Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

While it is normal to feel disturbed or shocked by a serious traumatic event, persons who develop PTSD seem to be vulnerable to develop a constellation of symptoms that causes significant distress or impairment in functioning. These events may include but are not limited to events of war, natural disasters, violent crime, etc. Traumas may also be psychological in nature, not just physical. The classic PTSD situation is that of “shell shock", where some (not all) persons who were in the front lines of war return with this syndrome.

The major symptoms these persons experience are related to 1. Reexperiencing the traumatic event, 2. Avoidance of stimuli that may be associated with the trauma; often accompanied by a general “numbing", and 3. Increased level arousal.

Reexperiencing symptoms mainly include recurrent thoughts or dreams about the event or feeling like the event will recur or is recurring; avoidance symptoms include efforts to avoid thoughts, activities, places, or people who may be associated with the event; “numbing" may include apathy or detachment from others, and increased arousal typically include exaggerated startle to loud noises, irritability, difficulty sleeping, and aggravated reactions to situations that may be reminiscent of the event.

Persons with PTSD often also develop depression, and a history of depression in first-degree relatives has been related to increased vulnerability to PTSD. If you search “post traumatic stress disorder and genetics", or “post traumatic stress disorder and serotonin", or “post traumatic stress disorder and brain scans" in the Pub Med web site of the U.S. National Library of Medicine you can get a picture of the kinds of biologic studies and findings seen in PTSD.

Along with medication, counseling is extremely important to try to re-work the conclusions of these persons that the trauma will reoccur, to convince them that they were not the cause of the trauma, and to bring them back to a world where they can feel sure the trauma is finished and in the past.

As a side note, many psychiatrists and researchers question whether OCD and PTSD should really be classified as Anxiety Disorders, or whether they may be best thought of as independent conditions. While OCD an PTSD do entail considerable anxiety symptomatology, there is clearly more going on besides just anxiey, and Counseling Tokyo opines that they will probably be reclassified once there is adequate genetic and neurophysiologic data to sway the nosologic system makers.

Go to anxiety page top.