Question:
The diagnosis PTSD is a psychological diagnosis that rules out organic deficits, i.e., there is something wrong organically with the person's brain. However, since quite a few neurologists as well as other Medical professionals are not well informed about TBI and its ramifications, they refer to TBI symptomatology as PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorders. It's a catch all phrase. It's the easy way out to describe a disturbed individual with emotionally laden sequelae of repeated "mental" re-occurrences of the "incident", again and again, which upsets them galore. My neurologist back in 1993 diagnosed me with PTSD. He did not even bother to send me for an NP eval.. what does that tell you...??

I will look for a post I sent last year about the symptoms, etc., of PTSD, and repost it.

Answer: I have someone staying with me suffered PTSD, as well as knowing my friend with TBI. The symptoms are SIMILAR, but they are NOT the same. I am not playing with words here. Paul's symptoms are a direct result of the injury to his brain. John's (PTSD)symptoms are a more 'in the mind'. I do not wish to sound to disparaging here. Far from it. His memory is affected because 'flashbacks' he suffers, the anxiety and distress reduce his attention span. Rather like when one has a severe migraine, the pain gets in the way of concentrating but it is not brain damage causing the problem. Paul's IS because the memory site in his brain is damaged. Tiredness in both is a result of anxiety.