APA House Call: Treating Disassociation Issues for Trauma Patients

The 2020 American Psychiatric Association (APA) Annual Meeting was cancelled this year, with plans made to convert the world-leading psychiatry conference into a two-part virtual session and educational platform for attendees.

In lieu of regular on-site coverage, HCPLive® will be running a series of interviews, insights, and reporting on topics that frequently headline the APA meeting—featuring familiar experts.

For patients who are suffering from PTSD or trauma, comorbidities like depression and anxiety are expected.

This combination of comorbid psychiatric conditions can result in a number of negative symptoms, such as dissociation, which can be particularly difficult to treat.

While there are a number of different causes for trauma, such as military combat, childhood abuse, and traumatic experiences, dissociation can be a common symptom.

However, each patient with different sets of circumstances should be treated differently.

In an interview with HCPLive®, David H. Jiang, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Morningside, explained some of the potential non-pharmacological options to help this patient population, as well as some of the medications that he has had success with.

Despite the cancellation of the live version of the conference, Jiang will be presenting during the APA: On Demand virtual meeting. Jiang’s presentation centers around the award-winning film, You Were Never Really Here, a story about an individual’s journey dealing with both childhood and combat trauma.

The short film will lead into a discussion on how new approaches could improve trauma screening in a diverse mental healthcare setting.