User:Emily1Sandoval/Memory and trauma

Sexual violence victims are predominantly women. When interviewing women who had been sexually abused in childhood, Williams found that 38% of women had no recollection of the abuse in later adulthood. While those who experienced a singular traumatic event (e.g., witnessing the death of a parent) were better able to remember the traumatic experience. These results indicate that repeated traumatic experiences are more likely to be repressed than those that occurred only once.

World War II (WWII) contributed to an abundance of PTSD cases today. Many of the patients diagnosed with PSTD after WWII did not have memories of the traumatic events yet had symptoms like hysteria. The amnesia can be attributed to Freud’s theory of repression which suggests that individuals repress their memories to keep themselves safe from further harm/consequences. Stricker et al. (2017) furthered this idea through research that demonstrated higher rates of cognitive impairment (e.g., executive functioning, attention, working memory, and processing speed) in individuals diagnosed with PTSD, like service members or veterans. Memory and learning ability were the most affected areas. More specifically, veterans had a more difficult time with initial learning and encoding the information than recalling it at a later time.

Moradi et al. ( 1999) attributes the memory loss associated with PTSD to "intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal symptoms." These symptoms are thought to interrupt performance memory. Additionally, the loss of memory was attributed to a smaller hippocampus in those with PTSD, as the hippocampus is responsible for memory functioning.