[Treatment of post-traumatic stress syndrome]

Abstract

This paper reviews different psychotherapeutic and drug treatments for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Psychotherapeutic treatments have changed from the abreaction technique to more classical psychodynamic approaches and recently to cognitive and behavioral techniques. Many drugs have been used in the treatment of PTSD but most of the studies were not controlled and included very few patients. More recently, double blind controlled studies have been performed comparing imipramine, desipramine, amitriptyline, phenelzine and placebo. A global efficacy has been found but the improvement was more closely related to associated symptoms, namely anxiety and depression, than to the core symptoms of PTSD.