PTSD Treatment

How common is PTSD?

About 70% of people will experience a traumatic event during their lifetime. An estimated 20% of people who experience a traumatic event will develop PTSD, but the actual incidence may be much higher, because many people who have PTSD never get diagnosed or treated. 

Why should I seek treatment for PTSD? 

PTSD causes problems with mood, anxiety, sleep, and interpersonal interactions. Untreated or inadequately treated PTSD can be debilitating, making it difficult to work and engage in your regular activities. Fortunately, effective treatment for PTSD is available. With treatment, people with PTSD can recover and live healthier, happier, more satisfying lives. 

What causes PTSD?

PTSD can be precipitated by exposure to any event that causes or has the potential to cause serious physical injury, severe psychological harm, or death. PTSD can occur after exposure to violence, physical or sexual abuse, sexual assault, serious accidents, severe illness, unexpected death of a loved one, famine, natural disasters, terrorism, or war. Complex PTSD can develop in situations where trauma occurs repeatedly over a long period of time, such as child abuse or domestic violence.

Whether or not a person who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD is related to the severity of the trauma, whether they had experienced a previous traumatic event, whether the trauma was repeated or prolonged, how close they were to the traumatic event, and their relationship with the victim or perpetrator. People are at particularly high risk for PTSD when they experience rape, severe physical assault, or war. People who are exposed to trauma related to their occupation, such as soldiers, police, corrections officers, firefighters, EMTs, and other health care workers, are also at very high risk for PTSD.

What are the symptoms of PTSD?

Symptoms of PTSD include nightmares, intrusive thoughts, vivid memories which can feel like re-living the trauma, feeling agitated and on edge all the time, constantly looking for signs of danger, having an exaggerated startle response, mood swings, and emotional dulling or numbness in some situations and difficulty controlling emotions in others. PTSD symptoms can start immediately after a traumatic event, or even months or years later. Symptoms can worsen with exposure to triggers, which are people, places, and situations that remind the person of the traumatic event.

Sometimes people with PTSD can outwardly appear to be participating in activities as usual, while inwardly feeling disengaged, disconnected, and alone. They may feel like things are not really happening, or like they are happening to someone else and not them. Sometimes people with PTSD aren’t able to engage in normal activities at all. In some cases, people with PTSD may wish they didn’t exist, or may have thoughts of harming or killing themselves.

PTSD can present similarly to other psychiatric disorders, such as depression or bipolar disorder, and sometimes people have other psychiatric conditions as well as PTSD. Accurate diagnosis can be essential to creating an effective treatment plan. The board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioners and psychotherapists at Owl & Eagle Health and Wellness have extensive experience and expertise in diagnosing and treating PTSD.

How is PTSD treated?

At Owl & Eagle Health and Wellness, our team of board certified psychiatric nurse practitioners and psychotherapists treat PTSD with a holistic approach, combining medications with psychotherapy, nutritional psychiatry, and other integrative treatments including dietary changes, vitamins, supplements, stress management, sleep hygiene, exercise, yoga, meditation, and breathwork. We provide highly specialized types of psychotherapy for PTSD including Somatimotor Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Medications that are frequently used to treat PTSD include antidepressants, anxiolytics, sleep medications, and medications for specific symptoms like nightmares. Most medications for PTSD have very manageable side effects, that typically resolve in the first weeks of treatment. Genetic testing can help identify which medications are more or less likely to be effective and well tolerated for you. For cases of PTSD that don’t resolve with these treatments, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and Ketamine Assisted Therapy can be added to the treatment plan. These augmenting strategies can be highly effective for treatment resistant PTSD. The majority of patients we treat for PTSD are able to effectively control their symptoms and achieve meaningful recovery, improving their function, mental and physical health, and quality of life.  

If you would like to learn more about assessment and holistic psychiatric treatment for PTSD for children, teens, and adults at Owl & Eagle Health and Wellness, Contact Us with questions or Book Now  to request an intake appointment today. Appointments are available either in-person in our offices in Golden or Denver, Colorado, convenient to the Denver Metro area, or via telehealth anywhere in Colorado. We look forward to meeting you!

Sources:

https://www.nami.org

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/

https://www.samhsa.gov/

https://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/mental-health-myths-facts

https://mhanational.org/mentalhealthfacts

https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Posttraumatic-Stress-Disorder