Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an illness that occurs in response to exposure to single or multiple distressing traumatic events and is often chronic in nature. These traumatic events range from trauma during childhood (abuse, neglect, community instability, etc.) to adulthood (abuse, financial instability, natural disasters, etc.). While research shows trauma in childhood plays a larger role in the development of PTSD later in life, it is also important to obtain a thorough history of current life stressor as these stressors may result in or cause a re-emergence of PTSD symptoms. The first-line therapy for PTSD is trauma-informed psychotherapy. However, there are multiple other therapy modalities such as exposure therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing that displayed promising results in multiple studies. If therapy does not alleviate the PTSD symptoms, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) can be added as a first-line alternative. In this chapter, we review the epidemiology, risk factors, and evidence for the use of both non-pharmacological and pharmacological interventions in the treatment of PTSD among older adults.