What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

By:  Kimberly Swanson, MS-Psy, CNA

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is a trauma and stress related disorder.  Trauma stress related conditions are a group of disorders that involves psychological distress followed by anxiety, fear, depressive, anhedonic, or dissociative symptoms, with certain similarities in symptoms and behaviors (e.g. psychological distress) (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), 2013).

Symptoms of PTSD

The DSM-5 (2013) states that a critical component to PTSD is the symptoms that may occur after being exposed to one or more traumatic occurrences.  Patients may feel emotional feelings  from the traumatic event (e.g. scared,  horrified, vulnerable) is not in Criterion A because PTSD is clinically varied.  For instance some people may feel scared mostly when having flashbacks of the tragic incident.  Whereas for others,  they may have mostly anhedonic or dysphoric moods with a negative insight of what took place (DSM-5, 2013).

Commonality of  PTSD

According to the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R), it is believed that  the lifetime cases of PTSD within the United States is at 6.8% (Kessler, Berglund, Demler, et, 2005); these figures does not show the gender differences when it comes to the commonality of PTSD (Butcher, Mineka, Hooley, 2013).  The NCS-R outcomes revealed that women have higher cases of  PTSD than men.  Throughout their life span, women were at 9.7% and men were at 3.6%. 

The difference in commonality of gender based PTSD is intriguing, due to some studies showing that males are more prone to  traumatic events (e.g. war and combat) (Tolin & Foa, 2006).  Research has shown that gender differences may be a contributing factor  that women are at a higher risk to certain types of  traumatic experiences (e.g. rape) (Cortina & Kublak, 2006).  Females tend to demonstrate a higher level of PTSD and are prone to having more severe symptoms (Tolin & Foe, 2006).

References

American Psychiatric Association (APA).  (2013).   Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5^th  edition (DSM-5). 

Butcher, J.N., Mineka, S., Hooley, J.M.  (2013).  Abnormal Psychology 15^th edition.  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson Education, Inc. 

Cortina, L.M., Kubiak, S.P.  (2006).  Gender and post-traumatic stress:  Sexual violence as an explanation for women’s increased risk.  Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115, 753-759.

Kessler, R.C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Walters, E.E.  (2005b).  Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distribution of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(6):593-602.

Tolin, D.F., & Foe, E.B.  (2006).  Sex differences in trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder:  A quantitative review of 25 years of research.  Psychological Bulletin, 132, 959-992.

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