater air intake while possibly reducing mental or physical stress.

It is important that a person experiencing symptoms of PTSD receive help.

Students can and should be sensitive to the fact that people do experience challenges that affect them mentally and physically, during the course of their life.

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Posted by Features on Dec 5 2011. Filed under Advisor Approved, Features, Vol. 57, Issue 6. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry