Causes and Description of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

What is PTSD?

Virginia J. Duffy PhD, Nurse Practitioner in Psychiatry

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder. It is a longer then usual stress reaction to a traumatic experience such as:
• Any life-threatening event (or event perceived as life threatening)
• Combat
• Natural disasters
• Accidents
• Assault
• Rape
Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. However, some people will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time. These individuals may have PTSD if the following symptoms are seen.

Symptoms of PTSD

• Re-living the trauma
• Becoming anxious when confronted with a reminder or thought about the trauma
• Avoiding places or people that remind the person of the trauma,
• Isolating from other people
• Feeling numb
• Feeling on guard
• Irritability
• Easily Startled
In addition to the symptoms described above, we now know that there are clear biological changes that are associated with PTSD.
PTSD is complicated by the fact that people with PTSD often may develop additional disorders such as depression, substance abuse. PTSD may lead to problems in job, marriage and family.

How Is PTSD Treated?

There are now effective treatments for PTSD. Recognizing the symptoms and acting early is important in that may prevent PTSD from becoming worse and causing additional problems. PTSD is treated by a variety of forms of psychotherapy (talk therapy) and pharmacotherapy (medication). There is no single best treatment, but some treatments appear to work particularly well, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT includes a number of diverse but related techniques such as cognitive restructuring, exposure therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).
Medications can be used to treat the symptoms of PTSD, including anxiety and depression, and sleep disturbance.

This site is entirely funded by Dr. Duffy Please send any email correspondence to: