This Is How Trauma Leads to PTSD

you can watch the best parts of this series at met circle comm over 70% of US adults have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives that's over 220 million Americans and 20% of those people go on to develop the debilitating illness known as post-traumatic stress disorder so we traveled to New York to sit down with leading psychiatrist and PTSD expert dr. Judith Joseph welcome to the med circle original series PTSD from traumatic events ending the silent epidemic dr. Judith we just finished filming our six episode I think it's six episodes right guys six episodes series on PTSD and traumatic events thank you for providing all this information what was what was your favorite part of the series my pleasure I think the my favorite part was the sharing part where we both shared our own experiences yes I think that we can talk a lot about scientific methods and diagnosis and so forth but people really connect to stories and that authenticity I think will bring people closer to understanding what's happening with them at home and I think for you it gives you an understanding not only are you an expert on this but if you've experienced a traumatic event and whether or not you were diagnosed with PTSD you've still gone through something traumatic and that gives you some insight into you know what someone with PTSD has gone through or at least made that a little bit closer my favorite part of this series was how actionable your advice and tips were I always say mental health is complicated but the solution should be simple and you gave us a simple solution time after time I love love that let's define for the people watching this what exactly PTSD is so PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder and it is a category of four things that people experience after they have either experience something life-threatening for themselves or they witnessed it happen to someone that they know or care about and so people can experience avoidance and you know that can take several form so they may not want to think about the experience or avoid things that remind them of that experience or people that remind them of that experience raising well if somebody was attacked or raped they may avoid that place where they were attacked or they may avoid people that look like they're their attacker also another hallmark is Rhian Singh that traumatic incident so they may have that experiencing in different ways such as nightmares that are very vivid that make them feel as if they're back in that situation or they could be wide awake and have flashbacks and they truly believe that they're in that situation where that saw you there they truly believe there's no difference between this experience or original experience both from their own personal feelings but actually neurologically what's going on in their brain and you gave some you use some big words okay at amygdala hippocampus campus prefrontal cortex but you made it easy to you under easy to understand so I really appreciate that you explain things very simply when people experience this traumatic event what's so frustrating for me because I read all the comments on our videos is that they don't know what to do hmm and so they go through this traumatic event they are feeling terrible they think they may have PTSD they don't know what to do so they do this they search they pay and then they pray they search for something on the internet they pay the first person that will offer them hope and then they just hope that what they've done is correct and oftentimes that leads to the wrong diagnosis so you get the wrong treatment you end up spending a lot more money and a lot more time on the wrong treatment or the wrong therapists and most importantly is you don't get the recovery that you deserve so you have fixed that model at least for this PTSD series to help people move in the right direction what is a first what is their first step that they take after that traumatic event to start to recover so I think you're absolutely correct and I'll add to that when they search and then they find the wrong treatment its deflating it makes them feel even more hopeless than they started off feeling so I think that the first step is asking for help and I think that shame and stigma often get in the way of asking for help so sharing is key because if you don't share how are you gonna get help that's right and also people tend to self-medicate I can't tell you how many times people tell me that they go to the pharmacy and they pick up over-the-counter medications to help them to alleviate some of that anxiety and the poor sleep and so self-medicating does does have consequences they can actually some medications can make your symptoms worse yeah and there's a lot of myths around PTSD and I don't think people understand how truly debilitating this is when it is untreated talk about what someone's life looks like when they have untreated PTSD one of the most memorable cases that comes to mind is this man who was robbed several years ago and he he's a very intelligent man he's a professional he's logical however he saw someone walking outside of the home and something about the way this person walked or looked just triggered him and he truly believed that this person was going to rob him and he had a full-blown flashback re-experiencing that we talked about where he believed that this man was going to rob him and his wife described it as like him just like dissociating she said that his eyes just kind of went to glass grabbed a gun went to the window and he was going to shoot this innocent civilian because he believed that this was happening all over again I mean that that is the severe instance and it can happen and the longer that these symptoms trama go untreated the more likely that they are to get to this point where it is life or death yeah and I mentioned earlier that I've seen some pediatric cases of complex trauma where a little girl that I treated was just head banging and no one understood what was going on and she was dissociating to a point where she didn't didn't feel like she was a part of her own body so she didn't feel that pain and people thought well this is either schizophrenia or mental retardation and it just did not add up and so when trauma goes on for so long and it's not treated the chances of things getting better become more difficult more unlikely and so we want to get the right diagnosis we want to get the right treatment in place so that the person has the best outcome and not surprising but people with PTSD are often dual diagnosed with depression substance abuse or addiction it's incredibly pervasive yeah you I think did you say in this series that 80% of people with PTSD also have a co-occurring mental illness so it's not 80% but they're so they're more likely compared to people who don't know is it yeah there are eighty percent more likely to have like something like depression or anxiety or a substance abuse illness or comorbid condition compared to people who don't also we also talked about how trauma experiencing trauma is very very common hmm and so when you look at people who have extreme PTSD it can look like schizophrenia it can look like bipolar disorder but we have to remember that those things are less likely that incidents of those things happening and our population they're smaller than PTSD so always go for the thing that's more likely to happen and then peel back and that's where having the skills and a trained clinician involved is important well here was a good reminder from this series when I asked about the signs that you should look out for and I said well those sound like the same signs of depression so how do you know if it's PTSD or depression and you gave me this great reminder let's take a look right now I'm trying to figure out if my husband on my wife is having PTSD depressive episode this is difficult now because those all look the same yeah what do I do so as a supportive loving person this person's life it's not your job to diagnose yes okay you say it louder for the people in the back it's not your job to diagnose my husband accuses me all the time it's like you're diagnosing you're like it's not I am totally not capable that might be your job to diagnose you can actually I'm like I have too much baggage of that I can hear a good diagnosis I mean when you love someone you're so invested you just you can't it's such a great reminder to know it is not the supporters job to do any other diagnosing that's you that's your job over there so you've got to make sure you know your role as a supporter and you do that so perfectly throughout this series and remember if you want to watch this series you can go to med circle com become a subscriber and get access to that series and others and I hope you do if this is something that is relating to you either on a personal level or you know somebody who has or may have PTSD now dr. Judith you brought up something that I had never heard of but I was really excited to talk about it it's called work place PTSD we did an entire episode on it but tell the viewers what that is so when you think about pts do you think that your life is in danger or someone that you know their life is in danger you don't think about anything else and I'm hoping to change that so what I've found in my practice is that when people truly believe that they can lose their job when their livelihood is threatened they can have some of those symptoms of PTSD that other people have they can have avoidance they can have hyper vigilance they can have nightmares all of the physiological things that you see someone who survived something traumatizing let's say their life being frightened they can have those same symptoms if they believe that their livelihood is being threatened that you're the pioneer on this the reason you haven't heard about this and I haven't heard about this is because she dr. Judith is the one pioneering this doing the research coming out with a book all on this concept of workplace PTSD and I will applaud you on how you handled my questions because I really brought some skepticism to that I said what about the people who just think well our society is getting weaker what about the people who think this is a joke and we're just trying to diagnose everybody and you gave such great poignant answers that really made me even see PTSD in a different way so again wonderful wonderful job now what are you most excited for and what do you hope people will get the big takeaway that people get after watching your series so I think that people have a lot of information from online resources and not all online resources are vetted like med circle so it's so important to have real clinicians real experts putting the right contact out there because if you don't have the right content then you're it's like the blind leading the blind so I think it's so important to have vetted experts talking about these topics because then you're not really getting the help that you need yeah I've learned that a lot I look back at my mental health journey and kick myself hmm because if I if I had known what I know now going through what med Circle provides because although I work for Med Circle I am also a user of Medicine goal if I knew what I knew back then I would have had fast results I always spent way less money in treatment so much and I think I would have lived an even happier life I've lived a great life but it I think it would have been even been happier so I'm glad that you mentioned that I'm Kyle Kittleson and remember or whatever you're going through you got this thanks for watching your next step is to go to med circle comm and finish watching this series there you can also access other series and get actionable advice and simple explanations continue your mental health journey at med circle comm and I'll see you there you [Music]

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 116,778

Rating: 4.897059 out of 5

Keywords: dr. judith joseph, medcircle ptsd, trauma, psychology, mental health, ptsd, kati morton, childhood trauma, medcircle, kailash, the price of free, traumatised, katie morton, alexa altman, kyle kittleson, doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, psychiatry, mental illness, epidemic, adults, story, real stories, result, effects, US, series, youtube, video, interview, discussion, dr. oz, dr. phil, workplace ptsd, 2019, life, death, happy, sad, advice, self help, help, complex ptsd

Id: eg5D6i0kl8c

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2019