Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD, is a mental health condition that may occur in people who have experienced an event that was life-threatening or simply so traumatic, that it left a lasting impact on their mental health. With PTSD, you can experience symptoms such as extreme anxiety, along with flashbacks and nightmares. Additionally, you may subconsciously or consciously become afraid of putting yourself in a position that could make the traumatic event re-occur. For example, if you were recently in a car accident, you may become anxious every time you need to drive. If the accident occurred on a specific road or parkway, you may feel extra anxious about driving down that same road again.
Saturday, June 27th is National PTSD Awareness Day. Additionally, the entire month of June is recognized as National PTSD Awareness Month. The goal of this month is to bring attention to PTSD, increase public awareness, and reduce the stigma surrounding PTSD. This helps those who are suffering feel comfortable knowing that PTSD is not something to be ashamed of. Treatment methods are promoted, with an increased focus on providing valuable tools and resources for those with PTSD to seek help.
These symptoms of PTSD typically emerge within a few months after the event has occurred. To receive a diagnosis of PTSD, the symptoms must be so severe that they interfere with your daily life functioning. For example, if your PTSD symptoms affect your work, relationships with loved ones, or even just your daily life, you may qualify to be labeled with PTSD.
Specifically, PTSD symptoms are grouped into four distinct categories: intrusion, avoidance, mood and thinking pattern changes, and hyperarousal. Let’s break these down into more detail:
With intrusion, you may experience recurrent, unwanted memories of the event that took place. Flashbacks may occur, along with extreme anxiety when reminded of the event.
Avoidance involves consciously or even subconsciously avoiding any environment, situation, people, or objects that could cause you to re-live the negative event.
Negative changes in mood can occur, where you feel detached and worried that the traumatic event could happen again. Along with these mood changes, the hyperarousal feelings of constantly being “on edge” with difficulty concentrating can occur.
All of this information is key and crucial to our mission at Victory. Many of our patients may have experienced traumatic events in their lives that led them to engage in substance use. As a means of coping with these unwanted thoughts and feelings, patients have turned to substance use to self-medicate.
We recognize that patients may not formally be diagnosed with PTSD but still exhibit symptoms that are consistent with the diagnosis. Our highly experienced behavioral health and psychiatric teams work together to ensure that our patients can receive the best care possible to help them overcome their PTSD symptoms.
Psychotherapy, along with certain medications such as SSRIs that treat anxiety and depression, have been found to commonly help those with PTSD overcome their symptoms and lead a positive, substance use-free life.
Victory Recovery Partners is a group of addiction-recovery centers on Long Island and Manhattan, New York. By providing complete care under one roof, consisting of behavioral health, medication-assisted treatment, psychiatric and wellness services, we ensure that all our patients receive top-level care, keeping true to our mission, “No One Left Behind”. For more information on Victory, please visit our website.