Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – the facts
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a physical and psychological condition caused by exposure to extremely frightening or distressing events.
It is thought to affect around five per cent of men and 10 per cent of women at some time. It can occur at any age, including childhood.
Approximately 40 per cent of cases are a reaction to sudden bereavement.
An individual with PTSD often relives the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, and has problems with concentrating and sleeping, with feelings of isolation and detachment from life.
You may feel afraid or feel that you have no control over what is happening. Anyone who has gone through a life-threatening or traumatic event may develop a severe stress related condition or PTSD.
Typically, these events include things such as:
- Military combat situations
- Sexual or physical abuse
- Extreme physical assault
- Terrorist attacks
- Serious accidents – such as car crashes
- Disasters, such as fires, floods, or earthquakes etc
After the event, you may feel confused, angry or scared. If these feelings don’t go away or they get worse, you may be already suffering from PTSD.
Not everyone witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event will develop PTSD. Individuals differ. How likely you are to develop PTSD depends on many factors such as how close you were to the event, how much personal control you had over the circumstances, how strong your reaction was, how intense was the trauma, how long it lasted, and whether you were injured or lost someone close to you.
The symptoms of PTSD usually start soon after the traumatic event, but sometimes it may be many months or years before symptoms develop.
If you are experiencing some or all of the symptoms listed below, you may well be suffering from PTSD:
- Flashbacks, nightmares or night-time terrors
- Feelings of depression
- Isolation, loneliness and confusion
- Insomnia and irritability
- Hyper-alertness and hyper vigilance
- Inappropriate anger
- Excessive drink or drug use
- Suicidal thoughts
- Self harm or harming others
- Severe mood swings and aggression
- Do you find yourself unable to do things that you once were able to do?
- Is your behaviour affecting your quality of life?
- Have people close to you commented that you are somehow behaving differently from before?
All these symptoms are completely natural emotional reactions to deeply disturbing and traumatic experiences.
Today there is overwhelming evidence that UK troops fighting in the various areas of conflict all over the world are suffering from PTSD at ever-increasing levels. The number of individuals being diagnosed with PTSD and associated symptoms has increased by 53% in the last few years.