Long — Term Adjustment and Adaptation Mechanisms in Severely Burned Adults

Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from thermal burns each year in the United States. Prior to the development of modern treatments such as sulfamylon, silver nitrate, and sophisticated supportive measures, those with severe and mutilating burns usually died. Now many of these patients survive. To be burned is an intensely traumatic experience— catastrophic, painful, deforming, debilitating, and even dirty, because of the invariable presence of infection. Further, the burn victim, unlike most other victims of trauma, must continue to wear the badge of his trauma for the rest of his life.