An accident, a war, an airplane disaster, a burglary, the death of a child, a hostage takeover or sexual violence; All are drastic events which turn your life upside down and can confront you abruptly. Not only as a direct victim, but also as a witness to a drastic life event, your own vulnerabilities may be charged. Sometimes the impact of the event haunts you for a short while and sometimes for a lifetime. This experience must be coped with, to prevent this event and its recollection from dominating your life. While some people can deal with such a traumatic experience on their own, or with the aid of friends and family, others are unable to pick up the thread of daily life once again. Their fears and memories keep coming back. These people are struggling on a daily basis with various disturbing physical and psychological burdens.

Types of symptoms
Examples of reoccurring symptoms are:

• You have recurrent intrusive distressing recollections of images and thoughts of the event, sometimes experienced as flashbacks;
• You may experience reoccurring nightmares or dream of the event and your sleep is disturbed;
• You may feel as if you are reliving the traumatic event;
• When exposed to cues which resemble in some way the traumatic situation, you may experience intense psychological distress and even the same physical response which you had at the time of the event. You therefore may try to avoid stimuli which resemble the situation. You may avoid people, places and activities which make the recollections vivid;
• You may have difficulties to recall some aspects of the trauma;
• You regularly have recurring reactions of increased arousal;
• You may experience diminished interest in activities and detachment from others;

Treatment
Upon receipt of your application, we will invite you to an initial interview followed by an appointment with a physician and a psychiatrist. The different aspects and findings will be discussed witha multidisciplinary team. Following which, your care provider will draw up a treatment-plan together with you. It will include an assessment of your symptoms, the diagnosis, the treatment objectives and how we aim to achieve these. When desired, it may also be beneficial to include in the treatment people who are important to you, for example your partner or your children.