This Post Traumatic Stress Disorder website has been designed by the two of us to help guide, primarily, the interested lay person, especially if they or someone close has PTSD. There are, alas, many professionals who, for the sake of their patients, should know more about PTSD and its treatment. There is a close relationship between PTSD and Attention Deficit Disorder.  There are many people, lay and professional, who know too little about ADD, let alone its common association with PTSD.

One major problem with the present construct of PTSD for the common man is the non-commonsensical first diagnostic criterion given in the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV) – there it is said that you can’t have PTSD unless the event that frightened you would certainly have frightened anyone else! (Like looking at an x-ray of a broken bone and being told ‘it can’t be broken ‘cus you didn’t fall far enough’.)

We make it clear that PTSD can follow any frightening-to-you event – whether or not it would have frightened the authors of the DSM. We show the simple visual test that indicates the presence of PTSD, be it severe (‘syndromal’ as per DSM criteria), or not so severe (‘sub-syndromal’, but still significantly troublesome to warrant treatment). We explain in detail the only likely to be effective treatment for PTSD, using rapid eye movements. PTSD doesn’t respond in any curative way to ‘talking therapies’, and certainly not to medications.

We describe Attention Deficit Disorder in a way which makes it clear to all that it isn’t a ‘disorder’, but that having that type of brain can give rise to difficulties, including, under certain circumstances, PTSD. We describe the management of ADD.

If ADD and PTSD aren’t thought about, and looked for, then they’ll be all too often missed and left untreated and unmanaged.