La prévention, le repérage, l’accompagnement précoce et l’orientation adéquate des personnes souffrant de séquelles post-traumatiques favorisent leur rétablissement et améliorent leur qualité de vie.
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Evaluation scales
In order to be diagnosed with PTSD, symptoms must have been present for at least one month. The diagnosis can only be made by a doctor. However, if you think you may have PTSD, there are self-report scales, including the PCL-5. However, a self-report test is not diagnostic and is never 100% reliable. If the test result is negative but you are still having difficulties, it is time to seek help and make an appointment with your doctor.
If you are a healthcare professional, there are scales that can help you make the diagnosis. You can use your patient's PCL-5 scores or a semi-structured interview guide, such as the CAPS-5. The CAPS-5, on the other hand, is more cumbersome, taking about 45 minutes to complete, and may require training. If you are interested in training, you may wish to contact your nearest CRP to discuss this.
Many tools have been developed to help screen for PTSD. PTSD screening tools are essentially self-administered scales, i.e. questionnaires completed by the patient himself.
They have the advantage of being quick and easy to use and do not require the presence of a clinician. However, they do not measure non-verbal manifestations and pose the problem of understanding the instructions and scoring. The diagnosis of PTSD cannot be made after the completion of a self-administered questionnaire and must be confirmed by a clinician.
The hetero-administered scales are of two types: on the one hand, short screening tests that do not allow a diagnosis of PTSD to be made, but only to quickly identify patients at risk who should benefit from an in-depth diagnostic approach; on the other hand, scales that correspond to longer structured interviews that allow the presence or absence of PTSD diagnostic criteria to be ascertained, and thus the diagnosis of PTSD to be made or not.
