by Dannett Frey

Created on: January 06, 2009

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD typically is found in someone who was exposed to threats of death or serious injury, or subjection to actual injury, which resulted in an intense emotional response of fear, helplessness, or horror. In order to understand the treatment options for PTSD, you must first understand the behavioral definitions of PTSD.

Behaviors or diagnostic criteria can be one or several of the following:

1. The person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others.

2. The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. In children this may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.

The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one or more of the following ways:

1. Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event.

2. Recurrent distressing dreams

3. Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring

4. Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

5. Physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness, as indicated by three or more of the following:

1. Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings or conversations associated with the trauma.

2. Efforts to avoid activities, places or people that arouse recollections of the trauma.

3. Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma.

4. Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities.

5. Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others.

6. Restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)

7. Sense of a foreshortened future.

Persistent symptoms of increased arousal, as indicated by two or more of the following:

1. Difficulty falling or staying asleep.

2. Irritability or outbursts of anger.

3. Difficulty concentrating.

4. Hypervigilance.

5. Exaggerated startle response.

Duration of the disturbance is more than one month. Causes clinically significant distress or impairment.

The following are the skills the victim of PTSD should concentrate on developing.

Relaxationthe victim will need to feel at ease with you as much as he or she can before relaxation can be discussed. Develop a relationship with the victim build on small steps of trust.

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