Learn Psychiatry

1. The person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event(s) that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or threat to physical integrity of self or others
2. The response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.  (In children, may be expressed as disorganized/agitated behavior)

1. recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, and perceptions (repetitive play in children)
2. recurrent distressing dreams of event (in children may be frightening without recognizable content)
3. acting or feeling as though the event were recurring (reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, dissociative flashbacks) (In children, trauma specifc re-enactment)
4. intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
5. physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event

1. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
2. efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollection of the trauma
3. inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
4. markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
5. feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
6. restricted range of affect (e.g. unable to have loving feelings)
7. sense of foreshortened future (e.g. does not expect to have career, marriage, children or normal life span)

1. difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
2. irritability or outbursts of anger
3. difficulty concentrating
4. hypervigilance
5. exaggerated startle response

Specifiers for PTSD