What Is the Single Most Common Traumatic Event That Can Lead to Ptsd?
All of united states of america volition encounter stress throughout our daily lives. When a strong emotional response to an extremely stressful or agonizing event impairs a person's power to cope, it'southward ofttimes considered to be traumatic.
While trauma doesn't always directly lead to mail service-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it is beneficial for those who accept witnessed or experienced trauma—as well as their loved ones—to know the signs and symptoms of PTSD, ways to treat it, and how to seek assist.
Trauma can vary in severity and impact—in fact, approximately one in three people who experience severe trauma likewise experience PTSD.
Despite its more mutual association with soldiers returning from combat situations and the horrors of war, PTSD is a condition that can apply to anyone who has witnessed or experienced traumatic, life-threatening, or life-changing events.
According to the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD is a common condition affecting 10% of women and four% of men at some point in their lives.
Keep Reading To Larn
- What PTSD and trauma are—and aren't
- How to recognize if you or a loved one are experiencing symptoms
- How to successfully manage and treat PTSD
Who Tin Experience PTSD? Anyone.
PTSD is a condition that affects people of all ages. No one is immune to trauma or how it affects the human brain. Depending on the person, PTSD may mean something different but be equally as impactful.
The experience of mail-traumatic stress tin vary depending on the trauma that the private went through—even symptoms tin vary betwixt two people. In some cases, symptoms can appear nearly instantaneously. For others, information technology tin can take decades for symptoms to surface and be recognized. For many, at that place's a delayed onset of symptoms, when the brain is no longer as preoccupied or the person has the opportunity to absorb what has happened.
At that place is no definitive answer to why some people who experience trauma develop PTSD and others do non. A combination of elements may cause the disorder or brand individuals more than susceptible to mail-traumatic stress, such equally:
- Exposure to trauma, including factors like the number of traumas experienced and the severity of those traumas
- Familial histories of anxiety and depression
- Emotional response (temperament)
- How your encephalon regulates the hormones and chemicals your trunk releases in response to traumatic events and stress
- Occupations like soldiers, nurses, doctors, EMTs, law enforcement, and firefighters expose some people to more trauma than other in jobs
What Events Tin can Lead to the Evolution of PTSD?
You lot don't have to experience a specific trauma to develop PTSD. Many people acquaintance this disorder with military machine veterans. While PTSD is common in military populations, simply witnessing an effect, similar a car accident, tin trigger PTSD symptoms.
In these cases, painful, traumatic memories can announced out of nowhere, creating intense physical and emotional reactions. During World War I, this was referred to as "vanquish shock." When the horrors of war were too much for the brain to manage, the brain, or at to the lowest degree function of the brain, merely close off.
Children and teens frequently experience PTSD every bit a event of traumas that touch them, such as school shootings, domestic violence, machine accidents, fail, or corruption. fifteen-43% of adolescents will experience a traumatic consequence, with most a quarter of those individuals experiencing symptoms of PTSD.
How Do I Recognize PTSD in Myself or Others?
With any traumatic event, it is completely normal to feel impacted. Still, PTSD symptoms may interfere with the person'south ability to function in their normal settings or environment.
While there are many symptoms of PTSD, they are often dismissed as something other than post-traumatic stress disorder. If symptoms escalate over time, interfere with the ability to become most day-to-twenty-four hours activities, or don't diminish with time, it may be worth talking to someone about the possibility of a PTSD diagnosis.
When because if yous or a loved one are living with PTSD, it'due south important to remember that the onset of symptoms can prove at any time, not just immediately after experiencing trauma. Many people take reported symptoms appearing decades after existence exposed to trauma.
While military members are common among PTSD patients, women are two times more likely than men to experience PTSD, and it is often the outcome of trauma like domestic violence, physical abuse, or rape.
While some people are predisposed to post-traumatic stress disorder, information technology tin impact anyone. As PTSD has many symptoms, it'due south important to recollect that someone may only express one of the following symptoms—or all of them.
Each afflicted person volition have a unique experience with PTSD and may feel any of the post-obit:
Unwanted and Intrusive Memories
When memories seem to turn against us, they can be traumatic in their own right, especially when they are memories we're trying to forget. These unwanted and intrusive memories may look similar the following symptoms:
- Reliving traumatic events over and over or having flashbacks of the consequence
- Recurring memories of the event while waking or sleeping
- Upsetting nightmares
- Concrete and/or emotional distress triggered by sights, sounds, and even smells that remind you of the traumatic event
Avoidance
Avoidance is a common reaction to trauma but tin get problematic if information technology'southward the main method of coping, as it tin can interfere with your power to heal later trauma. These are some of the symptoms of avoidance:
- Resisting thoughts or conversations about the traumatic result
- Avoiding people, places, or acts that remind y'all of the event
Trauma Anniversaries
It is normal for people who take experienced trauma to exist upset or on edge on the ceremony of an outcome. It is when these reactions are astringent or extreme that it indicates a deeper potential problem, such as PTSD.
Changes in Concrete and Emotional Reactions
Sometimes referred to as arousal symptoms, these symptoms emerge in reaction to the trauma and include things like:
- Easily startled
- Constantly vigilant for danger
- Unable to sleep
- Inability to concentrate
- Irritability
- Acrimony, aggression
- Guilt and shame
Sometimes these are accompanied by self-destructive behaviors, such as drinking, using drugs, sexual promiscuity, or engaging in dangerous activities like skydiving, driving at excessive speed, and pursuing other dangerous activities.
Negative Thoughts and Moods
If you're experiencing the following symptoms, you should accomplish out to someone you trust.
- Feelings of hopelessness
- Negative thoughts most yourself or the world
- Difficulty maintaining shut relationships
- Feelings of disengagement from friends and family
- No interest in things that once brought you joy
- Inability to experience positive emotions
- Emotional numbness
- Memory issues—even difficulty remembering central details of your trauma
PTSD symptoms may come and go over time. Seeking handling tin assist you recognize certain triggers so that yous can manage the emotions they bring about if you can't avert these triggers.
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How Is PTSD Diagnosed?
At that place are several steps involved in fully diagnosing postal service-traumatic stress disorder, including a physical and psychological evaluation in addition to coming together the criteria in DSM-5 (the standard for psychiatric diagnosis). Some of the criteria established in the DSM-five include one or more than of the following factors:
- Direct experience of a traumatic consequence
- Witnessing trauma to others
- Learning someone you love was threatened or afflicted by a traumatic upshot
- Repeated exposure to graphic details of traumatic events (such as first responders, emergency room staff, soldiers, etc.)
Also, symptoms of PTSD have to touch you longer than one calendar month and interfere with your power to cope and/or function in normal activities or relationships, for a formal diagnosis to be considered.
How Is PTSD Treated?
The sooner you seek treatment, the faster you can begin to feel relief and not exist encumbered by the symptoms of your trauma.
Two specific treatments are effective in treating PTSD: medications and psychotherapy. Both tin exist benign on their own, and combining the two types of treatment often is helpful.
Psychotherapy—talk therapy—can take place in ane-to-one meetings and/or group meetings. Talk therapy helps people with PTSD in many means.
Talking most the traumatic memories with a trained therapist can provide the patient with education about their symptoms so they don't feel so lonely and out of command.
Talking can desensitize people to their memories, which gradually allows them to stop avoiding reminders of the trauma. It can help them build skills for re-evaluating the thoughts and feelings that surround the memories. Most importantly, talk therapy can allow people to experience supported and rubber.
Trauma-Focused Therapy
The nigh well-studied and constructive types of psychotherapy for PTSD are those that are "trauma-focused," which means that the treatment involves focusing on the specific traumatic event.
In that location are several types of trauma-focused treatments. Some involve exposure methods, while others involve cognitive restructuring.
Exposure Therapy
Understandably, people with PTSD are oft highly reluctant to face the memories they have of the traumatic event. Therefore, they start to avoid any sort of reminders of information technology. This tin atomic number 82 to their lives becoming very constricted.
For case, if someone was involved in a serious motor vehicle blow on the highway, they may not merely start avoiding that specific highway simply also start fugitive being in a car or traveling anywhere outside the home. The fright becomes generalized, and their lives become all nearly avoidance of danger. Nowhere feels safety anymore. They feel haunted by the memories.
Exposure therapy for PTSD is a trauma-focused treatment that involves a trained professional helping a person gradually confront their sorry memories about the traumatic event over fourth dimension in a prophylactic environs.
The exposure may begin with imagining the traumatic outcome, talking about it out loud, and writing nearly it. Then, it may go on to confronting aspects of the traumatic result in the real world (e.g., having a motor vehicle accident survivor get-go past just walking out to the car, and then sitting in the automobile; over time, having them take a short drive, etc.).
Over time, with connected exposures, the thoughts and feelings come up up and people become sensitized to the fear that accompanies their memories.
Cognitive Restructuring
Cognitive restructuring for PTSD is a trauma-focused treatment that concentrates on identifying and then re-evaluating thought patterns that underlie the strong negative feelings that are associated with traumatic memories.
After a traumatic outcome, the survivor may view themselves, other people, and/or the world differently than they did before.
For case, someone who was assaulted by a male stranger while walking through the park may have distorted beliefs as a consequence. They may believe it was their fault for walking alone or that any man they don't know is a potential threat. They may come to believe there is no safe place in the world anymore.
Cerebral restructuring aims to place the thoughts associated with a traumatic event and so teach people how to challenge the thoughts by asking: Are they accurate, and what are the facts?
Cognitive restructuring works to help people re-evaluate their thinking processes that are associated with the traumatic memories, commencement, by having the therapist identify and challenge trauma-related thought patterns and then by teaching the person skills to do so themselves.
Centre Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is a trauma-focused psychotherapy approach. It involves recalling a traumatic retentivity, including the thoughts, feelings, and body sensations that come up while doing and so.
In some ways, it is like to exposure treatment. What makes it dissimilar is that while recalling the traumatic memory, people are asked to focus their attention on an external stimulus that invokes side-to-side movements of the eyes. It is thought that the side-to-side eye movements help to facilitate the processing of the belief by activating both encephalon hemispheres.
The National Center for PTSD provides more than in-depth data on trauma-focused treatments.
A Note on Treatment
All treatments for PTSD should be washed by a mental health professional person who has been trained to evangelize the treatment and undergone supervision of cases earlier doing it on their own. Anybody is unlike.
While in that location are three trauma-focused treatments (prolonged exposure, cognitive processing therapy, and EMDR) that have the about research backing them up, studies show that non all patients will answer. If one type of treatment does not work, some other may.
Some PTSD specialists believe that these types of short-term, trauma-focused treatments—which can be effective in some people who accept survived adult-onset, single-incident traumatic events or gainsay trauma—may also be constructive in people who accept sustained prolonged trauma during childhood.
Other PTSD specialists are concerned that trauma-focused treatments may be likewise overwhelming in these instances. As well, they are concerned that people who have experienced babyhood abuse may have considerable difficulty trusting a therapist to take them through handling.
Instead, they may recommend a phase-oriented treatment that involves the establishment of trust, safety, stabilization, and skills training earlier trauma-focused work.
Length of Treatment
Trauma-focused psychotherapy treatments typically are provided over a few months. For those who respond, a decrease in the intensity and frequency of PTSD symptoms happens fairly chop-chop. Some studies have shown that these effects continue to last over fourth dimension.
Antidepressants can accept a month or so to starting time existence constructive. Prazosin can be effective almost immediately for the treatment of nightmares.
Family Involvement in Handling
In addition to a patient receiving medication and/or psychotherapy, it is helpful to have family members involved. Family members should be taught to recognize the symptoms of PTSD so they can empathise what is happening to their loved one. They demand to know that PTSD is a treatable condition so that they can lend support to relatives by reaching out and providing encouragement.
While in that location is no one-size-fits-all handling for those living with PTSD, many treatments take been successful in helping people live with fewer symptoms—allowing them to live healthier, happier lives.
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PTSD and Suicide
Many people who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder also struggle with suicidal thoughts and/or behaviors.
Although it is non possible to predict suicide with any certainty, our best tool is recognition of the signs that many people exhibit when contemplating suicide. The following three behaviors should prompt you to seek firsthand help for yourself or a loved one:
- Talking about wanting to die or to impale oneself
- Looking for a way to kill oneself, such as searching online or obtaining a gun
- Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live
Please seek assistance immediately if you or someone y'all love is experiencing suicidal thoughts. If y'all or someone you know needs help:
- Telephone call 911 if you are thinking almost harming yourself or someone else
- Talk to your dr. well-nigh your symptoms and thoughts.
- Telephone call a suicide hotline: 1.800.273.TALK (i.800.273.8255)—if you are a veteran, printing 1 after calling this number to connect you with the Veterans Crunch Line
- Text Hi to 741-741 for free, 24-hour support from the Crisis Text Line
- Outside of the U.S., visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of resources
- Join a support group—it can exist beneficial to know that others share similar experiences and sympathise how yous feel
- Seek counseling with someone who specializes in mail-traumatic stress disorder
- Phone call or connect with a friend or loved i
- Contact a spiritual leader
PTSD Tin Exist Treated—Aye, There'southward Hope!
If you are overwhelmed by symptoms or negative thoughts that you suspect are related to PTSD, you should contact your health intendance team to hash out the possibility of a PTSD diagnosis. You tin can also contact a local mental health facility, like McLean, to get the help you demand. You don't have to struggle on your own—there is a path to recovery.
If you recognize the symptoms in a friend or loved 1, you should always attain out to them and offer support. Whether they accept your assistance or not, knowing that you've offered tin be incredibly helpful to those who are affected past mental disease.
Want More Info?
Looking for even more information nigh PTSD? You may find these resource helpful.
Interesting Articles and Videos
- Deconstructing Stigma: It Doesn't Matter How Tough You lot Are
- Podcast: PTSD, Resiliency, and Military Mental Health With Commissioner Randall Liberty
- Identifying the Roots of PTSD
- The Mental Health Effects of Highly Stressful Events
- Find all of McLean'due south resources on PTSD
Learn More than
- Suicide Prevention Resources
- Trauma and Grief Resource for Children – Child Mind Plant
- Emotional Recovery – American Cherry Cross
- Kids & Trauma – Children's League of Massachusetts
Helpful Links
These organizations may likewise have useful information and community supports:
National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
A part of the VA that works to advance the clinical intendance and social welfare of America's veterans through research, education, and training in the science, diagnosis, and treatment of PTSD and stress-related disorders. Its website is provided as an educational resources concerning PTSD and other enduring consequences of traumatic stress.
Suicide Prevention Lifeline
If you lot are suicidal, please call 800.273.TALK(8255). You'll be connected to a skilled, trained counselor at a crunch center in your expanse. Counselors are available 24 hours a day, vii days a week.
Samaritans: Massachusetts
A nondenominational, not-for-turn a profit volunteer system defended to reducing the incidence of suicide by befriending individuals in crisis and educating the community near constructive prevention strategies. Telephone call or text the 24/seven free and confidential helpline at 877.870.4673.
Vet Centers
This program provides readjustment counseling, outreach, and referral services to veterans and their families in a relaxed, customs-based setting. Vet Centers also provide counseling for military sexual trauma and bereavement counseling to parents, siblings, and spouses of service members who die in service. Many staff members are combat veterans themselves. About all combat veterans are eligible for Vet Center services.
RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)
The nation's largest anti-sexual violence arrangement, RAINN started and currently runs the National Sexual Set on Hotline (800.656.HOPE) in partnership with over 1,100 local rape crisis centers beyond the land and operates the DoD Safety Helpline for the Section of Defense. RAINN also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, aid victims, and ensure that rapists are brought to justice.
International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
Dedicated to sharing information most the effects of trauma and the discovery and dissemination of knowledge near policy, program, and service initiatives that seek to reduce traumatic stressors and their firsthand and long-term consequences. Providing admission to education and research, meetings and events, besides as tools for treating trauma and public resource.
The National Kid Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)
NCTSN brings a singular and comprehensive focus to childhood trauma. A collaboration of frontline providers, researchers, and families committed to raising the standard of care while increasing access to services.
Source: https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/everything-you-need-know-about-trauma-and-ptsd
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