Should PTSD get more attention from the Health department?

An incident or an experience can sometimes turn your life upside down. It can leave you altered, shattered, and traumatized for the rest of your life.

Think of that one day from the past, which can still give you shivers by just a thought of it. Maybe you’ve overcome it, but not everyone can do that.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental condition that is caused by experiencing an excruciating, traumatic situation. It could be an accident, a natural disaster, loss of a loved one, physical violence, harassment, or rape. The symptoms can sometimes develop immediately after the experience or after weeks, months, or even years in many cases.

The world is going through a pandemic that seems to have no end to it. There is mental distress all around. With increasing unemployment, deaths, lockdowns, and quarantine, our lifestyles have been changed for a long time ahead. In such an emergency situation, PTSD will find new victims, in the form of Covid-19 patients, survivors, health professionals, families of the infected and dead. Thus, mental health needs more attention than ever before.

A person suffering from PTSD, or probably any other mental condition is subject to judgments, and discrimination. The social stigma attached to a mental illness makes reaching out for help and medication more difficult. It is of utmost importance that PTSD patients, in the current scenario of social isolation, receive more aids and immediate response from health departments across nations.

The people in close contact of PTSD sufferers should look for isolation symptoms, and particularly change in patterns of TEB; that is Thoughts, Emotions, and Behavior. Lack of focus, flashbacks, nightmares, and insomnia, are some other symptoms that need to be observed. Also, certain professions are at a higher risk of PTSD than others; like military services, police services, ambulance workers, firefighters, war correspondents, nurses, and other health care professionals. Such professions need greater attention.

The treatment for PTSD includes medications and psychotherapy. However, it is the need of the hour to make institutional changes in the way PTSD is approached. With greater discussions on public and media platforms, the stigma attached to it can surely be removed. Mental health systems in the form of Community help centers and Women welfare associations should be developed for local assistance. Reach out mechanisms should be created by hospitals and clinics, in the form of online portals and webinars. Such mechanisms can be of huge help for the sufferer’s family and friends looking out for help. Regular counseling sessions and workshops could be curated for high-risk professions. This could be further extended to school and college-based programs, in order to help teenagers and youth in developing mental health awareness.

PTSD deserves a more conclusive approach at national and international levels. It is crucial to create structures that can make mental health assistance, and medication, a non-discriminatory process. It can only happen when solutions for PTSD go beyond just the boundaries of mental hospitals.