Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental illness that causes people to have repeated, distressing episodes in which they relive a traumatic event. It’s normal to have bad memories, feel on edge, or have trouble sleeping after a scary event. For most people, these symptoms go away on their own over time. But if these symptoms last for more than a month, it could mean that you have PTSD.
Important Signs of PTSD
PTSD can cause various symptoms that make daily life difficult. These are:
- Intrusive Memories: Nightmares or thoughts that keep coming back and are related to the traumatic event.
- Emotional numbness is when you feel like you’re not connected to other people emotionally.
- Avoidance: Staying away from people, places, or situations that remind you of the trauma.
- Hypervigilance is when you are always on guard, easily scared, or “jumpy.”
The National Center for PTSD has a short, private online self-screening tool for people who are unsure if their symptoms need professional help. This can help people figure out if they need to be evaluated more.
Who is likely to get PTSD?
Not everyone who goes through violence, disasters, or other traumatic events will get PTSD, but some groups are more likely to do so. People in the military who have been in combat are at a very high risk. The National Center for PTSD says that between 11% and 20% of veterans who served in Operations Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan have PTSD.
About 4% of men and 8% of women in the general population are thought to have PTSD. This gender gap is partly because women are more likely to be sexually assaulted.
New Guidelines for Treating PTSD
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) have worked together to come up with new clinical practice guidelines for treating PTSD. These guidelines go into excellent detail about the evidence for and against different types of therapy.
The Most Effective Ways to Treat PTSD
The new rules looked at psychotherapy, medications, and other therapies that don’t involve drugs. Psychotherapy, sometimes with certain medications, was found to be the most effective method. Experts warned against using some drugs due to insufficient evidence or potential danger.
Recommended therapies for PTSD
Psychotherapy is the main treatment for PTSD that is recommended. It works better than just taking medicine. It has fewer negative side effects and is often the choice of patients.
The following trauma-focused psychotherapies were highly recommended:
- Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT): This therapy helps people learn how to question and change negative thoughts that are related to the trauma.
- In prolonged exposure (PE) therapy, you slowly face memories, feelings, and situations related to trauma to make them less powerful.
- The guidelines also suggest mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), which is an eight-week program that combines meditation, body scanning, and simple yoga stretches.
Medications That Are Good for PTSD
Some individuals with severe symptoms may require medication to fully engage in psychotherapy.
The following drugs, which are often given to people with depression and anxiety, are conditionally recommended:
- Paxil (Paroxetine)
- Sertraline (Zoloft)
- Venlafaxine (Effexor)
- Prazosin (Minipress) may be considered for nightmares, although the evidence supporting its use is weak.
Not Recommended for PTSD: Medications and Therapies
The rules say that you should not use benzodiazepines like alprazolam (Xanax) and clonazepam (Klonopin). These anti-anxiety drugs have not demonstrated any validated advantages for PTSD and may pose risks, such as cognitive dysfunction and diminished efficacy of psychotherapy.
There isn’t enough proof right now to say that using cannabis can help with PTSD symptoms. There are worries about serious side effects, like cannabis hyperemesis syndrome.
The effects of psychedelic-assisted therapies like psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”) and MDMA (“ecstasy”) are still undetermined due to insufficient evidence.