Post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is defined as the development of characteristic symptoms following a psychologically distressing event that is ‘outside the range of usual human experience’. This includes torture, sudden destruction of one’s home or community, threat or harm to close relatives and friends, and so on.
Common symptoms include re-experiencing the event, for example in nightmares and flashbacks, avoidance of things associated with the trauma, which can trigger severe anxiety and sometimes physical panic responses, sleep disturbance and poor concentration. All these are essentially normal reactions to abnormal events. However, where survivors develop severe, extreme or long-term mental health problems that seriously hamper their ability to live normally, a diagnosis of PTSD may be helpful in terms of opening doors to help and support from the health service.
Treatment
The most effective therapeutic approach for long-term, severe PTSD appears to be a series of talking treatment sessions with a clinical psychologist, in which the person with PTSD is encouraged to talk through their experiences in detail. This may involve behavioural or cognitive therapeutic approaches.
Antidepressants may also be prescribed to relieve concurrent depression, a common feature in trauma survivors, and enable the person to get the most out of any psychological treatment. Counselling may be helpful too in the early stages of recovery, particularly from counsellors experienced in the treatment of PTSD.
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Written in 2001
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