Trauma & Post-traumatic Stress

Does the world feel like a frightening, dangerous place for you?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a group of stress reactions that can develop after we witness a traumatic event, such as death, serious injury or sexual violence to ourselves or to others.

What is PTSD?

• PTSD is a mental health condition that may occur after a traumatic event, or after multiple traumatic events.
• PTSD can happen after there’s been actual or threatened serious injury, death or sexual violence to ourselves or others.
• PTSD can also occur after repeated and extreme exposure to the details of traumatic events. For example, emergency workers may be exposed to repeated trauma at work.

Direct and indirect exposure to trauma

Our exposure to a traumatic event can be:

• direct – when we’ve experienced a personal trauma or witnessed a traumatic event
• indirect – when we hear/learn about a traumatic event.

Potentially traumatic events, include:

• sexual assault
• physical attack
• being threatened with a gun, knife or other weapon
• domestic violence or abuse
• childhood physical or emotional abuse
• serious car accidents
• distressing home or workplace accidents
• seeing someone being killed or badly injured
• being held captive
• wars
• terrorist attacks
• natural disasters like bushfires, floods, earthquakes
• torture
• fire
• plane crashes
• being first on the scene where someone has been seriously injured or killed
• repeated exposure to the details of extreme traumatic events.

Dr Stewart Hase on PTSD: Imagine the following. You constantly anticipate that something awful could happen at any moment and you feel on edge all the time; you are easily startled and feel as if you are watching the world as a video rather than being a part of it; you wake up in the middle of the night, perhaps more than once, with your heart pounding, frightened, sweating profusely having had an awful nightmare; sleep is always broken and you feel exhausted all the time; at random times during the day, you remember a traumatic (or many) event that just comes into your mind and it causes you to feel anxious and distressed; sometimes you feel as if you are reliving the traumatic event; you have panic attacks that come out of the blue or as a result of thinking about a traumatic event; angry outbursts have affected your relationships and your loved ones are finding living with you difficult; you’re drinking too much and this is affecting your relationships and your work; and you feel depressed most of the time, as if your life is out of control, helpless and sad.

This is the world of someone who has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a reaction to a traumatic event that lasts more than six-months and, for many, for years later, if left untreated. The person who develops PTSD will have directly experienced a traumatic event or witnessed one or perhaps a loved family member has gone through a traumatic experience. Police and ambulance officers, nurses, doctors and others who have to directly deal with the aftermath of a traumatic event, such as human remains, can also develop the disorder.

Bullying and harassment have also been shown to cause PTSD. It’s important to realise that only a relatively small number of people who experience trauma with go on to develop the disorder.

 PTSD is a complex condition that varies in severity and, therefore, the type of treatment. People with moderate to severe forms of this condition often need medication that they might take for a long time, perhaps for life. There are a range of psychological treatments for PTSD and they need to be tailored to the needs of the individual since all cases are different.