What is the treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder?

What is the treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder?

You may need no treatment if your symptoms are mild, particularly if the trauma happened less than a month ago. However, if your symptoms are prolonged and moderate or severe, treatment can help you to adjust. If you have severe symptoms 2-4 weeks after the incident, you are likely to need treatment.
You should be aware that no treatment will 'wipe the slate clean' and erase all memories of the event.
Note: some non-medicinal treatments mentioned below may not be available on the NHS in every area.

Talking treatments and other non-medicinal treatments

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) may be advised. Briefly, CBT is based on the idea that certain ways of thinking can trigger or fuel certain mental health problems such as PTSD. The therapist helps you to understand your current thought patterns. In particular, to identify any harmful, unhelpful and false ideas or thoughts. The aim is then to change your ways of thinking in order to avoid these ideas. Also, to help your thought patterns to be more realistic and helpful. It may help especially to counter recurring distressing thoughts and avoidance behaviour. Therapy is usually done in weekly sessions of about 50 minutes each, for several weeks. You have to take an active part and are given homework for between sessions.
• Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) is a treatment that seems to work quite well for PTSD. Briefly, during this treatment a therapist asks you to think of aspects of the traumatic event. Whilst you are thinking about this you follow the movement of the therapist's moving fingers with your eyes. It is not clear how this works. It seems to desensitise your thought patterns about the traumatic event. After a few sessions of therapy, you may find that the memories of the event do not upset you as much as before.
• Other forms of talking treatments such as anxiety management, counselling, group therapy and learning to relax may be advised.
• Self-help. Joining a group where members have similar symptoms can be useful. This does not appeal to everyone but books and leaflets on understanding PTSD and how to combat it may help.

Medication
Antidepressant medicines are often prescribed. These are commonly used to treat depression but have been found to help reduce the main symptoms of PTSD even if you are not depressed. They work by interfering with brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) such as serotonin which may be involved in causing symptoms.
Antidepressants take 2-4 weeks before their effect builds up and can take up to three months. A common problem is that some people stop the medicine after a week or so as they feel that it is doing no good. You need to give an antidepressant time to work. If one does help, it is usual to stay on the medication for 6-12 months, sometimes longer.
There are several types of antidepressants. However, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants are the ones most commonly used for PTSD. There are various types and brands of SSRI. Paroxetine has been found to be particularly useful for general use. Non-SSRI medicines sometimes used by specialists are mirtazapine and phenelzine.
Benzodiazepines such as diazepam are sometimes prescribed for a short time to ease symptoms of anxiety, poor sleep and irritability. The problem is, they are addictive and can lose their effect if you take them for more than a few weeks. They may also make you drowsy. Therefore, they are not used long-term. A short course of up to 2-3 weeks may be prescribed now and then if you have a particularly bad spell of anxiety symptoms.
Other medicines such as beta-blockers, mood stabilisers and anticonvulsants are being studied. These are normally used to treat other conditions but there is some evidence that they may help some people with PTSD. Further research is needed to clarify their role.
A combination of treatments such as CBT and an SSRI antidepressant may work better in some cases than either treatment alone.