Pathways to care for people presenting with complex PTSD

The project aims to help identify the pathways of care for people presenting with ‘complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ (PTSD) or ‘complex trauma’. This is a controversial proposed diagnosis and will be present in The International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11) (A European psychiatric diagnostic manual) due for publication in 2017. It distinguishes the criteria following prolonged and multiple traumatic events, in which people experience the core symptoms of PTSD (re-experiencing, avoidance and hyperarousal), accompanied by difficulties in emotion regulation, interpersonal functioning and persistent negative self-beliefs. People with such symptoms may fall between different care pathways (e.g. PTSD and personality disorder).