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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Month

Jun 5, 2025 | PTSD

Movies and TV shows often use post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a device to tell viewers about a painful event that happened to a character in the past. Unfortunately, this can leave viewers who aren’t familiar with PTSD under the impression that everyone with this condition has flashbacks or that their trauma is similar to what the character has experienced. 

At Safe Harbor Recovery Center, we treat people with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health conditions. We would like to take the opportunity to provide additional education about PTSD during June, which is observed as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Month in the United States.

What is Trauma?

Trauma is defined as a scary, overwhelming, or painful occurrence that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. What one person finds traumatic may just be moderately upsetting for another person. Some examples of potentially traumatic events include:

  • Military combat
  • Sexual, physical, or emotional abuse
  • Traffic accidents
  • Natural disasters
  • Sudden loss of a loved one
  • Medical illnesses
  • Placement in foster care

Whether or not an event is traumatic for someone depends on several factors, such as:

  • How much support the person has available
  • What coping skills that the person has to manage their experience
  • How safe the person is from future trauma
  • A person’s ability to access therapy, if needed

What is PTSD?

PTSD is a mental health condition that can occur after a person experiences a traumatic event. Not everyone who experiences something traumatic will develop PTSD. In fact, most people who experience trauma do not develop PTSD. About 70 percent of people worldwide have experienced something traumatic, but only about 5.6 percent of people develop PTSD. Just like other mental health disorders, not everyone with PTSD experiences the exact same symptoms. The symptoms a person with PTSD could experience fall into different categories.

  • Re-experiencing symptoms such as intrusive thoughts about the event, nightmares, or flashbacks, which make the person feel and maybe even act like they are still in the event. during a flashback, a person may experience sounds, images, smells, or other sensations from the trauma.
    • Avoidance symptoms, where the person avoids things that remind them of the trauma, such as certain people, places where the event occurred, activities that remind them of the event or people involved, or thoughts of the trauma
  • Hyperarousal symptoms such as a heightened sense of danger, even when there is no risk, feeling like they need to always be watching for trouble, jumpiness, or difficulty sleeping
  • Changes to mood and thinking, such as sadness, anger, and/or inability to feel happy
    • loss of interest in activities they used to like, negative feelings about themselves or the world around them, ongoing fear, or shame or guilt
  • Dissociation, such as thinking that the world doesn’t feel real or that the person feels like they are outside their own body

It is important to remember that a lot of people without PTSD may have some of these symptoms immediately following a difficult experience. For a person to be diagnosed with PTSD, the symptoms must last for more than a month and interfere with a person’s daily life. PTSD symptoms can last for months or even years and may co-occur with other conditions, including:

  • Depression
  • Substance use disorders
  • Memory issues, either around the trauma or more broadly, struggling to remember things

Responding to PTSD

PTSD is a treatable mental health condition. Many people with PTSD can reduce or eliminate their symptoms over time. Several modalities of therapy can help, and for people who utilize substances to self-medicate their PTSD, treatment to manage their substance use can be incredibly helpful. If you think you might be experiencing PTSD, the National Center for PTSD has a free screener you can use to identify your symptoms. This is not an official diagnosis, but it may help you better recognize your symptoms and explain them to a professional who is qualified to provide you with a diagnosis.

Raising Awareness

There are many ways that you can raise awareness about PTSD, some of which include:

At Safe Harbor Recovery Center, in Portsmouth, Virginia, we offer trauma-informed, evidence-based treatment to help people who are struggling with addiction enter recovery and manage any underlying mental health symptoms.