Clinicians of Varying Backgrounds Can Successfully Deliver Prolonged Exposure Therapy

Therapies

While professional experience has some impact on the course of prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD, all well-trained practitioners can effectively administer this form of treatment, according to recent findings from a team of American researchers. A form of change-oriented psychotherapy called prolonged exposure therapy (PE therapy) has verified usefulness as a treatment for people affected…

Comorbid PTSD, Heroin Addiction Increases Risk for Major Depression, Suicide

PTSD & Trauma

Significant numbers of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have diagnosable problems with substance abuse and/or substance addiction. Some of these individuals are addicted to the powerful opioid street drug heroin. In a study published in January 2015 in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, a team of researchers from Australia’s University of New South…

Why Does PTSD Only Affect Certain People?

PTSD & Trauma

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition characterized by a damaging reaction to exposure to traumatic events that pose (or seem to pose) a serious threat to life or well-being. Doctors and researchers are well aware that only some of the people exposed to highly traumatic circumstances will develop this condition. In a…

Post-Traumatic Growth: Healing From PTSD

PTSD & Trauma

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been part of the therapeutic lexicon since the 1980s, when PTSD was added to the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a response to the biological, psychological, and social impact of catastrophic events such as war, rape, natural disasters and surviving prisoner-of-war or concentration…

Dual Diagnosis: PTSD and Substance Abuse

PTSD & Trauma

After a break-in and assault, a young woman self-medicates with prescription drugs. But not even the increasingly large amounts of narcotics can ease her anxiety. Sidney had been like most of the young women attending her prestigious women’s college; she was wide-eyed, eager and intellectually curious. Her parents described her as someone who “lit up…

PTSD in Women

PTSD & Trauma

PTSD is the common abbreviation for post-traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety-related disorder that can appear in people who go through some form of physical and/or mental trauma. Because of the condition’s common association with the after effects of warfare, many people think of PTSD primarily as a men’s or a combat soldier’s illness. However, some…