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  • Q&A with Australian Health Practitioners

    Does post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affect women and men differently?

    Related Topics
    Mental Health Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
    • 2 answers
    • Ralph Graham
    • Frank Van de Mortel
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    Ralph Graham

    Counsellor

    Ralph Graham, Counsellor, Psychotherapist, helping those who are affected by:grief, loss, anxiety, phobias, panic attack.And those who have been traumatised by:crime, assault, sexual abuse and … View Profile

    My answer would be yes and no.
    Yes, in that accompanying disease conditions may differ due to hormonal, anatomical and other differences. If the question is should therapy be different for a woman with PTSD as opposed to a man then the answer from my perception is essentially, no. Different sufferers have different symptoms whether male or female and treatment in my approach is geared to what the client is manifesting and which area or traumatic incident is the client willing to address first.
     
    Reporting on differences, an article on militarymentalhealth.org says that researchers found “… women with PTSD are more likely to suffer from the following symptoms and health conditions than men with PTSD:

    • Anxiety disorders
    • Avoidance and numbness
    • Gastrointestinal effects
    • Arthritis
    • Cardiovascular disease
    • Reproductive effects
    • Cancer
    • Low blood pressure
    • Fatigue
    Men with PTSD are more likely to experience the following symptoms than women:
    • Anger
    • Irritability
    • Substance abuse”
    Other research indicates that women’s immune systems are measurably more affected by PTSD than mens.
    Another observation is that a higher percentage of women manifest PTSD after a traumatic incident than men. If there are more men with PTSD in total than women it will surely be due to there being more men in harm’s way than women as in the military, emergency services, security personnel etc.

    I believe healthshare is going to attract people who are suffering and want to understand what is happening to them and what they can do about it and who can help them more so than those involved in academic pursuits and wishing to keep up with what physical research is happening relevant to PTSD.  There is a lot of research going on into how the body and more especially the brain reacts to events involving an assault on emotions. The plasticity of the brain is most exciting in that it has become clear that in many areas the brain does not stay damaged but recovers or changes after psycho therapeutical interventions.
    Exciting though it is, my preoccupation is in the session room where changes, recovery and healing is evident. Clients are not normally going to have an MRI or other brain examination before and after psychotherapy and so their outcomes will be measured in the alleviation of symptoms and their ability to operate more happily in life.
     
    My passion involves the employment of techniques or a synthesis of techniques to deliver suffering souls from the jaws of PTSD and a sufferer is going to be focussed on participating in this process and on how successful it is.
     
    So, in the final analysis, women and men fall victim to the ongoing after effects of traumatic experience in essentially the same way and their treatment and outcomes will essentially be the same.   

    Where the therapy involves the safe and controlled examination of traumatic events as in the case of Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR), any differences does not affect the success of the intervention.

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  • Frank Van de Mortel

    Psychologist

    Experienced in acute care of adults with mood and personality issues. Special interest in trauma related psychological injury (PTSD, ASD emergency services and military personnel … View Profile

    PTSD affects everyone differently. Women and men both report similar symptoms however each person's experience is as unique as the range of trauma that can be experienced.
    This is further individualised because of each person's unique learning history.

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