What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that might be diagnosed following exposure to a traumatic event.

While it’s normal to experience distress immediately after a traumatic experience, PTSD is diagnosed when symptoms persist over time (at least a month) and significantly impact a person’s daily life.

Recognising the Signs of PTSD

There are three main clusters of symptoms:

1) Reliving of the traumatic event, which might include becoming distressed when faced with reminders of what happened, getting distressing physical sensations or having unwanted thoughts about the trauma that intervene during everyday activities (such as ruminative thoughts, nightmares or flashbacks).

2) Avoidance of anything that reminds them of the trauma, such as staying clear of certain people or places, withdrawing from others, or feeling emotionally numb.

4) Increased alertness - this can show up as being constantly on edge, feeling irritable, difficulty with sleeping or being easily startled.

Further Diagnostic Criteria

According to the NICE guidelines (2018), which follow the ICD-11 criteria for diagnosing PTSD, a diagnosis is made based on the presence of those three core symptom clusters following exposure to a traumatic event, which includes:

• Experiencing serious physical harm.

• Facing a life-threatening incident.

• Being subjected to sexual violence. 

• Witnessing acts of violence.

• The exposure can occur in different ways: it may happen directly to the person, be something they observe happening to others, or involve finding out that a traumatic event happened to someone close to them.

Examples of traumatic events we have worked with in our practice include: childbirth, a sexual assault, work-place accident, a bad drug trip, witnessing violence, workplace bullying, an operation gone wrong (this not an exhaustive list), the moment of hearing about losing a loved on.

If you have been exposed to a number of traumas, experienced prolonged or complex trauma, or suffered from childhood neglect or abuse then take a look at our Complex PTSD page which might fit your difficulties more accurately than PTSD

In addition to the above symptoms will be causing significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of life.

NICE-Recommended Treatment Options for PTSD

In the UK the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) provide guidance to healthcare teams like the NHS about the most appropriate treatment for diagnoses according to the research. According to them, treatment for PTSD should follow a stepped-care model, meaning that the level of care is matched to the individual’s needs. The first recommended treatment options are psychological therapies, with particular emphasis on trauma-focused approaches.

One of the main therapies is trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy (TF-CBT), which helps individuals work through their traumatic experiences by challenging unhelpful thoughts and learning healthy coping skills.

Another widely used method is Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), a technique that involves recalling traumatic memories while performing specific eye movements, which can help reduce the emotional distress tied to those memories. EMDR is often especially helpful for adults who have experienced a single traumatic event. These sessions are adapted to suit the age, developmental stage, and specific needs of individuals, including those with more complex trauma histories.

Medication may also be recommended but is not the first-line treatment. It may be considered when psychological therapy is not available or has been ineffective. NICE recommends the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), specifically paroxetine or sertraline, for adults with PTSD.

What’s Next?

We have a dedicated team of trauma therapists, who are trained in EMDR and TF-CBT and have extensive knowledge on PTSD. If you’re interested in finding out more or feel ready to take the next step, we’re here to help. You don't need to have a formal diagnosis to work with us. We work with the areas of difficulty, not the diagnosis.

Reach out to us here for a free consultation.

* A note of diagnoses: A psychiatric diagnosis is a label that could be given to an individual whose behaviour or emotional responses match a commonly observed pattern as described above. This does not indicate that something invisible is going on below the surface to cause this. Such diagnoses there-fore differ from physical health diagnoses, in which there are underlying biological causes, infection or anatomical anomalies. There are important bodily and neurobiological responses that occur as a result of trauma and that can be long lasting - but a diagnosis of PTSD does not mean that there these have been caused by a 'PTSD gene' or abnormality; these changes are in fact normal human reactions to intense, adverse or scary experiences.