I've been thinking again . Had a bad night, so gave up trying to sleep in the end and got up to do something, but ended up with all sorts of stuff whizzing through my head. What I was thinking about a lot was this PTSD/CPTSD thing. I'm trying to put things in very basic and simple way, so please don't be offended and think I'm minimising anybody's condition- I'm just thinking of helping the non-ptsd people get it without doing the ptsd=crazy thing.

So you get "simple" ptsd from a single traumatic event, maybe like a car crash, you get treatment quickly, and so you may have the acute stress reaction thing which is curable, or if you get ptsd, but get treatment soon enough and nothing else shit happens, then it is likely that you might be curable.

In my thinking, you hit problems when:
1. you have a lot of traumatic events
2. you don't get treatment very quickly (or you get the wrong treatment)

Also, by its very nature, I believe that ptsd itself is traumatic. For example, when having intense nightmares or flashbacks, you do believe that you are in that situation and your life is at risk, therefore your body & brain react as such and effectively, you are suffering repeated trauma.

So, really, I think that you are right Anthony - all these "pioneering" docs are not finding ways to cure ptsd. They are splitting ptsd into different categories, meaning the less complex cases may be curable, but the end result is producing false hope and frustration for those of us that do have the full complex form of ptsd. Throw in depression, substance abuse and the more severe dissociative problems and the picture doesn't look quite so rosy anymore. Unfortunately for us it is not a very attractive prospect for these docs to try and find cures for something which is so complex, as the rewards are small for them. Therefore, they concentrate on the "easier" forms of ptsd and try to apply the same principles to complex cases, which doesn't work and may make things considerably worse for us.

The docs that are actually trying to find ways to help treat the difficult cases are the ones worth their weight in gold. Sadly, they are few and far between, and most are dependent on government or drugs companies for finance, meaning that they are not able to follow their own instincts a lot of the time, cos in business terms, they will not bring enough money back.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on the subject for now. By the way - I love all the new emoticons - I was tempted to substitue them for words here and there, but I was supposed to be making things easy to follow. The teacher side of me is obviously waking up a bit.....