Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Sometimes, people who have been in or seen a traumatic event have distressing symptoms afterwards. If those symptoms don’t go away, you may be assessed as having post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD for short.

People with PTSD will have been in or seen a traumatic event where they thought there was a serious threat of death or serious injury to themselves or other people, for example, combat, assault, accident, violent death of another person, torture, rape or other sexual crime. At the time, the traumatic event will have caused them to feel intense fear, helplessness or horror.

If you have PTSD, you may have ‘flashbacks’ in which you feel you are back there, reliving the event again. You may have thoughts, images or nightmares about what happened when you don’t want them, and your may avoid things to do with the event, including thinking, feeling or talking about it. You could also be easily startled, or jumpy, and  ‘hypervigilant’, which means you are always watching out for danger.

PTSD can affect how you live your life, but there are treatments that have been shown to work well. To refer yourself to Talk Liverpool, click HERE.