Ariana Grande would like to show you her brain in the aftermath of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing at one of her concerts. Because the brain scans she just posted appear to show active PTSD.

“Hilarious and terrifying,” she wrote in her Instagram story Thursday, showing a basic picture of a healthy brain versus the brain of a person suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and then following it with a shot of four scans that she labeled “my brain.”

“Not a joke,” she added.

See, her brain images were lit up brighter than the one showing PTSD activity. The singer told British Vogue last June that even her “anxiety has anxiety” after the blast, which claimed at least 22 lives and injured scores of people.


Ariana Grande posted brain scans showing PTSD in her Instagram story. (Instagram)

Grande had just wrapped her concert, attended by many teens and their parents, including Grande’s mother, when the bombs went off. Fans were sent running in a panic.

“It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe, tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing,” the singer, now 25, told the magazine. She’d always had anxiety, she said, and she never talked about it, but when she got home from her tour, it was the most severe it had ever been.

Symptoms of PTSD include flashbacks, intrusive memories of the traumatic event, panic attacks and nightmares as they relive the trauma, according to WebMD. The person might avoid situations that remind them of the trauma and thereby cut themselves off from others, or from activities they used to enjoy.


Sufferers also operate on high alert, having outbursts or failing to relate to others, WebMD said. There are physical symptoms as well, related to blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, tension and digestion.

cdz@latimes.com

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