Help In Coping With Trauma

Traumatic events occur somewhere every day. Studies indicate that adults are less capable of coping with trauma than children and are more likely to suffer physical and emotional problems years after the traumatic events took place. The key to coping with trauma is to find the right kind of help as soon as possible.

PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was once treated as the result of war experience but is now accepted as the outcome of severely stressful events experienced by ordinary people as well. Survivors of child abuse as well as serious accidents may show the same kind of symptoms as those who have gone through battle. In order to be diagnosed with PTSD, a patient should have experienced an event or events that involved the death or serious injury – or threatened such danger – to the patient or others.

The second part of the diagnosis depends on the patient's response to the event which must include intense fear, helplessness or horror. PTSD is the result if the patient persistently reexperiences the event or the emotions of the event through images, thoughts or perceptions, or through distressing dreams of the event or by reliving the feeling of the event through hallucinations or flashbacks.

Reexperiences can also occur when the patient is exposed to anything that is a reminder of the traumatic event. A sufferer should look for professional help in coping with trauma when his or her life is disrupted by avoiding activities, places or people that trigger memories of the trauma, by lack of interest in important activities, by loss of the ability to feel emotions, or by a troubling sense of a shortened future. Other symptoms of problems coping with trauma include sleep problems, irritability, difficulty concentrating, increased startle response and a sense of hypervigilance.

These symptoms should date from the traumatic event in order to indicate a difficulty in coping with trauma. If the symptoms last longer than month and cause distress or the inability to function in normally important areas, then professional assistance is required. It's important for the person who suffers from PTSD to find assistance in coping with trauma before his life is seriously altered by the symptoms. Many people have had to find help in coping with trauma since the events of September 11, 2001. Such events are so traumatic, that people who were not directly changed and did not personally witness the events were affected by varying degrees of PTSD.

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