Today on the Morning Show with Frances Finn at BBC Radio Nottingham, we discussed Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

PTSD can develop when you go through a near-death experience, or an event happens which makes you fear, or actually have, a serious injury; it can also occur if you witness the sudden or shocking death or injury of another person, especially of someone close to you. Even a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness or sexual abuse can result in PTSD. 

The key elements of the experience are: shock, fear, helplessness or horror.

Not everyone develops PTSD; some people are especially susceptible – children, the elderly, adults who have a rigid sense of the world as a safe place (“bad things only happen to other people, probably because they have been bad/ the world is fair / good people get rewarded for being good”).

Symptoms of PTSD include: flashbacks/bad dreams giving rise to panic attack experiences; sleep disturbance; numb emotions; irritability; difficulty concentrating; sense of pointlessness; loss of interest in usual activities; avoidance of reminders of what happened (and rigid extreme beliefs for ‘self-protection’)

PTSD usually develops within 3 months of the experience, but can also show itself years later.

Help is available! Your GP may prescribe medication, but will probably prefer to arrange counselling for you; cognitive-behavioural counselling is especially effective; we aim to help you ‘join up the dots’ of the experience, understand the links between thoughts and feelings and behaviours, gain new persepectives and a feeling of greater control, and formulate coping strategies and a relapse prevention plan.

Above all, we normalise the symptoms of PTSD: it has been your natural response to this terror. We urge friends and family to support you also; this is not a matter of ‘snap out of it’ or ‘move on, put it behind you’!