Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The essential feature of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is the development of characteristic symptoms following exposure to an extreme traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one's physical integrity. Symptoms may also develop after witnessing an event that involves death, injury, or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death or injury experienced by a family member or other close individual.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder can occur at any age, including childhood. Symptoms usually begin within the first three months after the trauma, although there may be a delay of months, or even years, before symptoms appear. Duration of the symptoms may vary, with complete recovery occurring within three months in approximately half of cases, with many others having persisting symptoms for longer than twelve months after the trauma.

Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder:
bulletthe person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others
bulletthe person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. In children, this may be expressed by disorganized or agitated behavior;
bulletthe traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one or more of the following ways:
  1. recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event
  2. recurrent distressing dreams of the event
  3. acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring
  4. intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
  5. physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
bulletpersistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three or more of the following:
  1. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
  2. efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
  3. inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
  4. markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
  5. feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
  6. restricted range of emotions
  7. sense of foreshortened future (does not expect to have a career, marriage, etc)
bulletpersistent symptoms of increased arousal as indicated by two or more of the following:
  1. difficulty falling or staying asleep
  2. irritability or outbursts of anger
  3. difficulty concentrating
  4. hypervigilance
  5. exaggerated startle response
bulletduration of the disturbance is more than one month
bulletthe disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning
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These pages are solely for public informational purposes. The information cannot be relied on to make diagnoses or prescribe treatment in any individual. Persons who require such services should consult with a licensed professional.

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© 2000 Red Oak Psychiatry Associates, P.A.    Updated 11/26/2007