Patients in the ICU often suffer post-traumatic stress, anxiety, or depression due, not only to the illness or trauma that put them there, but to the very nature of the ICU and life-saving treatment<\/strong>. As a result, follow-up schemes have been put in to place to help alleviate these psychological problems. Researchers from the Karolinska University Hospital Solna and the Karolinska Institutet compared patient’s recovery from 2006, before a follow-up scheme was started, with that of patients in 2007 and 2008.<\/p>\n The scheme consisted of non-compulsory meetings at three, six and 12 months after being discharged from ICU with a nurse, physician and a physiotherapist, revisiting the ICU, and in severe cases being referred to a psychiatric unit for further therapy.<\/p>\n Before the use of the follow-up scheme women had much higher scores on the Impact Event Scale (IES), which measures post-traumatic stress, than men. For women, after the introduction of follow-up, these scores were significantly reduced<\/strong>. However, the scheme had no effect on the IES score of men.<\/p>\n Dr Peter Sackey, who led this study, explained, “In general, for the same event, women are twice as likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, recover more slowly, and are more prone to suffer long-term effects. We found this was also true in ICU survivors. The women with the highest IES scores were the ones who were most helped by the follow-up scheme. While it is not clear whether the scheme only helps patients at severe risk of PTSD, it does mean that these people have access to the treatment they need.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the BioMed Central press release via EurekAlert!: Women are more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress than men after leaving an intensive care unit (ICU), finds a new study published… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,10],"tags":[14,46,49,92,23,62,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2933,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions\/2933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/DoctorandPatient.jpg\" "\\"doctor")
Women are more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress than men after leaving an intensive care unit (ICU),<\/strong> finds a new study published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Critical Care<\/em>. However, psychological and physical ‘follow-up’ can reduce both this and post-ICU depression<\/strong>.<\/p>\n