Lecture
Traumatic stress – a special form of the general stress reaction. When stress exceeds a person’s psychological, physiological, and adaptive capacities and destroys their defences, it becomes traumatic.
Correcting traumatic stress requires a comprehensive and individualised approach. Here are some of the main approaches to working with people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other forms of traumatic stress:
Psychotherapy:
Medication: Some patients may require medication to relieve the symptoms of PTSD, such as anxiety, panic attacks, or insomnia. Antidepressants or anxiolytics are usually used.
Group therapy: Group sessions can give patients the opportunity to discuss their experience with others who have also lived through trauma. This can help reduce the feeling of isolation and improve social support.
Self-help and lifestyle: It is important to pay attention to a healthy lifestyle, since physical and mental health are interconnected. This includes regular physical exercise, healthy eating, sufficient sleep, and stress management.
Integrative and alternative methods: Some people find relief from stress and traumatic symptoms through practices such as yoga, meditation, art therapy, and music therapy. These methods can help with relaxation and the expression of emotions.
Education and support of family and loved ones: Relatives and friends play an important role in supporting people suffering from PTSD. Education about the symptoms and ways of providing support can make family relationships healthier and promote recovery.
An interdisciplinary approach is very important in working with post-traumatic states. Help may begin with organising self-help, with conducting crisis intervention, with the struggle to expand the rights of those affected. All methods of psychological help can be divided into four categories. The educational category. Those affected may have their own resources for recovery, which they find with the help of books and articles, through becoming acquainted with the basic concepts of physiology and psychology. Creating an informational field allows those affected to realise that their experiences and difficulties are not unique, that they are “normal” given the situation, and this gives them the opportunity to hope that, when they turn to a specialist, their suffering will be understood, and they will receive support and help. A holistic attitude to health.
The principle of holism. It presupposes treating the person as a single whole. Wholeness presupposes the necessity and importance of drawing on all the reserves of the human organism and personality: physical activity, proper nutrition, spiritual development, the use of a sense of humour. Attention to all sides of the human personality makes it possible to activate such capacities for a person’s recovery as were hidden even from the person themselves. A person deserves to be treated as a single whole.
Social support. For a person to emerge from a state of post-traumatic stress, the social environment matters. Who the person can rely on in a situation of psychological distress, what new problems have arisen in family and work relationships after the traumatic event – all this should be taken into account when carrying out crisis measures. This should include the existence of a self-help network, and the building of support from public organisations.
Psychological help proper. Psychological help includes working with manifestations of grief (support groups for adults and children experiencing grief), removing phobic reactions through work with traumatic images, and many individual methods of psychological help and support. Specially created methods occupy a particular place in the system of psychological help. These are, above all, Psychological debriefing – a form of crisis intervention applied immediately after a crisis event in group form – and psychobiographical debriefing, which can be used in individual work with a delayed period of traumatisation.
It is important to note that effective treatment of PTSD and traumatic stress can differ from person to person, and the recovery process can take varying amounts of time. Professional help is, as a rule, an important component of the process, especially if the symptoms of PTSD significantly affect the patient’s quality of life.
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