The What Keeps Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Going? handout presents key factors that maintain PTSD.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
The "What Keeps It Going?" series is a set of one-page diagrams explaining how common mental health conditions are maintained. Friendly and concise, they provide an easy way for clients to understand at a glance why their disorders persist, and how they might be interrupted.
What Keeps Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Going? is designed to help clients with PTSD understand more about their condition.
Understanding what keeps post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) going is crucial for effective intervention. By identifying these factors, therapists can develop idiosyncratic models of clients' experiences and focus their interventions.
Designed to help clients affected by PTSD.
Explain to the client that certain difficulties persist due to cycles that maintain them.
Use the handout to discuss what might be keeping the client's difficulties going.
Pinpoint and personalize maintaining factors that are relevant to the client.
Explore how these maintaining cycles can be interrupted.
Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be split into groups (APA, 2013): re-experiencing symptoms, arousal symptoms, avoidance symptoms, negative thoughts and mood.
Research studies have shown that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective treatments for panic disorder (Watkins et al, 2018). CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while the fire is burning they aren’t very interested in what caused it, but are more focused on what is keeping it going. This is because if they can work out what keeps the problem going, they can treat it by ‘removing the fuel’ and interrupting this maintaining cycle.
Psychologists Anke Ehlers and David Clark identified the key components that are thought to explain why PTSD persists (Ehlers & Clark, 2000). The What Keeps Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Going? information handout describes these factors, which maintain PTSD. It illustrates them in a vicious cycle or 'flower' format in which each ‘petal’ represents a separate maintenance cycle. Helping clients to understand more about the cognitive model is an essential part of cognitive therapy for PTSD. Therapists can use this handout as a focus for discussion, or as a template from which to formulate an idiosyncratic model of a client’s experiences of PTSD.
