[Therapists' psychological problems when treating posttraumatic stress disorder].

Abstract

War experience in interaction with personality structure can have a traumatic effect and provoke various psychopathological responses and even disorders at the psychological level. PTSD is one of the possible psychopathological responses to war trauma, which provokes a range of different emotions in those working with such patients. The heterogeneity of the clinical aspect of the disorder, the comorbidity and social malfunctioning of the patients represent a frequent source of difficulties in the psychiatrist's work. The disorder brings about alterations at the somatic, psychological, social and occupational level of the affected individual, requiring a complex approach to treatment. The psychotherapeutic treatment of PTSD patients gives rise to different counter-transfer emotions at different stages of the therapeutic process. The therapist experiences fright, anger, guilt, frustration, and sometimes even a tendency to avoid the patient. His ability for empathy and understanding of the patient can be exhausted and become the cause of a reduced capacity for sympathy, a secondary traumatic stress and a vicarious trauma.