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May 02, 2006
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Does Hypnosis Treatment Helps?
by SirGan
 Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or simply PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such. Such events could be military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults like raping, child abuse and similar. Most of the people who experienced these things can return to the normal life within some given time, but great amount of people develop one serious stress reaction disorder that, not only will not go away on its own, but may even get worse over time. Many people say they are literally haunted by the memories of traumatic experiences which disrupt their everyday activities.The primary symptoms of PTSD are:
Signs of increased panic and stress response, such as rapid breathing, higher heart rate, sweating etc. when exposed to situations that resemble the earlier trauma
Other symptoms that could occur months or even years after the original trauma and may include the following:
Statistical data1An estimated 7.8 percent of Americans will experience PTSD at some point in their lives. Women (10.4%) are affected almost twice as likely as men (5%). About 3.6 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 to 54 have PTSD during the course of a given year.
War is also one important risk factor because it is proven that, about 30 percent of the men and women who have spent time in war zones experience PTSD. More than half of all male Vietnam veterans and almost half of all female Vietnam veterans have experienced PTSD.
What causes PTSD?Normally, during or fallowing the traumatic event, person's perceptions change and serve to somehow divide the person from the extreme circumstance.
This is completely natural mechanism. It helps a person cope with the situation and provides self-protection. When person is diagnosed with PTSD, these thought processes continue to occur later in life. This is considered to be the consequence of a response to any trigger that brings back thoughts of the trauma.
Biochemically, several researches done in the past showed that this may be related to persistent elevations of a substance called glutamate in the brain. What is the role of this glutamate?
Glutamate generally rises in response to stress and returns to normal following the event.
Who is most likely to develop PTSD?Target population that is most likely to develop this psychiatric disorder are:
Those who experience greater intensity of stress situations, especially if those situations are unpredictable and uncontrollable!
Those with vulnerability factors such as
Those who experience threat or danger, suffering, upset, terror, and horror or fear
Those which social environment produces feeling of shame, guilt, stigmatization, or self-hatred
What are the consequences associated with PTSD?It is proven that PTSD is associated with a number of distinctive neurobiological and physiological changes. People diagnosed with PTSD may experience several neurobiological alterations in the
Many experts believe that the main problem is that, people with PTSD tend to have abnormal levels of key hormones involved in the body's response to stress:
PTSD patients also develop problems over-active thyroid gland! When the diagnosis of PTSD is set early in childhood, those children have greater chances to develop some other psychiatric disorders.
Most common disorder found in people with PTSD are:
MAN
WOMEN
Even some other, non-psychiatric disorders could also occur. Some of those are headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, immune system problems, dizziness, chest pain, and discomfort in other parts of the body.
Treatment of PTSDThere are several forms of PTSD therapy and most of them showed beneficial results. The most common are:
MEDICATIONSDoctors often prescribe some antidepressants such as
PSYCHO-THERAPYBehavioral therapy
This is one procedure which involves specific processes that involve mental imagery of the traumatic event combined with relaxation techniques
Cognitive therapy
This involves learning of some coping skills change the thought process about the past traumatic event
Psychodynamic therapy
This includes one very effective supportive therapy that is made to help an individual to gain insight into his reactions to the event and learns to battle with occurrence of the trauma.
HYPNOSISHypnosis is a very normal and natural altered state of consciousness or awareness. Although many people think about hypnosis as some “zombie-like” method, the fact is that, after a hypnosis session, most of the people ask if they have really been hypnotized. This is because it feels like such a normal state, although they were expecting something very strange.
Hypnotherapy has long been used to treat war-related post-traumatic conditions. These last couple of years it has been used also in cases of sexual assault, car accidents and other traumatic events.
The principle of hypnosis is to induce a deep state of relaxation in patient, which may help cope with PTSD, causing
How does it work?It is important to know that our minds work on two levels, the conscious and the unconscious. This conscious part we use when we make decisions, think and act. Part of the unconscious mind's responsibility is to run any habitual behaviors. Communication directly with the unconscious mind is very possible and it is called hypnosis. This enables the doctors to quick and easy change habits of a lifetime.
Many people are confused because they’ve heard that hypnosis can't work for all. Well, they are partially right, because, it works only with people that have IQ bigger then 70. This means that it works with the majority of people.
It is also very important thing to know that the hypnosis is completely safe.
However, not every patient can sent to hypnotherapy. Some criteria should be meet, such as:
Hypnosis isn't being used only in treatment of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, but many other conditions such as:
PreventionBad thing about this disorder is that, practically, there is no prevention for PTSD. This is because traumatic events are often unpredictable and random. Some researches have proven that certain blood pressure medications, if given immediately can cause mild lowering of the symptoms intensity.
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