The Current situation and treatment of PTSD during the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic

Abstract

In recent years, with the continuous spread of the COVID-19, the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has gradually become the major mental disorder which puzzles the people's psychological problems. PTSD has a high incidence rate in people who have experienced one or more trauma, but not all people who have experienced trauma will suffer from PTSD. Research shows that most patients with post-traumatic stress disorder often have one or more other mental diseases, including major depression and substance abuse or others (like bipolar, anxiety and so on). As a mental disorder with high risk and high suicide rate, PTSD is easy to be comorbid with depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and other symptoms, which not only makes patients more painful, but also greatly increases the difficulty of treatment. Although traumatic events are a necessary condition for diagnosis of the PTSD, they are not the sufficient condition for occurrence of the PTSD. At present, a lot of research has been done on PTSD, but its pathogenesis is still not completely clear. The causes may include genetic susceptibility factors, childhood psychological trauma, and other negative life events before and after traumatic events.Psychotherapy and drug treatment are the main treatment schemes for PTSD at present, but in the epidemic environment, these treatments have certain inconveniences, which reflects the advantages of telemedicine. In the future, people should obtain more and more evidence-based evidence from multiple perspectives in order to obtain the best curative effect.