PTSD in the Young
In a recent study in the Lancet, Psychiatry it shows that one in thirteen young people experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by the age of 18. Additionally, just over fifty percent who suffer with PTSD “had also experienced a major depressive episode and one in five had attempted suicide”
These figures are terrifying it is clear evidence that young people are really suffering with some of the environmental situations that they find themselves in. This can be in a fractured home life or at school or in just their ordinary day to day lives. It is essential that young people are also taught resilience as resilience will be able to assist in how they handle trauma now and in the future.
As an adult psychotherapist I see the results of youth trauma all too often and often think that if these people were treated or helped sooner, they might avoid having to be in some kind of therapy in their adult lives. I believe that it would be good for adult and adolescent and child psychotherapists to have a better understanding of each others work in order to help both our unique client bases to get some kind of resolution of their past traumas or in the case of children and adolescents of their current traumas.
