I have a very different view as to whether or not PTSD is 'curable' or not.
While technically, it is absolutely correct to say 'there is no cure for PTSD', I do NOT believe this means one has to live their entire life with it.
In exactly the same way 'there is no cure for cancer' - BUT there are plenty of people who have cancer, and even those who have been told it's incurable or they are 'terminal', DO make a full recovery and no longer HAVE cancer.
In my own life, I had PTSD and it's symptoms probably from early childhood. But after years if treatment (ironically not specifically for PTSD as I was misdiagnosed at the time) all the PTSD symptoms went into full remission. For over a decade, I had not one flashback, I did not dissociate. I had come to a place if full acceptance, understanding and even compassion towards my abuse and abusers. In that decade plus, I had one bout of depression that ended treatment over a few months. But other than that, I had no mental health issues and no symptoms of PTSD.
I went from being highly dysfunctional - multiple hospital admissions, living in supported psych accommodation, patterns of repeated self harm (cutting, burning, overdosing), alcoholic binges, suicide attempts, eating disorders, and criminal activity that nearly saw me in prison (suspended jail sentence. I had - at one time!- multiple health professionals working with me - psychotherapist, psychiatrist, social worker, occupational therapist, psych nurse, forensic psychiatrist, probation officer. Being a psychiatric patient was my full time job.
Yet I managed to turn my life around - going to rehab and stopping drinking, as well as many many years of therapy, I got a life I could never have dreamed about while in the depths of PTSD. Suddenly I had 2 university degrees, became a he lath professional with a highly responsible job, and now I have as CLIENTS, families containing nurses, probation officers, psychologists, police officers (the irony is not lost on me :D).
So why do I have PTSD again now? Because the reality is, if you have been severely traumatised in the past you are much higher risk than the average person to being traumatised again to the point of PTSD Diagnosis.
In my case, a series of devastating major earthquakes hitting my city. Interestingly, it wasn't the first huge quake that triggered a trauma response in me (jolted awake 4:30am, size 7.1 - a very very shallow quake, less than 15kms under the earth; hundreds of aftershocks - 200 in just the first 24 hours alone). While I was pretty damn scared (my house walls were moving 2-3 feet in every direction, is how bad it was), and was worried I could be hurt, and I did not feel safe, on edge WAITING for the next huge quake (sometimes the first big one is not the biggest one - it could have been a foreshock! :eek:); I did not fear for my life.
The next severe quake 5 months later however, I really thought I was going to die. A smaller but more powerful quake (6.3) that killed almost 200 people traumatised me into developing PTSD. The PTSD triggered by the quakes took 2 years to recover from - mainly because it took 2 years for the ground to stop shaking weekly with aftershocks (still get them every 4-8 weeks nearly 4 years in). And I know I probably have more healing to do in terms of that - I do avoid a lot of anything related to the quakes. Hard to ignore it though when all around me, the widespread devastation to my city is a daily reminder. But the quake trauma also re-triggered childhood related PTSD, and that is what I am struggling with today.
So - while there is no defined 'cure' for PTSD I would encourage anybody with it to never give up hope that you can live a life FREE of it completely.
It does not need to be a life sentence.:)
