What Causes PTSD? Understanding Trauma and Risk Factors

What causes PTSD?

You can develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after going through something that frightens or distresses you. This can include seeing or hearing about something. This is known as going through, or experiencing something that is ‘traumatic.’

The traumatic experience might be out of your control.

PTSD can be caused by experiencing, seeing or hearing about one or many events such as:

serious accidents,
physical and sexual assault or abuse, including childhood or domestic abuse,
emotional abuse,
race-based trauma,
work-related exposure to trauma, such as being in the army, emergency services, or humanitarian sector,
trauma related to serious health problems or childbirth,
war and conflict, and
torture.

But it could be caused by other things too. The important thing is how you experience the event or events yourself.

Traumatic events might affect our belief that life is fair, reasonable, safe, and that we are secure.

But not everyone who experiences trauma will develop PTSD.

The risk of developing PTSD depends on how the experience affects you. PTSD is more likely to develop if the traumatic event:

is unexpected,
goes on for a long time,
involves being trapped,
is caused by people,
causes many deaths,
you think there is a threat to your life,
causes severe damage to the body, or
involves children.

You are at a higher risk of developing PTSD if:

you have ever lived with depression or anxiety disorder, or
you do not receive much support from family or friends.

I self-referred myself back to talking therapies and was put through to a therapist I knew from 2012 through a stress class. That really helped me to understand how bad my dizziness and falls were, the level of damage I sustained during the assault.