Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD for short, can affect anyone at any time of life. Being the victim of rape, bullying or a serious accident can trigger PTSD and lead to great mental suffering. However, help is available.
You may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder if you’ve experienced a life-threatening traumatic event or an event that you perceived as life-threatening for you or someone else. You may also have experienced a traumatic event in which you or someone else was seriously injured or at risk of serious injury. Examples of such events include sexual abuse, mental and physical abuse, death, torture, war, forced displacement, natural disasters, robberies and accidents.
Typical of post-traumatic stress disorder is that you keep reliving your memories of the traumatic event. You may have intrusive memories when awake and nightmares when asleep. You may even feel as though you’re back in the situation again, acting as you did at the time. Being reminded of the event in different ways can be extremely difficult, and it’s common to suffer extremely strong physical reactions.
People suffering from PTSD prefer to avoid sensory impressions and events that remind them of their trauma. Such as internal things that trigger memories, such as thoughts and emotions, as well as physical places, people, objects or conversations. PTSD also results in strong negative emotions and thoughts. You may find it difficult to feel happy and a part of things, and you may feel like you’re closed off from other people. The body becomes overly vigilant. You may feel like you’re constantly on edge and more easily frightened and irritated than before. You may have strong outbursts of anger and your ability to concentrate and sleep may suffer.
There’s a type of PTSD that also involves having particular dissociative symptoms. You can read more about trauma and dissociation here.
PTSD can make it difficult to cope with your work or studies. You may have difficulties with your social life or interpersonal relationships. It’s common to experience PTSD together with other difficulties and symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, dependency and physical illness.
Trauma doesn’t necessarily lead to PTSD. Many people recover from difficult events well. However, if you have traumatic stress symptoms that don’t improve and are interfering with your life, you should contact your healthcare centre or a psychiatric outpatient clinic. It’s never too late to seek medical attention and get help, even if the trauma itself happened a long time ago. Effective treatments are available.
You’ll undergo a thorough diagnostic assessment to find out whether you have PTSD. You may be asked to answer questions in an interview and to complete various questionnaires to help your healthcare provider decide whether together your symptoms indicate PTSD or are better explained by something else.
Trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) allows you to process your trauma and memories step by step in different ways. You’ll learn helpful strategies and how you can stop avoiding situations that you need to deal with. This will reduce your anxiety reactions and help you learn to manage your memories and improve your wellbeing. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapy that uses an eye movement technique. You may even be offered antidepressants.
Reviewed by: Marie Kanstrup, registered psychologist and doctor of medicine, Karolinska University Hospital and Uppsala University.
Last edited 2024-02-28