PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a stress response to a generally catastrophic experience, which is life threatening or otherwise traumatic.
- Exposure to actual or threatened trauma
- Intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks with intense psychological/physiological reactions
- Amnesia for event, detachment, avoidance of reminders
- Negative mood
- Arousal with sleep disturbance, irritability, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, impaired concentration
Post-traumatic stress disorder must last for > 1 month to be diagnosed. Until then, symptoms of PTSD can be diagnosed as acute stress disorder.
Links to this note
- Psychiatry
- Adjustment Disorder
- related: PTSD, Psychiatry
- In adjustment disorder, the life event is not life threatening, a key feature that differentiates it from post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD.