Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
This term describes the symptom where a person feels as though their original traumatic stressor is happening all over again.
What are flashbacks?
This is the minimum number of days that symptoms must persist following a traumatic event to diagnose Acute Stress Disorder.
What is 3 days?
Adjustment Disorder is defined as a milder, less specific version of these two trauma disorders.
What are Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?
These three intense emotional reactions are felt by an individual during exposure to a traumatic event involving actual or threatened death.
What are fear, helplessness, and horror?
If a stress response following a traumatic event continues past this time frame, it may resolve or progress into PTSD.
What is 1 month?
Rather than a highly traumatic event involving death or injury, Adjustment Disorder is precipitated by this type of trigger.
What is a stressful event?
Feelings of being jumpy or irritable fall under this specific category of PTSD signs and symptoms.
What is hyperarousal?
These that precipitate ASD are not always as extraordinary as war; they can include these common childhood or adult occurrences involving abuse, neglect, or loss.
What are traumatic life events (or interpersonal trauma, sexual/physical abuse, severe neglect, emotional abuse, repeated abandonment, or sudden loss)?
One key goal of nursing treatment for Adjustment Disorder is facilitating the patient's recognition of these.
What are problems?
This class of medications is used in drug therapy specifically to calm hyperarousal and panic symptoms.
What are adrenergic medications?
This non-pharmacological nursing intervention strategy aims to help patients manage stress and build resilience following ASD.
What are strategies to improve coping or enhance self care?
This general treatment category includes strategies to enhance self-care and improve coping mechanism outcomes for patients with Adjustment Disorder.
What are nursing interventions?
These two specific SSRI antidepressants are highlighted for the treatment of PTSD and trauma-related disorders.
What are sertraline and paroxetine?
Unlike Adjustment Disorder, both Acute Stress Disorder and PTSD require exposure to an event involving actual or threatened death or this type of harm.
What is serious injury (to self or others)?
While PTSD involves persistent re-experiencing, Adjustment Disorder symptoms present as a reaction to a stressor without requiring the presence of this full, severe phenomenon where the stressor feels like it's happening all over again.
What are flashbacks?