Overview

What it is: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be a very serious and debilitating condition occurring after you have been exposed to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical danger happened or was threatened. The kinds of traumatic events triggering PTSD in people include violent personal assaults (rape, mugging), natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes), man-made disasters (bombings), accidents or military combat.

How it's diagnosed: Doctors ask a series of questions to see if a specific trauma is causing your symptoms. They also look for other medical and anxiety conditions often appearing with PTSD. Your symptoms need to have been present for more than one month for a diagnosis of PTSD.

How it's treated: Treatment can involve taking medications like Paxil, psychotherapy (talk therapy) or both. It is likely you will need long-term treatment to prevent a recurrence of PTSD symptoms.

Some people find comfort just by learning PTSD is a medical condition like diabetes or heart disease. Learning more about your condition is often a good first step toward feeling better.

Back to Top

What Does It Feel Like?

Many people experience painful or stressful moments in their lives, such as financial problems, divorce or disappointments at work. However, sometimes a traumatic event is so severe it shatters your life. Violent acts such as physical assault, robbery, natural disaster, fire or serious accident -- or long-term trauma such as domestic violence, child abuse or war -- can lead to PTSD.

If you have PTSD, you often go out of your way to avoid any situation reminding you of the traumatic event that caused your condition. Or you experience "flashbacks" to the original event seeming so real it feels like it is happening all over again. Even the smallest reminder can cause you to start reexperiencing the event.

With PTSD, the symptoms can become so overwhelming they begin to interfere with your everyday life. The future could look bleak, you could having difficulty sleeping, you could find yourself always on edge or irritable with friends, family members or coworkers.

Back to Top

How Common Is PTSD?

PTSD is a lot more common than you may think. More than 16 million Americans have PTSD during their lifetime.

As many as 70 percent of adults in the United States have experienced at least one major trauma during their lifetimes, and 8 percent have had PTSD at some point. Women are twice as likely to have PTSD as men.

The good news is there are therapies to manage PTSD symptoms. Many people who seek treatment recover from PTSD and enjoy more productive lives.

Back to Top

Who Gets PTSD?

PTSD can happen to anyone, although certain situations seem to trigger the kind of traumatic response causing the condition.

About 30 percent of men and women who have spent time in war zones experience PTSD (the condition was first known as shell shock in the early part of the 20th century). Other people at risk for PTSD include professional firefighters, survivors of automobile crashes, female rape victims and prisoners of war.

Symptoms of PTSD sometimes occur immediately and then disappear after several months. In other cases, the symptoms begin to appear six months after the trauma and last indefinitely.

Back to Top