Muhammad Usman, Abdul Rehman, Nabiyah Bakhtawar, Adnan Bashir Bhatti.
Prognosis of PTSD in Treated vs. Non-Treated Groups.
J Pak Psych Soc Jan ;12(1):39-42.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder that develops after the exposure to an extreme degree personal or impersonal traumatic experience/ event. The symptoms of PTSD include psychiatric disturbances, social dissociation, physical features and behavioral changes. This condition can be acute, chronic or delay in onset, depending on when the symptoms first appeared after exposure to the traumatic event. PTSD has a natural tendency to heal (or remit) on its own. Does this invalidate all our efforts in treating this condition? The answer to this question can be obtained by comparing the prognosis of PTSD in people who got treated and those who didn’t receive any treatment. In untreated victims, the remission can be as high as 82% or as low as 9%. Factors that govern poor prognosis include the greater intensity of traumatic event, time elapsed since first encounter, female gender, younger age, and illiteracy. PTSD prognosis in treated patients, on the other hand, is far superior to non-treated individuals. Treatment even improves the outcomes in refractory cases of PTSD. Moreover, treatment modalities that have shown promise in improving PTSD prognosis include psychiatric interventions, psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. All this proves the superiority of treatment in improving PTSD status in the sufferers.

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