Psychologist, Dr. Seth Mawusi Asafo, has urged people experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder to seek professional help or speak to individuals they can trust about what they are going through.
He said it is also important for people experiencing post-traumatic stress to get enough rest and have massages because they help to ease-off pressures and tensions in the muscles.
Mr. Asafo made these comments on #StayAlive segment of HSTV’s Morning Show, #HealthyMorning, talking to Cecilia Anno-Barnieh about post-traumatic stress disorder: causes and treatments.
He said in cases of technical treatments, patients are put on anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications; exposure therapy; and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.
He explained post-traumatic stress disorder as psychological complication that people experience because they have been through unexpected and negative events. Example include, experiencing or witnessing plane crashes, car accidents and floods and explosions.
He said symptoms are listed in four main categories, namely, the Intrusive symptoms, Avoidance symptoms, Physical symptoms and Cognitive symptoms.
With Intrusive symptoms, he said, patients experience flashbacks and nightmares of the traumatic event; whereas with avoidance symptoms, people stay away from things that remind them of the event.
He said people who experience physical symptoms are easily startled by events, such as sirens or cars honking. They also become very irritable and have problems with eating and sleeping.
Those who experience cognitive symptoms, he noted, develop concentration problems and some detach from reality because they don’t want to face similar events again.
According to Mr. Asafo, everybody can develop post-traumatic stress disorder; however, people who continuously find themselves in tensed environment or situations that threaten their survival are at higher risks of developing the disorder.
“Before we can say you have the disorder, the symptoms should have at least persisted for one month,” he stressed.
