DSM IV Criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:

1. The person experienced, witnessed or was confronted with an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of others.

2. The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness or horror. Note: In children, this may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.

B. The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one (or more) of the following ways:
1. Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts or perceptions. Note: In young children, repetitive play may occur in which themes or aspects of the trauma are expressed.

2.Recurrent distressing dreams of the event. Note: In children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content.

3. Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.

4. Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

5. Physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
1. Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings or conversations associated with the trauma
2. Efforts to avoid activities, places or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
3. Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
4. Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
5. Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
6. Restricted range of affect (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children or a normal life span)

D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma) as indicated by two (or more) of the following:
1. Difficulty falling or staying asleep
2. Irritability or outbursts of anger
3. Difficulty concentrating
4. Hyper vigilance
5. Exaggerated startle response

E. Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in Criteria B, C and D) is more than 1 month.

F. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
Specify if:
Acute: if the duration of the symptoms is less than 3 months.
Chronic: if the duration of symptoms is 3 months or more.
With Delayed Onset: if the onset of symptoms is at least 6 months after the stressor.

Photo credit: Black Hole | Computer-simulated image shows gas from a tidally shredded star falling into a black hole. Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speeds into space. Astronomers observed the flare in ultraviolet light using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and in optical light using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on Mount Haleakala, Hawaii. The light comes from gas falling into the black hole, and glowing helium from the star's helium-rich gas expelled from the system. Sometimes persons who experience PTSD and depression feel as it they have fallen into a black hole.

Tags: DSM-IV, PTSD, homeopathy-heals, homeopathy-world-community, post-traumatic-stress-symptoms

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Comment by Ranga Sai on January 22, 2010 at 11:58am: Nice one.

Comment by Jennifer Hautman on January 29, 2010 at 1:14pm: You may be interested in Peter Chappell's Trauma remedies. Again I've used them and found them very beneficial (article soon to be published in Links). He has several Trauma remedies, including:
Abortion Trauma PC524a
Abuse Trauma PC310e
Adoption Trauma PC309d
Birth Trauma PC308c
Genocide and War Trauma (PTSD) PC304x
Nagasaki and Hiroshima Atomic Trauma PC307b
Natural CatastropheTrauma (PTSD) PC305z
Rape and Rape Stigma Trauma PC435p
Shock Trauma PC11c
Torture Trauma PC311f
Unburied Relatives Trauma PC315k
War Trauma PC304x

The PTSD you describe may fit with this:

War Trauma PC304x
Genocide and War Trauma (PTSD)
This is the big daddy of all the trauma downloads, built from the experiences of Bosnia and Rwanda.

The key thing is the tormenting memories after a sudden but premeditated, planned, savage, short lasting, attack. Mostly they died(?). For the survivors there are tormenting memories and flashbacks of exact extremely scary life threatening or deeply painful or humiliating or remorseful moments of events from the genocide or war. These flashbacks are occurring daily, even hourly, even every minute of every day, and have lasted many years already. These are like action replays, like the goal on TV, except it’s the same horrific video repeating every few minutes for perhaps eleven years and it´s horrific beyond the imagination. It is exact images of what happened flashing back all the time. Some of these memories are actually of going unconscious so in the replay even now in their thinking they go unconsciously even if momentarily. They obviously won’t notice it, and from the outside they might appear normal, if unresponsive or incoherent. Conversation will jump.

The best model I can invent to understand from all this is it’s as if the psyche is broken or fragmented. It’s like a black hole in the centre of their mind. It’s like broken bones in the mind or heart. It not amendable to common sorts of healing because the parts need re-aligning. It’s like it needs a surgeon to rejoin the broken parts except it’s the soul or the mind or the heart that has been torn apart.

In consequence of these images, thoughts and responses
1. They cannot get to sleep without tormenting images for a long period into the night.
2. They can not sleep properly at all, only getting light and partial sleep for these many years and they are not fully rested or refreshed after sleep. (This is partly I think out of fear of attack, so the light sleep of the normal sleep pattern of alternating deep sleep and light sleep, is disturbed or very disturbed, maybe full of flashbacks, so it’s a very disturbed sleep)
3. They can not focus on any real daily problems as these get linked immediately to genocidal images which are like a permanently on TV replaying the scenes of genocide, which they normally blank out, and it is in the centre of their mind and any inner thinking goes directly to the ‘TV’. They cannot make rational decisions because they cannot think, in every thought they go into the genocide images and ruminate and get no further. They stay buried in these overwhelming processes.
4. They cannot respond to the needs of others – typically their large family and instead neglect them because they are unable to feel and think.

They are also
1. They feel they could be killed any moment, that any sound frightens them to death day and night. (This is shock of a high order that is overwhelming and incapacitating and which cannot be re-integrated).
2. Very frightened as the killers are still at large, even living next door, even if the killers next door have tried to apologise. They cannot accept or contemplate the apologies. (This is hardly surprising. Imagine it your neighbours were the killers of your family, which you witnessed and there was no justice unless you are prepared to be the witness and there is no effective witness protection, and even you could be accused and thrown in jail without any investigation of the accusation). (The government is in an impossible position with millions involved in killings, the jails full up, and a depleted judicial system).
3. Deeply disturbed by not having been able to bury their relatives. (Lack of closure which is a very common and serious trauma in its own right).

Also, as a consequence of their internalised fearful and deeply frightened state
1. They fear the neighbours in the community who were the killers and generalise this and don’t socialising, don’t go to church, don’t engage in conversation, never get into laughing and joking, and instead stay at home, isolated from society. They even become speechless for long periods.
2. They do not allow themselves to be helped by others.
3. They feel its impossibility that anyone could even want to help them.
4. They feel completely unable to even think about reconciliation and forgiveness.

They remain being dependant victims, having to beg for food, unable to even think of work, of restarting work, instead are living in dire poverty, starving (eating a small meal every few days) homeless, rootless yet often having to support large families of orphans, not having buried their relatives, and are completely unable to think their way out of this.
Children drop out of school due to the memories and the consequential inability to study.

While I am sure this is not the full picture and that it represents only the victims inner world, I am sure it’s accurate for the many women and men I interviewed and replicated millions of times across the world.

Anyone who is an Aconite constitution might need it. Anyone from a history of such events, which number many millions, if not billions of us might need it. It might be behind lots of panic and anxiety.

People tell me they took it, and from then on felt calmer inside. There was no apparent history, but as I said before, everyone has this history.
Copyright © 2010 Peter Chappell. All Rights Reserved.

Comment by Dr Dushyant Kamal Dhari on January 30, 2010 at 8:28am: Are these trauma remedies some new in homeopathy or routine remedies from homoeoapthic materia medica have been given codes?
Abortion Trauma PC524a
Abuse Trauma PC310e
Adoption Trauma PC309d
Birth Trauma PC308c
Genocide and War Trauma (PTSD) PC304x
Nagasaki and Hiroshima Atomic Trauma PC307b
Natural CatastropheTrauma (PTSD) PC305z
Rape and Rape Stigma Trauma PC435p
Shock Trauma PC11c
Torture Trauma PC311f
Unburied Relatives Trauma PC315k
War Trauma PC304x

Comment by Jennifer Hautman on January 30, 2010 at 12:01pm: They are new remedies designed by Peter Chappell, not sure how, he says they are reverse engineered in some process.

Comment by Dr Dushyant Kamal Dhari on February 1, 2010 at 1:47am: Are they proved on healthy human beings to elicit the symptomalogy ? If yes, then where can one find the materia medica of these remedies. If not, then how is the homoeopathicity established between the drug and the patient. Hahnemann does not advise us to prescribe for the disease. Regards.

Comment by Jennifer Hautman on February 1, 2010 at 3:25am: Hahnemann advises us to prescribe the genus epidemicus for an epidemic, and that is what these remedies are designed to be. If I get a chance I will find a quote from Peter Chappell's work, but right now I'm trying to get some of his remedies to Haiti (see Help for Haiti discussion threads). From my experience, and many others, the homeopathicity of PC remedies has been prooved by much clinical use and cured cases. Yours sincerely, Jenny

Comment by Ranga Sai on February 1, 2010 at 12:04pm: Well I think the conventional homeopathic medicines are more than sufficient to treat all of these.

Comment by Jennifer Hautman on February 1, 2010 at 9:23pm: PC remedies are a complement to our conventional remedies, not a replacement. Since 2006 I have been working in a clinic with women asylum seekers, from Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, the Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone etc. Almost all of them have survived rape and other forms of torture, witnessed the loss of loved ones, had to leave children behind, and may not know if their families are alive or dead. In my experience, after a PC trauma remedy, the constitutional remedy can be seen much clearer and will hold much longer. Also acutes will not relapse so easily and will also clear better with conventional remedies after a PC trauma remedy. Some women did extremely well with PC remedies alone, both for acute and chronic conditions. (More to come on this in a forthcoming edition of Links Journal). Also the ease with which they can be prescribed is ideal for situations where the need is great, but time is short and there are few homeopaths available (eg in Haiti now).

Comment by Dr Dushyant Kamal Dhari on February 1, 2010 at 10:36pm: If these remedies are designed on the basis of genus epidemic and are better than conventional remedies in epidemic situations, then these could be very helpful for our science. we can prove that "Homeopathy works" to our contemporaries who have difficulty in understanding the "Individualisation " concept of Homoeopathy. More about the logic of these, how they are prepared and other details should be made known to all Homoeopaths. As only by sharing we can improve.

Comment by Stephanie Nile on February 5, 2010 at 5:06am: HI everyone,
I have an open mind about these trauma remedies, they look interesting, but my feeling is that its a big ask to expect us to use them "in anger" (in serious psychological truama) without knowing interactions between the individual constituents.

I guess I must fall into Jennifer's "contraversial for some" category. Perhaps I need to study the documentation properly before going further, i.e. RTM (Read The Manual) as they say on the Internet :)