How to Treat PTSD with High Blood Pressure Medications

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by feelings of detachment or emotional numbness, a feeling of distorted or altered reality, amnesia, insomnia and nightmares, or even repeated reliving of a stressful event like combat or a serious accident. Doctors usually treat it with a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressant, anti-anxiety or antipsychotic medications. In recent years, doctors have recognized that prazosin, a medication usually prescribed for high blood pressure or prostate enlargement, also seems to help patients with PTSD.

Things You'll Need

• Computer with internet access
• Notebook and pen
• Physician
• Psychiatrist
• Prescription
• Pharmacist
• Patient education materials
• Prazosin

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Instructions

• 1

  If you suspect you may have post-traumatic stress disorder, talk to your doctor. She may refer you to a psychiatrist, who will evaluate your case and determine the best mode of treatment for you. Once you have a diagnosis of PTSD, ask specifically about prazosin and educate yourself on all the recommended medications by going online and searching for each drug by name.

• 2

  Prazosin is in a class of medications called adrenergic antagonists, or alpha-blockers. It works by relaxing the blood vessels to facilitate blood flow. A study by Oregon Health and Science University revealed that prazosin apparently blocks the increase of steroid hormones known as glucocorticoids, steroid hormones that seem to cause atrophy and even cell death in nerves where impulses are transmitted in the brain. Stress causes elevated levels of glucocorticoids, and the study suggested that prazosin, by increasing blood flow to the brain, may reverse or even prevent nerve damage from high levels of glucocorticoids. Prazosin is often prescribed for high blood pressure, but may help your PTSD symptoms even if your blood pressure is normal.

• 3

  If your doctor does prescribe prazosin, tell him about other medications you use, surgeries you've had or will have, and if you're pregnant or breastfeeding. Also, ask your pharmacist about interactions with all other medications you use. Carefully read the patient education materials enclosed with prazosin so you'll know more about precautions, side effects and adverse reactions to monitor. Consider keeping a journal in a notebook for the first few days so you can tell what changes, desirable or undesirable, occur.

• 4

  Prazosin comes as an oral capsule. Your doctor will probably start you on a low dose of prazosin and gradually increase it. You should take the medication exactly as directed. Start at bedtime in case prazosin makes you drowsy, and don't drive or do anything dangerous (including operating machinery) for the first 24 hours after starting the medication. Don't double up on a missed dose, and don't skip a dose. Keep taking prazosin, even after you feel better, until your doctor tells you to stop.

• 5

  Side effects you should tell your doctor about if they worsen or don't clear up my include weakness, fatigue, headache and nausea. More serious adverse reactions about which you should immediately call your doctor include hives, rashes or itching; difficulty breathing or chest pain; fast, pounding or irregular heartbeat; or priapism (a painful erection that doesn't go away).