Combating a Simple Cure for PTSD

by Roman General

The other day I was tooling around the Internet and came across another website proclaiming to have found the"cure" for PTSD. That in three or four treatments they will be symptom free, ooo ooo ooo, and many in less! I just had to post a comment for people who would buy into this crap, to give some perspective on the misguided who may want to purchase this hopeless endeavor.

Below is the comment as I lay out a foundation and briefly discus the why and how’s of chronic traumaitzation as it relates and conflicts with a possible "simple solution",

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) centers on skill building and the restructuring of the cognitive scaffolding that has been damaged by constant neurophysiological interactions mediated by the nervous system; the sympathetic, parasympathetic systems and regulated by the endocrine system (Clinician’s Guide to PTSD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach by Taylor, 2006).

In cases with extensive traumatization such as chronic childhood abuse of an interpersonal nature, results in complex trauma based disorders. The cognitive structure of the brain has not fully developed as it has been arrested by the violation of relational attachments vital to interpersonal relationships. Further, the forming of the personality stems from the interactions with others as we engage with others to find our identifications and identity (The Dissociative Mind by Howell, 2005, and The Haunted Self by Van der Hart, Nijenhuis and Steele, 2006).

I have done expensive research into the causes and treatments of trauma based disorders and have found that, no one treatment can cure chronic or complex traumatization. Simple trauma based disorders may be treated on a short term basis, and this “treatment” that you claim to have perfected and can “cure” PTSD, without an evidence-based credibility does nothing to add to cutting edge treatment modalities.

As noted in Van der Hart et al. (2006) the Theory of Structural Dissociation of the Personality (Lee, 2009) and the Phase-Oriented Treatment modality covers most of the symptomology and comorbidity.

It will take years to integrate multiple traumatizations where the personality has been impeded developmentally and dissociatively compartmentalized.

Again I state that, no one treatment, can cure a chronically traumatized person of their maladies.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  Roman General is a staff writer for A Soldiers Perspetitive.