Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an incapacitating mental health condition that develops after exposure to a traumatic event with long-lasting, debilitating symptoms like flash-backs and hyper-reactivity. About 8-10% of Americans—over 25M people—are living with PTSD, from abuse, accidents, and natural disasters. Under normal circumstances, behaviors associated with PTSD are adaptive for coping with the trauma. For instance, avoiding stimuli associated with the traumatic event lessens the probability of encountering the threat or others like it. However, patients with PTSD lose normal daily functioning because these responses become dysfunctional and exaggerated. PTSD is also closely tied to homelessness, substance abuse, and a staggering suicide rate.

The current diagnostic standard is administering subjective symptom checklists long after the trauma. The ambiguity surrounding these checklists leads to underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis, and these checklists certainly do not inform treatment. Existing medications are also not effective—they either mask select symptoms or they are illicit with unknown mechanisms of action.

Clinicians do the best with the tools they have, but existing tools are not good enough. There is a massive opportunity to bring relief to millions of people if we just start focusing on the actual science…and we’re doing just that.