This website is mostly about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), for the professional and lay person alike. Because of an apparent association between PTSD and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) ‘A Lay Person’s Guide to ADHD’ is included in the website.

THE ‘EXACT’ DIAGNOSIS AND THE TREATMENT OF PTSD

 

For over 100 years the understanding and management of the construct PTSD remained stagnant.

Based on a chance clinical observation in psychology, Francine Shapiro introduced Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) in 1989.

Half of those involved in the understanding and management of PTSD have found EMDR (or alternating bilateral sensory stimulation techniques very similar) to be effective treatment for PTSD, eliminating it in a great majority, and at any age from 6 to over 60 years.

The other half involved in the understanding and management of the construct PTSD, self-styled ‘scientific elite’, have eschewed EMDR as ‘too simple, not scientific’.  Despite all latest brain-investigating techniques their understanding and management of the construct PTSD appears to remain stagnant.

There appears a unique difference between the construct PTSD, which responds to EMDR, and the constructs of all other ‘generic’ post trauma mental disorders which do not respond to EMDR.

Talking techniques and medication cannot eliminate PTSD, palliative as they may be.  Talking techniques and medication help other generic post trauma mental disorders, but not EMDR.

Exact diagnosis of PTSD – distinguishing it from all other post trauma disorders (which so often accompany PTSD) and determining its certain response to treatment – had remained problematic.

Another chance clinical observation, this time in ophthalmology, recorded in 1945 but lost until recently, now enables exact diagnosis of PTSD.  A simple visual test based on this clinical observation tells whether PTSD is there or is not there*.  The test is simple, reliable and sensitive, even ‘do-it-yourself’, and at any age from 6 to over 60 years.  Safe and costing nothing it is worth trying.   The ‘scientific elite’ eschew the test as ‘too simple, not scientific’.

These two serendipitous clinical observations, enabling both exact diagnosis and, for the majority, effective treatment, allow further understanding and management of PTSD to proceed.

*In terms of neuro-physiology: the clinical observation of the constant co-occurrence of the visual abnormality of ‘persistent peripheral oscillopsia’ together with the memory abnormality of ‘constantly recurrent abnormal flashbacks’ following an acute-fear experience, cannot be explained.  This co-occurrence appears a nomological law of PTSD – ‘neither logically necessary nor theoretically explicable but is just so’.  It is certainly a very useful ‘just so’. It enables ‘persistent peripheral oscillopsia’ to be the sensitive and reliable ‘state marker’ for PTSD; a simple visual test for it giving rapid confirmation of the presence or absence of PTSD.  Details are in this website and in Traumatology 15(3)23-33 (2009).