Are you suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Written by Dr Vernon Coleman on November 6, 2026. Posted in Current News

To say that we live in difficult, frightening, challenging and traumatic times is an absurd understatement

Most people are worried about many things: rising interest rates and inflation; failing health care; the steady but remorseless increase in food prices; the rise in heating bills; the increase in fuel prices and travel costs; the prospect of the fuel running out completely or being rationed; the uglification of our towns, cities and villages; violence in the streets.

Mass, illegal immigration has got out of control and causes real anxiety for a large section of the population who are, of course, all then demonised as ‘far right’ racists by Far, Far Left wingers who live in Islington and do their shopping in Mayfair and Knightsbridge.

Burnham, Britain’s faux Prime Minister says he thinks it is difficult to say whether the current levels of migration are too high or too low. What a 24 carat pillock he is. I hope he repeats that balderdash when campaigning at the next general election.

Millions are worried about housing. Burnham has awakened the dead remainers with a promise to reopen the Brexit campaign so that he can drag us back into the EU, an undemocratic and endlessly corrupt organisation which was invented by warmed up Nazis.

Never mind that a majority of Britons voted to leave the EU. Why is Burnham doing this? Is he hoping to split the right wing vote so that he can win an election and become a proper Prime Minister? (See my book `The Shocking History of the EU’ to be shocked.)

In the UK, the Government seems to have done its best to increase homelessness. Private landlords have been driven out of offering accommodation, and builders struggle with absurd red tape and ever rising employment costs.

Burnham’s party provides promises rather than houses. The promises keep coming. The houses do not and never will under a Labour Government.

If TikTok Burnham gets a hole in his shoe he blames Russia. If his favourite football team loses a match he blames Russia. If he has an unsatisfactory bowel movement he blames Russia. (`Oh, woe is me. My bowels are undone. It must be those pesky Russians again. Bring me a new loo roll and let’s bomb another Russian oil refinery.’) If his phone battery dies he blames Russia.

There is no evidence linking Russia to supposed attacks on the UK and Europe. And, as I have previously pointed out, why on earth would Russia or anyone else want to attack the UK or Europe.

The UK and the EU are close to bankruptcy and there are no natural resources. No one with brains would want to bother attacking the UK or the EU. But the lack of evidence is ignored in the desperate desire to find an enemy worthy of Burnham’s campaign of fear and intimidation; a campaign currently being waged against the electors – the people who pay his salary.

Burnham seems to be deliberately antagonising Russia and making life ever more difficult for Britons. Helping Ukraine bomb Russian oil refineries (with British taxpayers’ money) is stupid and not supported by the people.

Ukraine has lost an unnecessary war and Burnham is merely wasting money to help the depopulation plan by killing people. And Burnham’s policies in the Middle East support deadly war and depopulation plans and also push up prices and make life worse in Britain.

Around the world hundreds of millions of people will die of starvation because of Trump’s insane war. No politicians give a damn because their puppet masters have ordered them not to give a damn.

Fears about war are constantly being promoted. In the UK, Burnham seems determined to become the world’s No 1 warmonger. He is heavily involved in three and a half wars which have nothing whatsoever to do with Britain and I suspect that in due course he may find himself a defendant before the International Criminal Court.

(The half a war is the one we’re bound to have against Argentina.) In October 2026, around 60 countries around the world warned their citizens that they should prepare survival rations to get them through three days of some undefined crisis.

In Britain, citizens were warned that the crisis would happen in precisely 1000 days (so it’s difficult to see precisely why they were being told to put aside tins of beans and bottles of water so far ahead.)

Millions are terrified of Artificial Intelligence – awed by the claims for its power, control and destruction. (AI is truly dumb and has no power. It’s not real and it’s not intelligent. There’s no AI programme in the world that can make up a good joke.

It’s easy to get rid of AI. Just pull out the plug providing the computer with electricity and AI dies in a second. Or turn on the water sprinklers and be delighted by the firework display.)

The stress of dealing with the requirements of the recycling tsars causes much anxiety. In some areas people have to sort their rubbish into six, seven, eight or even nine separate plastic containers. There is now a record number or rats in Britain.

Naturally, the presence of the rats is officially blamed on climate change, rather than on rubbish collection rules which lead streets and homes littered with rubbish. (Recycling is, of course, known to be nothing more than a training exercise designed to produce unquestioning obedience.

Recycling is a nonsense. Most of the stuff which is so carefully sorted and washed is sent abroad to be buried or burnt. Recycling plastic, for example, is a complete waste of time.)

And then there is the steady disappearance of beauty and fun from our lives; the destruction of our culture; and the deliberate burial of our history.

Too much of the world smells of a toxic, breath-taking mixture of death, quiet despair and unstoppable corruption. Most people in most countries would struggle to name a single honest, decent politician whom they would trust with their wallet or car keys.

All of these stresses are quite uncontrollable.

Over thirty years ago I created the term `Toxic Stress’ to describe those general, external stresses over which we have no control but which surround us every day and are responsible for many of the illnesses which are now endemic .

Much of the stress to which we are exposed is outside our control. We have become increasingly aware of the ways in which our own behaviour can increase our exposure to stress and we have been taught many ways to reduce our vulnerability and to stress-proof our bodies.

But this information is of limited value when it comes to dealing with general, social stresses – many of which are difficult to identify and impossible to avoid. And so, back in the 1990s, I coined the phrase ‘Toxic Stress’ to describe these insidious and destructive social stresses.

We have failed in our attempts to control the damage done by `Toxic Stress’ because we have put all our effort into trying to find medical solutions. Hypnotherapists recommend hypnotherapy. Acupuncturists offer acupuncture as a solution.

Herbalists recommend herbs and old fashioned, orthodox physicians prefer to prescribe drugs. All these remedies can be of value. But they work only by suppressing the symptoms of illness produced by stress.

None of these techniques help to combat `Toxic Stress’ or, indeed, the way it affects our mental and physical health.

‘Toxic Stress is a result of social changes. And the only way to stay healthy and avoid the damage that can be done by ‘Toxic Stress’ is to learn how to survive in the world we have created ourselves (or rather, which has been created for us).

We can control some personal stresses by changing our life style but we cannot do anything about `Toxic Stresses’. We are exposed to many stresses which are an integral part of our complex society and to a million fears which are deliberately created by our own governments.

The politicians tell us that we will soon be at war (when no country is threatening us) and deliberately ramp up the fear to create terror. There is talk of conscription and a reminder that in the Ukraine women are now being forced to sit in trenches or operate drones.

It’s no wonder that anxiety and depression are now endemic and the largest cause of chronic illness and an inability to function satisfactorily. Government ministers deliberately ramp up the fear (when there is no good reason for the fear) while at the same time complaining about the number of people who are so damaged by the stresses they have created that they cannot work.

Many of those who have been battered by `Toxic Stress’ are now misdiagnosed as suffering from autism or ADHD. In the UK there are now nine million people who are officially diagnosed as being autistic. Millions more have been diagnosed, or self-diagnosed, as having ADHD.

I suspect that 90 percent of those individuals have been misdiagnosed and I strongly suspect that there are now far more people suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder than are suffering from autism or ADHD or any of the other disorders in that group of illnesses.

We tend to associate PTSD as being something which affects only soldiers who have been exposed to too much stress in combat. We know it can affect individuals (such as health care workers, firemen, police officers) who have been exposed to great traumas, but we do not think of it as resulting from the sort of unavoidable stresses to which we are all exposed as we go about our daily lives.

Countless millions don’t feel well but don’t entirely understand why. They are, they feel, distinctly under par in physical, mental and spiritual terms.

And the reason, in most cases, is that they are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by a constant, chronic exposure to uncontrollable and unavoidable stresses. Our governments are to blame, of course, with their constant and deliberate threats of war, disaster, climate emergencies and global poverty.

Here are the symptoms which suggest that you are suffering from PTSD:

1. Having negative thoughts about yourself
2. Communicating less with other people
3. Finding it difficult to control your emotions
4. Feeling low or flat for no obvious reason
5. Suffering from regular mood changes
6. Feeling constantly angry – even when there is nothing in particular to be angry about.
7. Looking for danger everywhere.
8. Avoiding places which make you feel uncomfortable
9. Avoiding people which make you feel uncomfortable
10. Not being able to enjoy things which you used to enjoy
11. Having difficulty in sleeping
12. Feeling anxious all the time
13. Suffering from headaches and/or gut problems or having pains with no physical cause.
14. Avoiding people or places that bring back bad memories.
15. Feeling disconnected from the world (and from yourself)

So what happens if you decide that you are suffering from chronic PTSD? You could go to see a doctor, of course. But in my opinion anything a doctor will give you for these symptoms is likely to make you considerably worse.

She or he will probably prescribe an antidepressant. But antidepressants have been shown to be both useless and dangerous (a common twin problem with many modern medications). You may be referred to a psychiatrist or some sort of mental health specialist.

That will probably also be a waste of time. Studies have shown that psychiatrists and psychotherapists do less good than hairdressers or barmaids/barmen. And, in the UK at least, you will doubtless be offered a lot of free money from the Government’s coffers.

The money will enable you to stay at home and watch TV all day long but it won’t deal with your symptoms.

I’m afraid that the only thing I can recommend is that you read my book `Toxic Stress and the 21st Century Blues’. The book doesn’t deal specifically with PTSD but it offers advice to help you deal with the problems created by toxic stress – the destructive phenomenon which is responsible for the modern epidemic of chronic PTSD.

You should be able to borrow a copy from your local public library and this I heartily recommend. If you want to be wild and reckless and buy a copy you can do so via the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com

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Header image: Evening Standard

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