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.

Non-Fiction

• Spike Milligan: Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall. In this war diary Milligan, one of Britain's greatest post-war comedians, details his descent into madness during the Italian campaign of World War II. The sequel, Where Have All the Bullets Gone? describes the appallingly unsympathetic treatment he received at the hands of military doctors.