Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a group of stress reactions that can develop after we witness a traumatic event, such as death, serious injury or sexual violence to ourselves or to others. PTSD can happen after we’ve been through one traumatic event, or after repeated exposure to trauma. Sometimes, PTSD can develop after hearing details about devastating and traumatic events many times, like the experience of some emergency workers. It’s important to seek help to manage PTSD. There are effective treatments for PTSD, and you can feel better.
Symptoms of PTSD
A person with PTSD has four main types of difficulties:
- Re-living the traumatic event through unwanted and recurring memories, flashbacks or vivid nightmares. There may be intense emotional or physical reactions when reminded of the event including sweating, heart palpitations or panic.
- Avoiding reminders of the event, such as thoughts, feelings, people, places, activities or situations that bring back memories of the event.
- Negative changes in feelings and thoughts, such as feeling angry, afraid, guilty, flat or numb, developing beliefs such as “I’m bad” or “The world’s unsafe”, and feeling cut off from others.
- Being overly alert or ‘wound up’ indicated by sleeping difficulties, irritability, lack of concentration, becoming easily startled and constantly being on the lookout for signs of danger.
A health practitioner may diagnose PTSD if a person has symptoms in each of these four areas for a month or more, which lead to significant distress or impacts on their ability to work and study, their relationships and day-to-day life.
People with PTSD can also have what are termed ‘dissociative experiences’, which are frequently described as:
- “It was as though I wasn’t even there.”
- “Time was standing still.”
- “I felt like I was watching things happen from above.”
Diagnosis
TBC
