Frozen fright vid våldtäkt, pseudovetenskap enligt DSM-5?

dödssimulering, dödsstillreflex, ligga-död-reflex
death feigning, freezing respons, freezing, freezing behaviour, USA-stavning: freezing behavior
Kallas även frysning, frysrespons.

Att spela död. Ett kommunikativt beteende som kan utlösas hos människor och en del djur och som får den som hotar dem att låta dem vara i fred. Det följs i många fall av kamp- eller flyktbeteende.
Det reaktionsmönster som yttrar sig som dödssimulering kallas även dödsstillreflex.

Dr. Rebecca Campbell and Dr. David Lisak have done extensive research into the effect of sexual assault on the brain. Their work explains the impact on the hypothalamus and pituitary gland and how this affects hormone levels, cortisol levels, encoding, affect, and recall. The hypothalamus or command center notifies the pituitary gland that a traumatic attack is occurring. The pituitary gland in turn notifies the adrenal gland that a traumatic event is happening and hormones need to be released to help the body survive. Four main chemicals are released in the face of the trauma, including adrenaline and cortisol, to assist with the fight-or-flight response. Opiates or natural morphine to dull pain and oxytocin to increase positive feelings are also released.

These four chemicals can be operating simultaneously, so that in addition to the fight-or-flight response, a victim may experience a freeze response. The opiates and oxytocin help the body and mind to survive the attack through a numbing effect. This freeze response that can occur during a traumatic assault means that some victims become literally paralyzed with fear by a neurobiological condition known as “tonic immobility” or “rape-induced paralysis.” The rate of rape victims who were affected by this paralysis at the time of the assault may be as high as 50 percent. Because they were unable to move their limbs, it became impossible for them to fight back as they were literally paralyzed by the attack due to the body’s “autonomic response.”[4]

Dr. Lisak explains that repeated assaults can have a cumulative effect so that the victim is not able to encode the information in the correct context or sequence but has intense sensory fragments that can reappear periodically in nightmares or from specific sounds or smells. Victims of earlier sexual assaults will go into the freeze mode much more quickly and so are unable to fight back or recall the incident in the proper sequence.[5] Given time, the victim may be able to remember the events in order. The problem is that when they are interviewed directly after the incident and then later, the interviews may be inconsistent due to the encoding and sequencing responses, which are dulled by the release of natural opiates. This inconsistency is then used to question the veracity of the victim’s report.

https://www.ncsc.org/microsites/trends/home/Monthly-Trends-Articles/2017/What-Judges-Need-to-Know-About-the-Neurobiology-of-Sexual-Assault.aspx

For the first time, neuroscientists at University of Bristol have identified a brain pathway that may be the root of the universal response to freeze in place when we are afraid. Their revolutionary study—released on April 23, 2014—discovered a chain of neural connections stemming from the cerebellum. When activated by a real or imagined threatening stimuli, these neural connections can cause the body to automatically freeze.