Psychiatric disorder that develops after a traumatic experience such as war, natural disaster, serious accident or physical abuse.
The onset of symptoms varies from person to person and can appear from shortly after the traumatic experience to years later. It can occur at all ages, even in infancy.
It manifests with recurrent memories that cause anxiety, psychological discomfort, irritability, negative thoughts, decreased interaction with other people, inability to feel happiness, concentration problems, sleep disturbance in the form of nightmares or insomnia, feeling of being an observer of oneself from outside one's body, feeling of unreality of the environment, etc.
The diagnosis is clinical by means of a regulated interview, generally carried out by a psychiatrist or psychologist.
Treatment is aimed at reducing symptoms, promoting adequate functioning and preventing chronic complications that may be disabling. Treatment is mainly psychotherapeutic, although it may include psychopharmacological help to stabilize specific symptoms.
- American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), American Psychiatric Association, Arlington 2013.
- Kessler RC, Rose S, Koenen KC, et al. How well can post-traumatic stress disorder be predicted from pre-trauma risk factors? An exploratory study in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. World Psychiatry 2014; 13:265.
- Jitender Sareen, MD, FRCPC. Posttraumatic stress disorder in adults: Epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, course, assessment, and diagnosis. UpToDate.
- Kessler RC, Berglund P, Demler O, et al. Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005; 62:593.
- Van Ameringen M, Mancini C, Patterson B, Boyle MH. Post-traumatic stress disorder in Canada. CNS Neurosci Ther 2008; 14:171.
- Koenen KC, Ratanatharathorn A, Ng L, et al. Posttraumatic stress disorder in the World Mental Health Surveys. Psychol Med 2017; 47:2260.
