"Fury, paranoia, hypervigilance, overreaction to a perceived threat – all are common in a traumatised person. The psychologist who helped me to get better characterised the condition thus: imagine your memories are a conveyor belt of cardboard boxes heading towards a final point, where they are processed. But if something life-threatening disrupts that process, the box memories get stuck, trapped in the amygdala, that bit of the brain that triggers your fight or flight survival impulse. The amygdala knows no sense of past or present, and so, when faced with a perceived threat, it responds how it sees fit, unbeholden to logic, in the form of blind panic.
"This is, of course, a very basic way of explaining an extremely complicated condition, but it certainly helped me....
"A survey by the We Need To Talk coalition found that one in five of those with mental health problems were waiting more than a year for referral, but studies have shown that those with PTSD should be given therapy within three months....
"I don't know how many people there are in this country walking the streets addled by trauma, but I know that they need to be better looked after. And I wonder if the research will ever come to anything...."
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