research power. this means that the most severe disorders are not studied adequately and patients most affected by early trauma are often not recognised by services. both historically and currently, at the individual as well as the societal level, "dissociation from the acknowledgement of the severe impact of childhood abuse on the developing brain leads to inadequate provision of services. assimilation into treatment models of the emerging affective neuroscience of adverse experience could help to redress the balance by shifting the focus from top-down regulation to bottom-up, body-based processing." complex post trauma stress disorder is a long term mental health condition which is often difficult and relatively expensive to treat and often requires several years of psychotherapy, modes of intervention and treatment by highly skilled, mental health professionals who specialize in trauma informed modalities designed to process and integrate childhood trauma memories for the purposes of mitigating symptoms and improving the survivor's quality of life. delaying therapy for people with complex ptsd, whether intentionally or not, can exacerbate the condition. recommended treatment modalities and interventions there is no one treatment which has been designed specifically for use with the adult complex ptsd population (with the exception of component based psychotherapy) there are many therapeutic interventions used by mental health professionals to treat ptsd. as of february 2017, the american psychological association ptsd guideline development panel (gdp) strongly recommends the following for the treatment of ptsd: cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt) and trauma focused cbt cognitive processing therapy (cpt) cognitive therapy (ct) prolonged exposure therapy (pe) the american psychological association also conditionally recommends brief eclectic psychotherapy (bep) eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (emdr) narrative exposure therapy (net) while these treatments have been recommended, there is still a lack of research on the best and most efficacious treatments for complex ptsd. psychological therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy are effective in treating cptsd symptoms like ptsd, depression and anxiety. they are especially effective for complex trauma related to domestic violence and less effective when the condition is related to experiences of war or childhood sexual abuse. for cptsd due to war or childhood sexual abuse mixing elements of different therapies seems to work better. mindfulness and relaxation is effective for ptsd symptoms, emotion regulation and interpersonal problems for people whose complex trauma is related to sexual abuse. antipsychotic medicine can help reducing ptsd symptoms for veterans. many commonly used treatments are considered complementary or alternative since there still is a lack of research to classify these approaches as evidence based. some of these additional interventions and modalities include: biofeedback dyadic resourcing (used with emdr) emotionally focused therapy emotional freedom technique (eft) or tapping equine-assisted therapy expressive arts therapy internal family systems therapy dialectical behavior therapy (dbt) family systems therapy group therapy neurofeedback psychodynamic therapy sensorimotor psychotherapy somatic experiencing yoga, specifically trauma-sensitive yoga arguments against diagnosis though acceptance of the idea of complex ptsd has increased with mental health professionals, the fundamental research required for the proper validation of a new disorder is insufficient as of 2013. the disorder was proposed under the name des-nos (disorder of extreme stress not otherwise specified) for inclusion in the dsm-iv but was rejected by members of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm) committee of the american psychiatric association for lack of sufficient diagnostic validity research. chief among the stated limitations was a study which showed that 95% of individuals who could be diagnosed with the proposed des-nos were also diagnosable with ptsd, raising questions about the added usefulness of an additional disorder. following the failure of des-nos to gain formal recognition in the dsm-iv, the concept was re-packaged for children and adolescents and given a new name, developmental trauma disorder. supporters of dtd appealed to the developers of the dsm-5 to recognize dtd as a new disorder. just as the developers of dsm-iv refused to included des-nos, the developers of dsm-5 refused to include dtd due to a perceived lack of sufficient research. one of the main justifications offered for this proposed disorder has been that the current system of diagnosing ptsd plus comorbid disorders does not capture the wide array of symptoms in one diagnosis. because individuals who suffered repeated and prolonged traumas often show ptsd plus other concurrent psychiatric disorders, some researchers have argued that a single broad disorder such as cptsd provides a better and more parsimonious diagnosis than the current system of ptsd plus concurrent disorders. conversely, an article published in biomed central has posited there is no evidence that being labeled with a single disorder leads to better treatment than being labeled with ptsd plus concurrent disorders. complex ptsd embraces a wider range of symptoms relative to ptsd, specifically emphasizing problems of emotional regulation, negative self-concept, and interpersonal problems. diagnosing complex ptsd can imply that this wider range of symptoms is caused by traumatic experiences, rather than acknowledging any pre-existing experiences of trauma which could lead to a higher risk of experiencing future traumas. it also asserts that this wider range of symptoms and higher risk of traumatization are related by hidden confounder variables and there is no causal relationship between symptoms and trauma experiences. in the diagnosis of ptsd, the definition of the stressor event is narrowly limited to life-threatening events, with the implication that these are typically sudden and unexpected events. complex ptsd vastly widened the definition of potential stressor events by calling them adverse events, and deliberating dropping reference to life-threatening, so that experiences can be included such as neglect, emotional abuse, or living in a war zone without having specifically experienced life-threatening events. by broadening the stressor criterion, an article published by the child and youth care forum claims this has led to confusing differences between competing definitions of complex ptsd, undercutting the clear operationalization of symptoms seen as one of the successes of the dsm. there are no known case reports with prospective repeated assessments to clearly demonstrate that the alleged symptoms followed the adverse events. instead, supporters of complex ptsd have pushed for recognition of a disorder before conducting any of the prospective repeated assessments that are needed.