Share on: Facebook Twitter. Show references Posttraumatic stress disorder. Arlington, Va. Accessed Dec. Clinician's guide to medications for PTSD. Treatment of PTSD. Coping with traumatic stress reactions. Helping a family member who has PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. National Institute of Mental Health.
Posttraumatic stress disorder. National Alliance on Mental Illness. Rothbaum BO. Psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder in adults.
What is posttraumatic stress disorder? American Psychiatric Association. Lifestyle changes recommended for PTSD patients.
Krieger CA expert opinion. You also can:. Department of Veterans Affairs, is the leading federal center for research and education on PTSD and traumatic stress.
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It is natural to feel afraid during and after a traumatic situation. Fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to help defend against danger or to avoid it. Nearly everyone will experience a range of reactions after trauma, yet most people recover from initial symptoms naturally. Those who continue to experience problems may be diagnosed with PTSD. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened, even when they are not in danger. While most but not all traumatized people experience short term symptoms, the majority do not develop ongoing chronic PTSD.
Not everyone with PTSD has been through a dangerous event. Some experiences, like the sudden, unexpected death of a loved one, can also cause PTSD. Symptoms usually begin early, within 3 months of the traumatic incident, but sometimes they begin years afterward. Symptoms must last more than a month and be severe enough to interfere with relationships or work to be considered PTSD.
The course of the illness varies. Some people recover within 6 months, while others have symptoms that last much longer. In some people, the condition becomes chronic. A doctor who has experience helping people with mental illnesses, such as a psychiatrist or psychologist, can diagnose PTSD.
Words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event can also trigger re-experiencing symptoms. Things that remind a person of the traumatic event can trigger avoidance symptoms. These symptoms may cause a person to change his or her personal routine. For example, after a bad car accident, a person who usually drives may avoid driving or riding in a car. Arousal symptoms are usually constant, instead of being triggered by things that remind one of the traumatic events.
These symptoms can make the person feel stressed and angry. They may make it hard to do daily tasks, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating. Cognition and mood symptoms can begin or worsen after the traumatic event, but are not due to injury or substance use.
These symptoms can make the person feel alienated or detached from friends or family members. It is natural to have some of these symptoms for a few weeks after a dangerous event. We could find ourselves in a car crash, be the victim of an assault, or see an accident.
Police, fire brigade or ambulance workers are more likely to have such experiences — they often have to deal with horrifying scenes. Soldiers may be shot or blown up, and see friends killed or injured. Most people, in time, get over experiences like this without needing help. In some people, though, traumatic experiences set off a reaction that can last for many months or years.
This is called 'complex PTSD' and is described in more detail below. PTSD can start after any traumatic event. A traumatic event is one where you see that you are in danger, your life is threatened, or where you see other people dying or being injured. Typical traumatic events would be:. Even hearing about the unexpected injury or violent death of a family member or close friend can start PTSD. The symptoms of PTSD can start immediately or after a delay of weeks or months, but usually within 6 months of the traumatic event.
Many people feel grief-stricken, depressed, anxious, guilty and angry after a traumatic experience. As well as these understandable emotional reactions, there are three main types of symptoms:. You find yourself re-living the event, again and again. This can happen both as a 'flashback' in the day and as nightmares when you are asleep. These can be so realistic that it feels as though you are living through the experience all over again. You see it in your mind, but may also feel the emotions and physical sensations of what happened - fear, sweating, smells, sounds, pain.
Ordinary things can trigger off flashbacks. For instance, if you had a car crash in the rain, a rainy day might start a flashback. It can be just too upsetting to re-live your experience over and over again. So you distract yourself. You keep your mind busy by losing yourself in a hobby, working very hard, or spending your time absorbed in crosswords or jigsaw puzzles.
You avoid places and people that remind you of the trauma, and try not to talk about it. You may deal with the pain of your feelings by trying to feel nothing at all — by becoming emotionally numb. You communicate less with other people who then find it hard to live or work with you.
You find that you stay alert all the time, as if you are looking out for danger. This is called 'hypervigilance'. You feel anxious and find it hard to sleep. Other people will notice that you are jumpy and irritable. A traumatic experience makes it very clear that we can die at any time. The symptoms of PTSD are part of a normal reaction to narrowly-avoided death.
But nearly everyone will have the symptoms of post-traumatic stress for the first month or so. This is because they can help to keep you going, and help you to understand the experience you have been through. This is an 'acute stress reaction'. Over a few weeks, most people slowly come to terms with what has happened, and their stress symptoms start to disappear.
Not everyone is so lucky. It is as though the process has got stuck. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress, although normal in themselves, become a problem — or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder — when they go on for too long. The more disturbing the experience, the more likely you are to develop PTSD. The most traumatic events:. If you continue to be exposed to stress and uncertainty, this will make it difficult or impossible for your PTSD symptoms to improve.
Everybody feels stressed from time to time. Unfortunately, the word 'stress' is used to mean two rather different things:. Unlike PTSD, these things are with us, day in and day out. They are part of normal, everyday life, but can produce anxiety, depression, tiredness, and headaches. They can also make some physical problems worse, such as stomach ulcers and skin problems. These are certainly troublesome, but they are not the same as PTSD.
We only want to think about it when we have to - if we find ourselves in a similar situation. Have you experienced a traumatic event of the sort described at the start of this leaflet? If you have, do you:.
If it is less than 6 weeks since the traumatic event and these experiences are slowly improving, they may be part of the normal process of adjustment. PTSD can develop at any age.
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