Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

It is a mental health condition characterised by experiencing symptoms like re-experiencing the traumatic event, avoidance to acknowledge the issue and feeling ‘on guard’.

Common traumatic events often lead to PTSD. These may include: serious accidents (road traffic accidents), military combat, violent personal assault (sexual assault, physical attack, abuse, robbery, mugging), being taken hostage, terrorist attack, being a prisoner-of-war torture (physical, emotional and psychological), natural or man-made disasters, or being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

Re-Experiencing:

When a person repeatedly re-lives and re-experiences a traumatic event as if it is happening again in the here and now. An intrusive, automatic and involuntary event. During these times, you may feel the same emotions and physical sensations you felt during the event and re-experience the same five sensory experiences that you did during the trauma.

Avoidance:

It may feel too upsetting for a person to think and talk about a traumatic experience repeatedly, so people commonly try to use techniques to avoid doing so. For example, distraction, numbing (substance misuse) and avoidance of people and places that may remind them of the trauma. Whilst avoidance may provide some short-term relief, it is understood to maintain the disorder, as it ultimately prevents and interferes with memories being processed and stored correctly.

Feeling ‘on guard’:

People with PTSD describe feeling hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant to signs of potential danger, as if they are always ‘on guard’. This commonly results in people feeling chronically anxious and panicky, which can affect sleep, concentration and memory. They may also feel very jumpy and irritable.

Often, in moments of re-experiencing, someone may feel all 5 senses (smell, touch, see, hear, and taste) that they felt in the original traumatic event, combined with physical responses to fear, such as trembling, panicked breathing, and an elevated heart rate.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) have been evidenced to be highly effective in the treatment of PTSD.

With appropriate treatment, like talk therapies and potentially medication, many people experience significant improvement in symptoms.