PTSD
This is something I see get thrown around a lot and is rarely used correctly.
Summarized DSM-V Criteria
A. Definition of trauma;
- The person has experience, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.
- the persons response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.
B. Re-experiencing; traumatic experience is persistently re-experienced at least one way:
- recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the events, including images, thoughts, or perceptions
- recurrent distressing dreams of the event
- acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations and dissociative flashback episodes
- intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
- physiologic reactivity upon exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an expect of the traumatic event.
C. Avoidance/Numbing; persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness indicated by at least three of:
- efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma.
- efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections
- inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma.
- markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
- feeling of detachment or estrangement from others.
- restricted range of affect (ex; unable to have loving feelings) sense of a foreshortened future (ex; does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span.)
D. Hyper-Arousal; persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma) as indicated by at least two of the following;
- difficulty falling or staying asleep
- irritability or outbursts of anger
- difficulty concentrating
- hyper-vigilance
- exaggerated startle response.