Counselling
PTSD THERAPIES & MEDICATIONS
Exposure Therapy
It usually involves eight to 15 sessions, 90 minutes each. Early on in treatment, your therapist will teach you breathing techniques to ease your anxiety when you think about what happened. Later, you’ll list the things you’ve been avoiding and learn how to face them individually(one by one). In another session, you’ll recount the traumatic experience to your therapist, then go home and listen to a recording of yourself. Doing this as “homework” over time may help ease your symptoms.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
With EMDR, you might not have to tell your therapist about your experience. Instead, you concentrate on the event while you watch or listen to something — a flashing light making a sound.
Stress Inoculation Training
SIT is a type of CBT. You can do it by yourself or in a group. You won’t have to go into detail about what happened. The focus is more on changing how you deal with the stress from the event.
You might learn massage, breathing techniques, and other ways to stop negative thoughts by relaxing your mind and body.
Medications
The PTSD brain processes “threats” differently, in part because the balance of chemicals called neurotransmitters is not balanced currently and triggers “fight or flight” responses in the body, which is what makes one experience jumpy and on-edge feelings. Trying to shut that down could lead to feeling emotionally cold and removed.
Medications can help someone stop thinking about and reacting to what happened, including having nightmares and flashbacks. Several types of drugs affect the chemistry in your brain related to fear and anxiety. Doctors will usually start with medications that affect the neurotransmitters serotonin or norepinephrine (SSRIs and SNRIs), including:
- Fluoxetine (Prozac)
- Paroxetine (Paxil)
- Sertraline (Zoloft)
- Venlafaxine (Effexor)
- Antidepressants
- Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
- Antipsychotics or second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs)
- Beta-blockers
- Benzodiazepines