ABSTRACT
Probably you will get better, but some traumas are more debilitating than others and have a reduced likelihood of recovery. In a study of rape victims, Rothbaum et al. (1992) found that 64 per cent were suffering from PTSD four weeks after the trauma. This proportion reduced to 47 per cent after three months and to 42 per cent by six months. A similar study (Rothbaum and Foa 1993) conducted on assault victims found a smaller proportion to have been traumatised: 14.6 per cent had PTSD three months following the trauma and at six months the proportion was 11.5 per cent. In a study of road traffic accident victims, Blanchard and Hickling (1997) found that about half those who did develop PTSD recovered by a six-month follow-up. Thereafter very few people improved. (On the basis of these studies one would say that the prospects of recovery are better for Cecilia (road traffic accident victim) than for Karen (rape victim), both of whom we met in Chapter 1.) In a study of fire-fighters who attended a bush fire in Australia, McFarlane (1988) assessed subjects at four months, eleven months and twenty-nine months after the incident. At first assessment 30.2 per cent developed PTSD and approximately one-half of these (47.4 per cent) had remitted seven months later, a further 18.9 per cent had remitted by twenty-nine months, leaving one in three of those who originally developed PTSD with persistent chronic PTSD. A further 19.7 per cent developed PTSD after the initial assessment. Similarly in a study by Blanchard and Hickling (1997) of those with some but not a full set of PTSD symptoms (sub-syndromal PTSD) 15 per cent of them later went on to develop full PTSD. Thus, not having full PTSD in the immediate aftermath of a trauma is not an absolute guarantee that the person will not succumb to it, but it is unlikely. Overall it is possible to conclude that a significant minority of those who suffer PTSD continued to be debilitated in the long term and that the proportion varies with the type of trauma.
