Common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder

Exposure to combat can spark several mental health diagnoses, and often they appear together — for example, people who have post-traumatic stress disorder often also suffer from depression or substance abuse. Here’s a breakdown of common PTSD symptoms and diagnoses, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:

• A person is exposed to a traumatic event in which he experienced, witnessed or was confronted with death, serious injury, or the threat of death or serious injury.

• The trauma caused a person to feel intense fear, helplessness or horror.

• They reexperience the trauma through nightmares, flashbacks or by replaying the event in their minds. They also avoid things that remind them of the event, which can cause emotional numbing. They may refuse to talk about the trauma, avoid places and people that remind them of the event, be unable to remember the whole event, stop participating in activities, or feel estranged from friends or family — even feel incapable of love.

• They may also have difficulty sleeping; be irritable, jumpy or nervous, prone to outbursts of anger, or unable to concentrate; or feel that they are constantly watching for danger.

If those symptoms persist for less than a month, the diagnosis is acute stress disorder. If they persist for more than a month, the diagnosis is PTSD.

If the symptoms last fewer than three months, the diagnosis is acute PTSD; longer than three months, it’s chronic PTSD. If a person doesn’t develop symptoms until at least six months after being exposed to trauma, the diagnosis is delayed-onset PTSD.

PTSD is one of a number of anxiety disorders causes people to always feel worried and tense, even when they are safe or in a stress-free situation, and also comes with physical symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, irritability, muscle aches and other problems.

As many as one-third of people diagnosed with PTSD try to numb their pain and bad memories by abusing drugs and alcohol, leading to substance abuse disorder.

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Check out our series on PTSD