Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one of the easiest disorders to overlook because it is usually accompanied by other pathologies. María Isabel Thomas Soto, a student of the Master’s in Clinical and Health Psychology, reviews in her master’s thesis studies and research that show that PTSD presents a high psychiatric comorbidity with Axis I pathologies, especially with conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders, or alcohol consumption or other substances. PTSD symptomatology can be masked and interrupt its diagnosis. Carvajal (2002) alludes to the fact that sometimes post-traumatic symptoms would be hidden within a psychiatric comorbidity, appearing only as a subsyndromal condition or even presenting in a delayed manner (months or years post-accident), a period in which many PTSD cases are “overlooked”, with a high probability of not being treated or receiving ineffective treatments.
Currently, PTSD is a public health problem due to the distress it causes in individuals, who are often unable to continue with their daily routine. It generates high costs because patients are offered inadequate and ineffective treatments due to it not being detected, which leads many people to become chronic patients dependent on the healthcare system.
It is the duty of the professional conducting the evaluation to detect and/or differentiate the PTSD diagnosis and/or any eventual comorbidity. Hence, its author investigates in this dissertation to understand the main etiological factors and most frequent comorbidities with which PTSD presents, to achieve differential diagnosis and intervene with the most effective treatment.
Our student María Isabel Thomas Soto considers it of vital importance to delve into the existing information and etiology regarding this disorder, which proves to be so elusive. Subsequently, she conducts a review regarding the important neurobiological changes that occur in the manifestation of this disorder to then address the Axis I comorbidities that most frequently present alongside PTSD.
The work dedicates a section to the importance of prevention, as well as to the timely detection and screening of the PTSD diagnostic picture, taking into account certain important factors suggested within current literature as the most effective for its treatment.
Consult the final project of the Master’s in Clinical and Health Psychology by María Isabel Thomas Soto: Post-traumatic stress disorder. A diagnostic picture beyond the obvious