PTSD treatment

It is very important to understand the core driver of PTSD before a remedy can be identified. One of the challenges for psychotherapists is getting the patient to open up and describe the event that caused the trauma. You wish there was something like an eraser that you could use to erase the traumatic experience from memory or pull a power cord from your brain that would reset the memory. But these are just illusions and more of a chimera. At the core of all PTSD treatment is a single goal, to make you learn to accept yourself, a kind of meeting yourself halfway, acknowledging that the past cannot be reversed, but steps can be taken to ensure that the present and the future does not imply another such traumatic experience.

Medications for the treatment of PTSD

A key element of PTSD is depression, followed by excessive anxiety. Antidepressants may be prescribed to the patient to calm the nervous system. When your mind is calm, your physiology also relaxes. If the patient also suffers from excessive nightmares and episodes of waking up in a cold sweat, tranquilizers may be prescribed. However, patients may develop a penchant for overdosing on such drugs, which could do more harm than good. Therefore, if medications are prescribed as part of routine PTSD treatment, they must be properly monitored and controlled. However, medications are rarely the only remedy for PTSD. These are short term and temporary in nature and there is a risk of the patient becoming addicted. Also, there is a chance that the drug will start to lose its potency after a while as the body gets used to it.

Group therapy as a treatment for PTSD

As discussed above, the most challenging aspect of PTSD treatment is getting the patient to open up and provide an accurate description of the event. Patients have the inclination to keep things bottled up as they always have ever since that traumatic event occurred in their life. They also feel that trauma is a personal demon that no one can help to eliminate. Such mental stigmas are the main inhibitors to the treatment of patients with PTSD. They tend to believe that they are beyond help and nothing can help them overcome their problem.

However, research and statistics have shown that bringing together a number of patients who have experienced similar traumatic experiences and having them talk about their experience makes them more willing to open up. This is the central philosophy behind group therapy which is centered around the concept of sympathetic bonding.

Let’s say, for example, that you are an accountant by profession and you are asked to participate in a forum where a group of cardiologists discuss the latest advances in open-heart surgery. Do you think you’ll open up and talk about why it’s so important that credits and debits cancel each other out for a correct balance? But in that same forum, even the most introverted cardiologist who has never met anyone else in the group could be seen as a very active contributor to a stimulating discussion. This is the concept of “like attracts like” or sympathetic bonding. This is what group therapy entails when used as a PTSD treatment method.

Psychotherapists may be present physically or behind a one-way glass wall or via video feed among the group of PTSD patients, who may or may not be aware that their conversation is being monitored by qualified mental health professionals. . As the subjects start talking casually at first, they eventually start talking about their experiences. It is then that the psychotherapists present take care of taking notes and analyzing the conversation.
After a while, patients really begin to open up one by one in the company of other patients (or well-wishers) and can begin a vivid replay of the traumatic event. Such descriptions provide valuable information to psychotherapists about the nature of the problem, which in turn helps them analyze and determine possible solutions.

Post-session research has also revealed that PTSD patients feel more relaxed after having had a chance to “bar their chest” and finally have someone with whom they can relate, listen and share their own traumatic experience. It is the same effect as opening the lid of a pressurized container. Releasing all that pent up tension and grievance, simply by discussing your experiences with like-minded people helps significantly to relax your nervous system. Anything that the psychotherapist recommends after such sessions can only have a positive effect on the patient.

Other treatments for PTSD, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, have been shown to be quite effective as long as the patient is willing to open up and give a true account of their experience. Patients have been reported to go into shock and feel extremely distressed when asked to describe their experiences, so it is very important that the psychotherapist not rush through the session or convey any sense of urgency to the patient. Instead, this needs to be approached cautiously and delicately with a keen eye for any feelings of overexertion on the part of the patient.