Technology Advanced Studies (VISTAS) Pallavaram, Chennai-117, India

Аннотация

INTRODUCTION regarding the natural ability of PTSD- affected A well-known name in present-day popular fiction, characters to overcome their depressive states. Kishwar Desai (1956-) is COSTA's first novel Some background on PTSD is necessary before award winner for her Witness the Night. The diving into the analysis. middle-aged Simran Sigh is the unconventional detective in the crime series- Witness the Night The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘trauma’ thus: “1. a (2010), Origins of Love (2012), and The Sea of deeply distressing event; 2. Med. Physical injury; 3. Innocence (2013). The Sea of Innocence is very Emotional shock following a stressful event.” similar to the search for the missing in Lisa Jewel’s (Compact Oxford Reference Dictionary). However, Then She Was Gone(2017). The characters in the the word trauma is also sometimes associated with novels are victims of crime and corruption who the altered behaviour of a person after a major develop depression. This paper contributes to the injury or life-threatening situation. The American existing PTSD perspectives of modern fiction. This Psychiatric Association has described PTSD as “a article aims to provide supporting literature psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who https://www.theamericanjournals.com/index.php/tajssei 86 THE USA JOURNALS THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND EDUCATION INNOVATIONS (ISSN- 2689-100X) VOLUME 06 ISSUE06 have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event, addiction. Gambling disorder is also put on the series of events or set of circumstances…Examples same pedestal as substance abuse disorder due to include natural disasters, serious accidents, the similar activation of the reward system. Simran terrorist acts, war/combat, rape/sexual assault, Singh receives information from her forlorn police historical trauma, intimate partner violence, and friend Amarjith that her case could be more than bullying.”(APA, pg. 1) The term PTSD or Post just a missing person; “Once upon a time, Goa was Traumatic Stress Disordergained popularity in the the place for drug consumption. Now it’s become a 1980s (Ehlers and Clark, 2008), with increasing big transit hub for sending drugs to other places, as evidence mounting on the aftereffects of trauma. well” (pg. 175) Corpses of foreign nationals were The diagnostic criteria for PTSD is a person stuffed with drugs like heroin and cocaine in order suffering from either one or multiple PTSD to ship them overseas safely: “It sounded like the symptoms lasting for more than a month. In some dead made perfect drug mules… with the cases, PTSD characteristics in a person are complicity of the police and the politicians, the delayed; thus characterised as delayed-onset PTSD international drug smugglers who operate from (DSM-Vol. 5, pg. 276). Initially, it was widely Goa have perfected each aspect of sending these assumed that PTSD affected war veterans after corpses back, right down to the death their harrowing experiences in the war. certificate.”(pg. 189) As Amarjith pointed out, the Goan police are always at the mercy of local people Recent critical literature studies have provided to trace the thugs involved in the drug racket. The necessary insight that supports the view that Anti-Narcotic Cell (ANC) are trying to ensure that psychoanalytical thinkers combine with literary the tourism industry in Goa is unharmed by the critiques to reach a collaborative approach. frequent deaths associated with drug overdose. In Trauma-inducing stress means serious long-term North Goa’s Morjim, a foreign national was negative consequences, with the past haunting the arrested for the possession of hydroponic weed, mental state of the characters, leading to confusion charas and LSD. (The Indian Express: December (Heidarizadeh, pg. 789). According to DSM, a 16, 2023) Goa, being a popular tourist destination, diagnosis of PTSD should be considered “when has been prone to drug-related activities; thus, personality changes emerge and persist after an keeping a continued vigilance is a priority to the individual has been exposed to extreme stress” ANC. Street vendors like Veeramma were “the eyes (DSM-5, pg. 649) and ears of this beach.” (pg. 53). Substance Abuse and Addiction in the Novel Vulnerable young adults who are leered under the In the past few days, I realised that the naivety that guise of a well-paid job in the Casinos are once existed on Goa’s beaches had disappeared. introduced to drugs; as Vicky2 points out, once There was an uncomfortable and very apparent they become addicts, they show behavioural dichotomy between life on the beach and the rest changes. Some, like Simran in the novel, are of Goa... Even though the beaches looked serenely drugged without their knowledge: “With every cosmopolitan on the surface and offered a variety step, the rocks in front of me expanded and of sea sports and other innocent pleasures, there contracted, the spaces between them becoming was a looming darkness around