Keywords
pharmacotherapy
management guidelines
Abstract
The review provides substantiation for the significance of PTSD as an important medical and social
problem, the evolution of PTSD in diagnostic and statistical manuals on mental disorders and modern
approaches of their treatment is considered.
With an emphasis on pharmacotherapy PTSD management guidelines published/updated over the past
10 years and also information from MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science were analyzed, the modern evidence
base of the advantages of psychotherapy over pharmacotherapy (and vice versa) was considered, and the main groups of drugs used (antidepressants, atypical antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and others) were
characterized from the standpoint of evidence-based medicine.
Separately approaches to the pharmacotherapy of sleep disorders, including nightmares, were
considered in details.
Based on the analysis of the studied information sources, it was concluded that the place of pharmacotherapy in the treatment of PTSD has not been definitively determined due to significant gaps in the evidence
base of the effectiveness and safety of used drugs.
In conditions of an exponential increase of PTSD frequency with limited success in its therapy, stydies on
expanding the evidence base of the effectiveness and safety of already used drugs and new representatives
of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers and medicines of other pharmacological groups are
becoming extremely relevant.
Present article provides overview concerning development of rational individualized approaches to the
complex treatment of PTSD, creation of new drugs using enhances knowledge about the neurophysiology of
PTSD, and development of reliable biomarkers for their diagnosis and control of treatment