Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or witnessing a traumatic, terrifying, lifethreatening, or near death experience event.
The major symptoms of PTSD include abrupt panics, severe anxiety, blackouts, flashbacks, nightmares, and uncontrollable thoughts about the event, lasting longer than 4 to 12 weeks, and significantly interfering with our daily lives.
It is important to not avoid these disturbing reactions and understand PTSD
by recognizing its causes, core symptoms, and available treatments.
Traumatic events that lead to PTSD triggers include:
- Serious accidents and deep wounds
- Natural disasters and destructions
- Military and defence wars and fights
- Sexual abuse and physical assault
- Sudden or violent loss of a loved one
The five primary signs of PTSD include:
- Intrusive Thoughts & Flashbacks: Involuntary, distressing memories, nightmares, or vivid flashbacks that make you feel as though you are reliving the traumatic event.
- Avoidance: Actively dodging people, places, activities, objects, or conversations that trigger painful memories or remind you of the trauma.
- Altered Mood and Cognition: Negative shifts in mood, feelings of detachment, memory gaps regarding the event, or an inability to experience positive emotions.
- Hyper arousal and Reactivity: Being easily startled, constantly feeling "on guard" for danger, having angry outbursts, or behaving recklessly often.
- Sleep and Concentration Issues: Struggling to fall or stay asleep, or having a hard time focusing on everyday tasks due to an overactive stress response.
In case these symptoms last for more than 3 weeks and severely disrupt
your daily life, it is important to seek help from PTSD expert, counsellor, or
a trauma therapist.
The treatment of PTSD requires a patient-specific approach, with the patient’s consent for any treatment. Many patients with PTSD are unwilling to pursue treatment, and some patients have symptoms resistant to treatment.
Some times it may be necessary to use a combination of residential
supervised treatment and psychotherapy modules in certain patients;
however, the approach to cure differs based on patients situations.
The patient is the key decision maker about treatment preference between
the remote psychotherapy and residential program modalities.
Therapy-based approaches are generally preferred, but patients with
severe symptoms or comorbid illness may not be able to engage in
meaningful therapy treatments initially and can be started on a residential
rehabilitation treatment plan with an intent to integrate therapy in the future
when the patient is more clinically stable.
Psychotherapeutic Approaches
Trauma-focused psychotherapy is the preferred treatment for PTSD. This includes cognitive behavioural therapy, exposure-based therapy, and eye
movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR). when the patient is more clinically stable.
Clinical studies of patients who receive trauma-focused psychotherapy have demonstrated greater improvement in symptoms compared to those who do not receive treatment.
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy utilizes techniques to identify and correct distorted psychological patterns and maladaptive beliefs, which can occur after a traumatic event.
- Exposure-measured Therapy is a technique most commonly used to treat severe anxiety disorders, panic attacks and phobias. The method considers a conditioned fear response from learned behaviour and involves a measured approach of reintroducing the stimulus to lead to fear extinction eventually.
- EMDR is a specific technique that involves certain saccadic eye movements to reduce the intensity of disturbing thoughts. These eye movements can be voluntarily adjusted while thinking about a distressing memory, reducing the anxiety associated with it.
The above trauma focused and informed supportive psychotherapy can be helpful for individuals who are dealing with acute trauma and those who have acute stress disorder.
Reach out to us directly and consult with our PTSD Specialist to start with the Trauma Therapy sessions.