PTSD Treatment in Marylebone, London

PTSD is what happens when the memory of an event stays filed as present rather than past. Intrusive memories, flashbacks and nightmares bring it back without being invited. You avoid the places and conversations that trigger it. You stay on guard, startle easily and scan for threat in rooms where there is none. Many people also feel numb and detached from the people closest to them.

Three parts of the brain are doing the work. The amygdala continues to treat the memory as a live threat. The prefrontal cortex, which should moderate that response, has less influence than it should. The hippocampus, which files a memory as belonging to the past, is affected too. Alongside that, the body stays braced, which is measurable as low heart rate variability.

The first-line treatments in the UK are trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy and EMDR. That is what NICE recommends, and it is where treatment should begin. Magnetic stimulation acts on the second part of that picture, the regulation of the threat response, which is a narrower claim than resolving the memory itself.

Being straight about the evidence: the rTMS literature in PTSD is growing but is smaller than in depression, and a good deal of it is in people who also have depression. NICE has issued interventional procedures guidance for depression and has not done so for PTSD. There is no version of this page where that reads better than it does written down.

Where a course does make sense is often where therapy has stalled. If you are too activated to engage with trauma-focused work, or your mood has dropped far enough that you cannot use the sessions, stimulation alongside therapy is a reasonable conversation to have. We ask that you have a therapist in place, and we are happy to work with one you already trust.

You will not be asked to recount the event to us. Your clinician needs enough history to treat you safely, which is a different thing, and the pace of the rest belongs to you and your therapist.