Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) An anxiety disorder based on how an individual responds to a traumatic event. According to DSM-IV, the following criteria must be met:

• The person has experienced a traumatic event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others, and the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror

• The traumatic event is re-experienced in specific ways such as recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections or dreams of the event

• Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma or numbing of general responsiveness

• Persistent symptoms of increased arousal, such as hypervigilance or irritability

• Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in Criteria B, C, and D) is more than one month

• The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning.

PTSD may be acute, chronic, or with delayed onset. Many individuals with DID (MPD) also have PTSD. The literature sometimes describes DID(MPD) as complex and/or chronic PTSD. Adapted from DSM-IV, p. 427-429.

Borrowed from the Sidran Institute's Trauma Disorders Glossary