Appeasement: replacing Stockholm syndrome as a definition of a survival strategy.

Background: Stockholm syndrome or traumatic bonding (Painter & Dutton, Patterns of emotional bonding in battered women: Traumatic bonding. International Journal of Women's Studies, 8(4), 363-375, 1985) has been used in mainstream culture, legal, and some clinical settings to describe a hypothetical phenomenon of trauma survivors developing powerful emotional attachments to their abuser. It has frequently been used to explain the reported 'positive bond' between some kidnap victims and their captor's, although scarce empirical research has supported this assertion. It has been used in various situations where interpersonal violence and mind control are reported and where clear power differentials exist, such as in child sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, human trafficking, and hostage situation scenarios.Objective: We propose replacing Stockholm syndrome with 'appeasement,' a term that can be explained through a biopsychological model (i.e. Polyvagal Theory) to describe how survivors may appear emotionally connected with their perpetrators to effectively adapt to life-threatening situations by calming the perpetrator.Conclusion: We believe the term appeasement will demystify the reported survivor experiences and will, in the eyes of the public, victims, and survivors, provide a science-based explanation for their narratives of survival that may initially appear to be contradictory. By understanding the potent reflexive neurobiological survival mechanisms embedded in appeasement, individuals and families can operationalise their survival from a perspective that supports resilience, a healthy long-term recovery, and normalises their coping responses as survival techniques.

Changing and redefining how victims are viewed and portrayed in mainstream media.Appeasement emphasises the asymmetry and adaptive strategy used to regulate and calm the captor, thus minimising potential injury and abuse.Stockholm syndrome does not reflect the survivor's experience nor does it acknowledge the negative impact that the label has on the survivor.

Community-based, acute posttraumatic stress management: a description and evaluation of a psychosocial-intervention continuum.

Much of today's psychological trauma can be identified as resulting from sudden and seemingly random events, and particularly from events that involve the loss of human life. This article presents a perspective on how behavioral health providers may approach the design, development, and implementation of community-based psychological trauma interventions. These interventions allow those community members most affected by the trauma to play a central role in the resolution of, and community adaptation to, traumatic losses. After a brief discussion of "critical incident stress debriefing"--a common form of psychological "first aid" that is sometimes used following traumatic events that affect a community--the article turns to the description of a community-based trauma-response program that provides a continuum-of-care model for the care and management of individual and group reactions to shared, traumatic events. A recent evaluation of that program, which was developed by the Community Services Program of the Trauma Center in Boston, is presented as an important first step toward determining the types of community-based responses that show promise in our efforts to ameliorate the impact of traumatic events in communities nationwide and internationally.

Cognitive and motor function after administration of hydrocodone bitartrate plus ibuprofen, ibuprofen alone, or placebo in healthy subjects with exercise-induced muscle damage: a randomized, repeated-dose, placebo-controlled study.

RATIONALE: Medications combining hydrocodone bitartrate and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents appear more beneficial than anti-inflammatory medications alone in treating pain and inflammation from acute soft tissue trauma, but opiate side effects may include sedation and impaired cognitive and motor performance. OBJECTIVE: Performance on complex cognitive and motor tasks was evaluated in healthy subjects with exercise-induced muscle damage who were treated with a hydrocodone-ibuprofen combination, ibuprofen alone, or placebo. METHODS: This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, repeated-dose clinical trial compared the effects of hydrocodone bitartrate (7.5 mg) plus ibuprofen (200 mg), ibuprofen alone, and placebo on cognitive and motor function in 72 healthy college men. Muscle damage in the quadriceps of each subject's dominant leg was induced by an eccentric exercise protocol. Subjects took the study medication four times daily (every 4-6 h) for 5 days. Forty minutes after medication ingestion at the same time each day, subjects underwent tests of attention/concentration, motor performance, and reaction time. Four trained assessors rotated among subjects so that none tested the same participant on more than three occasions. RESULTS: Repeated measures analyses of covariance revealed no between-group differences on a complex memory and cognition task or complex reaction time. Subjects using hydrocodone bitartrate plus ibuprofen performed significantly less well on a simple tracking task and made significantly more errors on a simple reaction-time task than the other two groups. These deficits were found to be highly transitory and not related to confusion or fatigue. CONCLUSION: Hydrocodone plus ibuprofen was not associated with deterioration in complex cognition but was related to very transitory decrements in tasks involving simple hand-eye coordination.