Treatment for PTSD includes medications, psychotherapy, or a combination of the two. Combined treatment can help improve symptoms and improve your ability to cope with your intrusive thoughts and feelings about the traumatic event.

Several types of medications can help improve the symptoms of PTSD. These include:

• Antidepressants: Two classes of antidepressants can be helpful for people with PTSD, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as fluoxetine (Prozac) and sertraline (Zoloft) and tricylic antidepressants such as amitriptyline (Elavil). These medications can help symptoms of depression and some symptoms of anxiety. They may also help sleep problems and improve your concentration.
• Anti-anxiety Medications: These medications may also be able to relieve some of the feelings of anxiety and stress that can occur with PTSD. Anti-anxiety medications include the class of drugs called benzodiazepines such as diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax) as well as other drugs such as buspirone (Buspar). These are usually used for short term treatment since they have an addictive potential.
• Beta-blockers: These drugs are used mainly to reduce the physical symptoms of anxiety such as heart palpitations, sweating, and trembling. They work by lowering blood pressure and slowing the heartbeat.
• Other Drugs: Some other drugs that may help the symptoms of PTSD include mood-stabilizers such as lithium carbonate and carbemazepine. The anti-psychotic drug risperidone may help with dissociation (flashbacks) and aggression.

Psychotherapy is a very effective way to help improve the symptoms of PTSD. It can help you learn ways to cope with the scary feelings that arise and help you explore the reasons that underlie those feelings. Psychotherapy can take several forms but all of them involve talking about your fears and emotions with a trained therapist. The form that is best for you depends on your symptoms and situation. Another option is group therapy, which can offer a way to connect to others going through similar experiences. Some of the main types of therapy used to treat PTSD include:

• Cognitive Therapy: This type of therapy helps you understand and change how you think about your trauma and its aftermath. Your therapist can help you learn to replace the scary thoughts with more realistic, less distressing thoughts and can help you learn ways to cope with your fears.
• Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): This type of treatment can help change how you react to memories of your trauma. It involves talking about your distressing memories while at the same time following the finger of your therapist with your eyes. While the reasons are still unknown, this technique appears to help decrease the symptoms of PTSD.
• Exposure Therapy: This type of therapy is based on the premise that fear is a learned association, which explains why things that remind you of the trauma also recall feelings of fear like you experienced during the event. By talking about your trauma repeatedly with a therapist you can learn to associate thoughts about the trauma with other things besides fear, eventually allowing you to stop being afraid of your memories.
• Brief psychodynamic psychotherapy: This type of therapy helps you learn ways of dealing with emotional conflicts caused by your trauma. Your therapist helps you become more aware of your thoughts and feelings, so you can change your reactions to them.

Many people who develop PTSD get better, but about one third of people with PTSD may continue to have some symptoms for long periods. However, even if you continue to have symptoms, treatment can help you cope with those symptoms and make them less intrusive.