PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) is a mental condition where you get flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety attacks, fear, and uncontrollable thoughts about a traumatic event or incident from your past (like natural disasters, accidents, or physical or sexual assault).
How common is it?
- According to the National Center for PTSD, around 8% of people will experience PTSD at some point in their lives.
- About 3.6% of adult Americans have PTSD during the course of a year.
- PTSD can develop at any age.
- Women are more likely to develop PTSD than men. This may be due to the reason that women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, abuse, and rape.
Symptoms of PTSD
Symptoms of PTSD can start to appear 3 months after the traumatic event. But sometimes it might take longer than 1 year. The duration and severity can vary from person to person.
Simply put, the symptoms of PTSD can be categorized as:
- Recollection and reliving the trauma: People with PTSD relive the traumatic event repeatedly through nightmares, flashbacks, and hallucinations. This can lead to severe distress and panic attacks.
- Avoidance: The person suffering from PTSD starts avoiding the places, persons, events, or situations that remind them of trauma. They don’t like to talk or even think about it.
- Hopelessness, negative thoughts, and mood: A person suffering from PTSD has constant negative moods and feelings of gloom, and hopelessness and feels negative about everything around including himself/herself, people, relationships, family, and friends, and favorite activities, feelings, etc.
- Exaggerated physical and emotional reactions (Hyper-arousal): After trauma, you started experiencing emotional reactions like staying on guard, being startled, or frightened easily, trouble sleeping and concentrating, getting irritated or violent easily, and having shame or guilt. These types of changes also affect physical health like high blood pressure, increased heart rate, palpitations, hyperventilation, nausea, and diarrhea.
Risk Factors
Anyone of any age can have PTSD. However, there are some risk factors that can increase the intensity of your symptoms. These are:
- Stressful experiences like physical/mental/ sexual assault.
- Inherited mental problems from family (like a family history of depression).
- Childhood trauma, such as child abuse or neglect.
- A job that increases your proximity to traumatic events, like military personnel, firefighters, first responders, etc.
- Having a mental problem before trauma like depression or anxiety.
- Having addiction issues (like excessive alcohol consumption or drug addiction).
- Lack of support from family and friends and social isolation.
Complications
Developing PTSD can ruin your whole life including your job, relationships, health, and daily activities. It also increases the risk of having other mental health problems like:
- Depression and anxiety
- Addiction issues like excessive drug or alcohol use
- Eating disorders
- Suicidal thoughts and actions
Treatment
The treatment of PTSD is to reduce emotional and physical symptoms to improve daily functioning and help you to manage the event that triggers the disorder. Doctors may prescribe you medications or psychotherapy/ talk therapy (from a therapist) or both based on the severity of your symptoms.
When you have PTSD, you feel as if the world is a dangerous place. You may have disturbing recollections, be agitated, or have difficulty sleeping. Don’t worry, we are here to help you overcome your fears and traumas and help you heal yourself and be the best version of yourself. Call us on +1-347-384-5690 to get a consultation. If you need help learning coping methods, register your information and make direct contact with our doctors and psychiatrists to learn those methods, log on to www.doralhw.org. Doral Health and Wellness has the best Doctors and Psychiatrists who specialize in Behavioral Health, make accurate diagnoses, and craft tailored treatment programs. Visit us at 1797 Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11212.
