Post traumatic stress disorder overview

Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.^[1] It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma.^[2] This stressor may involve someone’s actual death or a threat to the patient’s or someone else’s life, serious physical injury, or threat to physical and/or psychological integrity, to a degree that usual psychological defenses are incapable of coping. It is important to make a distinction between PTSD and traumatic stress, which is a similar condition, but of less intensity and duration.^[3] The condition has also been known historically or colloquially as shell shock, traumatic war neurosis, or post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS).

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