Introduction
These are the approved guidelines published by the South African Society of Psychiatrists to provide an overview on treatment and management of commonly diagnosed psychiatric illnesses. The guidelines include consensus recommendations, based on peer contribution and using the international evidence based guidelines that are suitable for the local South African health service.
Please note that parts of this guideline may be out of date, an update will be published as soon as it is available.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is among the most prevalent anxiety disorders, both in terms of lifetime and 12-month prevalence rates documented in epidemiological studies worldwide. The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) study conducted in the USA, for example, found the lifetime prevalence of PTSD to be 6.8% while the 12-month prevalence was 3.5%.[1,2] The South African Stress and Health Study (SASH) documented lower lifetime (2.3%) and 12-month (0.6%) rates, although PTSD was among the anxiety disorders with the highest proportion of severe cases (36% of all individuals diagnosed with PTSD were severely ill).[3] High rates of PTSD (19.9%) have also been documented among South African patients attending primary healthcare clinics.[4]