PTSD Specialist

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a distressing mental health problem that’s often challenging to treat. At West Michigan Ketamine Clinics in Wyoming, Michigan, Nicholas Kolascz, CRNA, and the experienced team provides specialized ketamine infusion treatments that can relieve the symptoms of PTSD and help you get your life back. Even when you have treatment-resistant PTSD, ketamine therapy could help. Call West Michigan Ketamine Clinics or book an appointment online.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition that develops following a severely traumatic event. It’s a condition that’s most often associated with military personnel returning from active duty, but it can affect anyone at any age.

Examples of events that can trigger PTSD include car accidents, terrorist attacks, plane crashes, shootings, and other forms of extreme violence or destruction. Prolonged periods of extreme suffering, such as you might experience as a hostage or in an abusive family situation, can also cause PTSD.

Symptoms of PTSD can appear very quickly after the trigger event or may take months or years to appear. Having PTSD can cause severe difficulties in life, often making it hard to hold down a job or maintain relationships. People who have PTSD frequently become isolated and turn to drugs or alcohol to help them cope with their symptoms.

PTSD symptoms fall into four categories:

• Intrusive memories
• Avoidance 
• Negative changes in thinking and mood
• Changes in physical and emotional reactions

PTSD’s most dramatic symptom is the flashback. Flashbacks are more than just a memory of the event. When you experience a flashback, you feel as though you are back in the situation that caused the trauma. You can see, hear, and smell everything around you as if you’d traveled back in time.

Flashbacks are often triggered by hearing a sound or smelling an odor that reminds you of your trauma. In an instant, you’re back where it all started and feeling the same emotions, typically ones like fear for your life, terror, disgust, and horror. Flashbacks can cause you to suddenly behave irrationally, for instance running for cover when you’re out shopping and hear a car backfire.

The most effective treatment for PTSD is typically a combination of medication and therapy. Antidepressants and antianxiety medications can often help reduce the severity of PTSD symptoms. Talk therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy, can also be vital in helping you deal with the trauma that caused your condition.

In some cases, these approaches don’t produce the required results. If this is the case for you, then ketamine could offer an alternative solution. Ketamine is an anesthetic drug that’s also effective in treating chronic pain and mental health disorders. The team at West Michigan Ketamine Clinics can deliver ketamine intravenously, where it acts to reduce the symptoms of PTSD.