What is "post-traumatic stress disorder"?

What is "post-traumatic stress disorder"?

Christopher Reist (Academic Psychiatrist, Co-Author of “Psychiatry”) gives expert video advice on: What are the most common causes of post-traumatic stress disorder?; What are the most common dangers associated with post-traumatic stress disorder?; Is there anything I can do to avoid developing post-traumatic stress disorder? and more...

Post-traumatic stress disorder refers to a anxiety disorder that results from coming face to face with a traumatic event. PTSD is relatively new in terms of a diagnosis, however we know that people were aware of it many years ago.There was an accountant by the name of Samuel Pepys who lived through the great fire of London. He took some very good records and published a little account. You can read in his account typical symptoms of PTSD, such as nightmares and intrusive recollections. It was during the World Wars that we really started to recognize PTSD as a distinct entity. It went through a couple iterations in terms of nomenclature, it was called "combat fatigue", "shell shock", but it wasn't until 1980 that we really came up with a diagnosis of PTSD. A lot of people think of PTSD as a veterans disease because it was often very much associated with the Vietnam war, but in fact, there are many people in the civilian world that suffer from various violent crimes and other kinds of accidents, such as motor vehicle accidents, that develop PTSD; So it really does affect quite a few people.