"official" diagnosis?

[Kat]

Not sure if this is the place to ask this, but I'm wondering if Complex-PTSD is an official diagnosis outside of the United States.  Here, it's not part of the DSM (Diagnostic and Systematical Manual for Mental Disorders).  I keep reading of people being "diagnosed" with C-PTSD on this site.  Here, that would not be considered an official diagnosis.  That said, my therapist has told me that C-PTSD is what I'm dealing with.  So...

[Candid]

I was diagnosed with CPTSD by a trauma therapist in Australia. I now live in England. It's not officially recognised in either place, both of which adhere to the DSM. Subsequent doctors have mostly written PTSD in my notes. However, CPTSD is all over the internet and there are plenty of academics who know it exists. I know, it's confusing.

This woman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otxAuHG9hKo really gets it and makes the distinction. It's only a matter of time before mainstream realises it's a whole other world from PTSD-simple.

Your therapist has told you you have the complex variety. That's pretty much what happened to me, and the relief was enormous. I'd known for a long time that I had PTSD symptoms but I also knew I had them in childhood, ie. long before my first life-threatening situation; and I didn't have visual or auditory flashbacks, as one GP pointed out as "the most obvious symptom of PTSD".

Pete Walker is The Man here. His most-read book is CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. He points out that being an infant with a hostile caregiver or two is life-threatening, and refers to 'emotional flashbacks' when the amygdala is hijacked by intrusive memories and the person flounders in abandonment depression.

Most of us here are really keen to get the diagnosis recognised.

[Three Roses]

I agree with everything Candid said. I'm officially diagnosed with PTSD & MDD but self-diagnosed with CPTSD.

The health-care community is divided, and this causes confusion. Hopefully they'll catch up soon.

[Dee]

I have an official diagnosis of CPTSD.  In my records it is written as CPTSD.

I suspect for DSM purposes I have PTSD.  However, the organization I go to recognizes and advocates for CPTSD.  There are groups that are working to get CPTSD in the DSM.  I fall under one of them.  I know that having that diagnosis has kept me from having several. 

I feel the most of the psychiatric community supports CPTSD.  When I was inpatient I was told I have it there as well.  From what I read it seems the only one that doesn't is the American Psychiatric Association, the ones who write the DSM.

[songbirdrosa]

I'm in Australia, and I was diagnosed with C-PTSD by my psychologist. The condition isn't widely recognised, but it is being considered for inclusion in the ICD-11, which I understand is currently being developed. I've also got comorbid diagnoses of bipolar II and generalised anxiety (manifesting primarily as polyphobia, social anxiety, and panic disorder).

I didn't even know C-PSTD existed until recently. I'd previously been diagnosed with BPD after my first admission to a mental ward, but to me that didn't fit. After I got admitted for a second time in just over a year, I got referred to my current therapist, who specialises in trauma, abuse, and sexual assault and she was the one to peg me with it. I looked it up, and it was the first thing I'd ever found that really explained everything. Incidentally, that research is also what lead me to find this place

[Kat]

Thanks for all of the information.  Sounds like the APA needs to stop dragging its feet on this.  However, it makes me really happy that so many practitioners go ahead and name it for what it is.  As many of you have mentioned, having a name for what we go through and a description of what all it entails is enormously helpful and relieving.

[sigiriuk]

Hi
In the UK, where we have socialised medicine, we dont need to bill using DSM, & we can be more flexible. I have cPTSD, and my Psychiatrist was the one who told me! However, she is a brainbox and works at the Institute of Psychiatry.
But because there is no way to code cPTSD on computer systems, (because they follow ICD and DSM),  PTSD is often used.
I feel lucky that I was given the diagnosis - it legitimises the complex set of feelings, and symptoms that I have.
Slim

[Candid]

I feel lucky that I was given the diagnosis - it legitimises the complex set of feelings, and symptoms that I have.

Quite. It also subsumes all those other, ill-fitting diagnoses I collected along the way.

Now my official psychiatric notes say CPTSD with major depression. I'm working on the quacks to see that the reason anti-depressants never work on me is that the 'major depression' is just another part of it. I'm glad to feel my feelings, all of them. That's preferable to being numb.

[Rain12]

CPTSD can be diagnosed under the DSM in the category of "Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified" or DESNOS. I have an official diagnosis of DESNOS-CPTSD by a psychologist here in Canada. Psychologists and others have lobbied to have CPTSD included in the next DSM as its own diagnosis.

[sanmagic7]

i self-diagnosed after finding this site and everything here fit so well.  same for the narcs in my life.  none of us have ever had official diagnoses of either of these.  no one's ever noticed my alexithymia, either. 

i see a trauma therapist in a week.  we'll see what happens with her.