As I research PTSD today, I come across multiple instances of statistics that don't reflect my reality living with chronic PTSD.
According to Mark Erickson, in a talk he gives as psychiatrist, here: SBNI Lunch Lecture Series - The Neurobiology of PTSD
Many people experience a trauma and qualify as PTSD a month later, but by four months later, do not. He gives many figures to demonstrate how PTSD sort of vanishes from the population of sufferers.
He doesn't break that stat pile down with any sort of explanation for the reduction in PTSD other than to say that PTSD goes away for most people.
Other research I have read cites 15 years as a mean duration for the disorder. I also read in those articles that if your PTSD has lasted more than 15 years or is delayed onset, then it is expected to be life-long.
He says that 75% of people experience a 'trauma' but only 3% or so go on to develop PTSD from it, and this is explained as a physiological pre-existing condition that is of yet undetected. He shows a part of the Pre-frontal cortex that inhibits and retrains the fight/flight of amygdala but "must not be working" in PTSD sufferers.
This implies that those with PTSD didn't survive something unusual or severe enough to break anyone down into PTSD; rather, the implication is that PTSD is the brain failing to do its job in telling us the cues are no longer a threat. He says even a conditioned fear response can be untrained by this part of the brain that is not working in PTSD.
Yet, this theory is then self-contradicted by his concession to the fact that child abuse and child rape almost always leads to PTSD and that more than any other trauma, it has the highest correlation to developing PTSD, like almost a guarantee. This makes the "brain part not working" theory questionable, unless that part of the brain hasn't formed yet or is easily "broken" by that trauma or during childhood in general.
What makes me so frustrated is that people qualify as having PTSD after one month post trauma based on criteria (from each of four symptom clusters: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity) yet, they are magically better after four months with our without treatment.
Finally, saying that we have effective treatments (in all videos out there on PTSD) seems to be a bald face lie.
Am I wrong for thinking that there is no wonderful pill out there fixing PTSD. He mentioned Prazosin for sleep.
Is everyone taking that now and finding it helpful?
I don't always suffer from nightmares or sleep problems, per se, but have all the other problems and the health problems that come from a lifetime with PTSD.
Is my frustration because the focus was on the "Mildest" one-time trauma, simple adult-onset vs. complex child trauma PTSD, or is this kind of presentation maddening to most of us with PTSD that hangs on?
According to Mark Erickson, in a talk he gives as psychiatrist, here: SBNI Lunch Lecture Series - The Neurobiology of PTSD
Many people experience a trauma and qualify as PTSD a month later, but by four months later, do not. He gives many figures to demonstrate how PTSD sort of vanishes from the population of sufferers.
He doesn't break that stat pile down with any sort of explanation for the reduction in PTSD other than to say that PTSD goes away for most people.
Other research I have read cites 15 years as a mean duration for the disorder. I also read in those articles that if your PTSD has lasted more than 15 years or is delayed onset, then it is expected to be life-long.
He says that 75% of people experience a 'trauma' but only 3% or so go on to develop PTSD from it, and this is explained as a physiological pre-existing condition that is of yet undetected. He shows a part of the Pre-frontal cortex that inhibits and retrains the fight/flight of amygdala but "must not be working" in PTSD sufferers.
This implies that those with PTSD didn't survive something unusual or severe enough to break anyone down into PTSD; rather, the implication is that PTSD is the brain failing to do its job in telling us the cues are no longer a threat. He says even a conditioned fear response can be untrained by this part of the brain that is not working in PTSD.
Yet, this theory is then self-contradicted by his concession to the fact that child abuse and child rape almost always leads to PTSD and that more than any other trauma, it has the highest correlation to developing PTSD, like almost a guarantee. This makes the "brain part not working" theory questionable, unless that part of the brain hasn't formed yet or is easily "broken" by that trauma or during childhood in general.
What makes me so frustrated is that people qualify as having PTSD after one month post trauma based on criteria (from each of four symptom clusters: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity) yet, they are magically better after four months with our without treatment.
Finally, saying that we have effective treatments (in all videos out there on PTSD) seems to be a bald face lie.
Am I wrong for thinking that there is no wonderful pill out there fixing PTSD. He mentioned Prazosin for sleep.
Is everyone taking that now and finding it helpful?
I don't always suffer from nightmares or sleep problems, per se, but have all the other problems and the health problems that come from a lifetime with PTSD.
Is my frustration because the focus was on the "Mildest" one-time trauma, simple adult-onset vs. complex child trauma PTSD, or is this kind of presentation maddening to most of us with PTSD that hangs on?