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.

Diagnostic Criteria

The diagnostic criteria for PTSD according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -IV (DSM-IV) are stressors listed from A to F. Notably, the stressor criterion A is divided into two parts. The first (A1) requires that ?the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others?. The second (A2) requires that ?the person?s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.? The DSM-IV A criterion differs substantially from the previous DSM-III-R stressor criterion which specified that the traumatic event should be of a type that would cause ?significant symptoms of distress in almost anyone,? and that the event was ?outside the range of usual human experience.? Since the introduction of DSM-IV, the number of possible PTSD-traumas has increased, and one study suggests that the increase is around 50% (Breslau & Kessler 2001).

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