Posttraumatic stress disorder
hidePosttraumatic stress disorder (abbreviated PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more traumatic events that threatened or caused great physical harm.
It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma. This stressor may involve someone's actual death, a threat to the patient's or someone else's life, serious physical injury, an unwanted sexual act, or a threat to physical or psychological integrity, overwhelming psychological defenses.
In some cases it can also be from profound psychological and emotional trauma, apart from any actual physical harm. Often, however, incidents involving both things are found to be the cause.
PTSD is a more chronic and less frequent consequence of trauma than the normal acute stress response.
PTSD has also been recognized in the past as railway spine, stress syndrome, shell shock, battle fatigue, traumatic war neurosis, or post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Diagnostic symptoms include reexperience, such as flashbacks and nightmares; avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma; and increased arousal, such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hypervigilance. Per definition, the symptoms last more than six months and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (e.g. problems with work and relationships).
For more information about Posttraumatic stress disorder, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with post traumatic stress disorder
Non-invasive technique blocks a conditioned fear in humans
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Dec 09, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (2) |
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Scientists have for the first time selectively blocked a conditioned fear memory in humans with a behavioral manipulation. Participants remained free of the fear memory for at least a year. The research builds on emerging ...
Military experiment seeks to predict PTSD
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Nov 20, 2009 |
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(AP) -- Two days before shipping off to war, Marine Pfc. Jesse Sheets sat inside a trailer in the Mojave Desert, his gaze fixed on a computer that flashed a rhythmic pulse of contrasting images.
Search results for post traumatic stress disorder
Acute stress leaves epigenetic marks on the hippocampus
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Nov 24, 2009 |
4.7 / 5 (9) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists are learning that the dynamic regulation of genes -- as much as the genes themselves -- shapes the fate of organisms. Now the discovery of a new epigenetic mechanism regulating genes in the brain ...
Brain imaging shows kids' PTSD symptoms linked to poor hippocampus function
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Dec 08, 2009 |
4.5 / 5 (2) |
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Psychological trauma leaves a trail of damage in a child's brain, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Their new study gives the first direct evidence that children ...
Major impacts of climate change expected on mental health
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Dec 03, 2009 |
3.4 / 5 (5) |
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Leading mental health researchers are warning that some of the most important health consequences of climate change will be on mental health, yet this issue is unlikely to be given much attention at the UN climate change ...
Gene implicated in stress-induced high blood pressure
Nov 23, 2009 |
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Do stressful situations make your blood pressure rise? If so, your phosducin gene could be to blame according to a team of researchers, at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, ...
Good stress response enhances recovery from surgery, study shows
Dec 01, 2009 |
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The right kind of stress response in the operating room could lead to quicker recovery for patients after knee surgery, according to a new study led by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers. The results could ...
Antiepileptic drugs not linked to suicide among those with bipolar disorder
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Dec 07, 2009 |
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Despite government warnings about an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions while taking antiepileptic drugs, these medications do not appear to be associated with increased risk of suicide attempts in individuals ...
Full recovery now possible for an 'untreatable' mental illness
Nov 19, 2009 |
3 / 5 (1) |
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Patients coping with the chaos and misery of Borderline Personality Disorder now have reason for strong confidence in making major life changes through a new treatment, Schema Therapy. For the first time, three major outcome ...
Inhibition of GRK2 is protective against acute cardiac stress injuries
Nov 17, 2009 |
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Inhibition of a protein known to contribute to heart failure also appears to be protective of the heart in more acute cardiac stress injury, namely ischemia reperfusion, according to two studies conducted at the Center for ...
Viagra for women? Drug developed as antidepressant effective in treating low libido
Medicine & Health / Medications
Nov 16, 2009 |
4.4 / 5 (7) |
4
The drug flibanserin, which was originally created as an antidepressant, is effective in treating women with low libido, pooled results from three separate clinical trials have found.
Depression as deadly as smoking, but anxiety may be good for you
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Nov 17, 2009 |
3.6 / 5 (5) |
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A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King's College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.
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