Post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a term for the psychological consequences of exposure to or confrontation with stressful experiences, which involve actual or threatened death, serious physical injury or a threat to physical integrity and which the person found highly traumatic. It is occasionally called post-traumatic stress reaction, to emphasize that it is a fairly normal result of a traumatic experience, rather than a manifestation of a pre-existing psychological weakness on the part of the patient.

Background

Psychological distress after trauma was reported in 1900 BC by an Egyptian physician who described hysterical reactions to trauma (Veith 1965). ?Hysteria? was also related to ?traumatic reminiscences? a century ago (Janet 1901). At that time Freud?s pupil Kardiner was the first to describe what later became posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (Lamprecht & Sack 2002).

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Hippocrates utilized a homeostasis theory to explain illness, and stress is often defined as the reaction to a situation that threatens the balance or homeostasis of a system (Antonovsky 1981). The situation causing the stress reaction is defined as the ?stressor,? but the stress reaction, and not the stressor is what jeopardizes the homeostasis (Aardal-Eriksson 2002). Posttraumatic stress is thus an imbalance according to stress theory.

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PTSD is a relatively recent diagnosis in psychiatric nosology appearing in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for the first time in 1980. It is claimed that the development of the PTSD concept partly has socio-economic and political implications (Mezey & Robbins 2001). War veterans were to a great deal incapacitated by psychiatric illness, including posttraumatic stress in the aftermath of the Vietnam war. However, they had difficulties receiving economic compensation since there was no psychiatric diagnosis available by which they could claim indemnity. This situation has changed and PTSD is now the only psychiatric diagnosis for which a veteran can receive compensation, such as a war veteran indemnity pension, in the USA (Mezey & Robbins 2001). While PTSD-like symptoms were recognized in combat veterans following many historical conflicts, the modern understanding of the condition dates to the 1980s.

Related Topics:
Nosology - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - 1980s

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Another name for post-traumatic stress disorder is Critical Incident Stress (CIS).

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