Week 4 Flashcards
What are the symptoms of PTSD
exposure to actual/ threatened death, serious injury/ sexual violence
Direct experience of the trauma
Witnessing trauma in others
Learning that the trauma (accidental, violent occurred to close family member, friend)
Experiencing repeating or extreme exposure to aversive details of the event
Symptoms for more than one month
DSM 5 Change → cannot be indirectly experience (ex: media)
Emotional response like fear, helplessness or horror not required
Intrusion: recurrent re experiencing of traumatic event though nightmares, intrusive images, physiological reactivity
Avoidance of thoughts, feelings or reminders of trauma
Negative cognitions and moods such as feeling detached, negative emotional states like shame and anger and distorted blame of self and others
Arousal and reactivity: hypervigilance, excessive response when startled, aggression, and reckless behavior
What is acute stress disorder
PTSD symptoms but at least two days after a traumatic event
What happens to our body when we experience fear
Our body increases heart rate in order to speed up delivery of oxygen and removal of carbon dioxide
Sympathetic nervous system gets activated
Fight or flight
Pale and cold → Redirection of blood flow way from skin towards big muscles
Increased rate and depth of breathing → provide more oxygen for muscles as energy
Sweating → cool body to prevent exhaustion
What are helpful treatments for PTSD
Medications
SSRIs
Cognitive-behavioral treatment
Exposure
Iaginal
Graduated or massed
Increases positive coping skills
Increase social support
Difficult treatment to complete
Psychological debriefing (critical incident stress debriefing, poor empirical support)
EMDR: eye movement desensitization reprocessing
What treatment, despite its popularity, has the least empirical support for its efficacy for PTSD
Psychological debrefing
What does exposure therapy for PTSD involve
The client talks about their trauma and that increases their feeling of fear but as they talk about it their anxiety goes down
It can happen weekly (graduated) or happen very quickly (massed)
Helps people process what happened to them
People are taught coping skills as well
