PTSD treatment

Treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder may involve psychotherapy, psychoactive drugs, or both. Psychotherapists help individuals confront the traumatic experience, work through their strong negative emotions, and overcome their symptoms.

Many people with post-traumatic stress disorder benefit from group therapy with other individuals suffering from the disorder. Physicians may prescribe antidepressants or anxiety-reducing drugs to treat the mood disturbances that sometimes accompany the disorder.

Other therapies

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) indicates changing behaviors, feelings and thoughts of the survivor. One of the CBT phases is Exposure therapy that seeks to help the survivor to cope with his trauma that he/she can remember the events of trauma in a controlled atmosphere. A technique called (desensitization) is used in order to take the traumatic events gradually or one by one which cause a kind of relaxation.

Pharmacotherapy (medication) is one of the methods used for decreasing the symptoms accompanied by PTSD like anxiety depression, insomnia. Currently, no exacting drug was found to be perfect treatment for PTSD. Yet, medication is successfully used in treatment of symptoms, which makes survivors more likely to take part in psychotherapy.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a quite treatment for traumatic memories. Whereas theories and researches are still growing for this type of treatment, there is a confirmation that the curative element unique or exclusive to EMDR may possibly facilitate the accessing and processing of trauma.

Another successful treatment was found to be Group treatment which is often a perfect solution since trauma survivors are capable of sharing traumatic materials in safe atmosphere with other survivors. Group members accomplish greater understanding seeing that they discuss and share how to cope with trauma-related symptoms like shame, guilt, rage, fear and doubt. They become more able to concentrate on the present instead of the past; this makes many survivors capable of coping with their symptoms, memories, and other sides of their lives.

Since traumatic events usually relate to early life experiences, Brief psychodynamic psychotherapy concentrates on emotional divergence. On narrating the traumatic memories to therapist, the survivor gets calmer, restores his self esteem and learns more coping skills.